It Was Never About Education: How the Concept of Educational Meritocracy Is Complicated Through Class Origins, Immigration, and Acculturation for Undocumented Chinese Immigrants

• In Event: Sense of Belonging Across Higher Education

Abstract

Since Asian Americans have been known to do well in US schooling, there is an assumption that they come to the US because of their buy in to an educational messaging of meritocracy for themselves and their next generation. However, there is very little documentation of this. Moreover, scholars have also associated their educational success, especially Chinese Americans, to be linked with them being a hyper-selected immigrant group. Yet, social class among immigrants are much more multifaceted than what literature depicts, especially for those who become undocumented. Drawing from four years of ethnographic fieldwork with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their families in Fuzhou, I find their understandings of education is much more complicated than what is assumed.

Author

• Jia-Lin Liu, New York University