“Parachute Students”: Lived Experience of Chinese High School Students in America

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 3: Schooling & Race

Abstract

Chinese upper-middle-class families, following their counterpart in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, start to send increasing number of their only sons and daughters to American for private secondary education. This research examines how these so-called, “parachute” students negotiate and construct their social, cultural, and ethno-racial identity in American private high schools, with a specific focus on Chinese students ‘efforts to make American friends, as it was considered the marker of “successful” integration. Drawing on in-depth interviews with forty Chinese students from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other major cities, I reveal the lived experiences of Chinese students at different stages of education to document the American private secondary education as they imagined it before arrival, perceived it during the school years and reflected upon it after graduation. Capturing these students ‘experience at an early stage will shed light on further understanding of the future generation of “transnational capitalist class”.

Author

• Siqi Tu, CUNY Graduate Center