Beyond Choice: How Points System Structure the Educational Inequality of Migrant families in Shanghai

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Politics of Education (Table 4)

Abstract

Institutional rules play a decisive role in structuring inequality. This is vividly illustrated by a case from my qualitative fieldwork in Shanghai. In one migrant family, the first child had the opportunity to complete nine years of compulsory education in the city under earlier policies. However, the younger child faced the increasingly refined Residence Permit Points System. This child was forced to return to their rural hometown because the parents failed to meet a newly added technical requirement. This divergence within the same household demonstrates that life trajectories are governed by evolving institutional access rather than family effort.

This study examines the Residence Permit Points System in Shanghai as a primary institutional mechanism for organizing social resources. Based on in-depth interviews and official documents, the paper argues that while the system was introduced with an inclusionary goal, its design functions as a technocratic filter. It determines the timing and limits of urban inclusion through increasingly specific technical thresholds.

The study identifies four patterns of navigating the points system:
1. Directly Qualified: Elite migrants whose credentials align with state-defined quality markers.
2. Tried and Succeeded: Families who navigate the burden of inclusion through long-term strategic planning.
3. Tried but Failed: Families whose heavy investments are nullified by technicalities like interrupted insurance.
4. Directly Quit: Disadvantaged migrants who exit due to the impossible threshold of the system from their perspective.

By integrating the issues of return migration and the deconstruction of family structures, such as the rise of accompanying mothers back home in rural areas, this study demonstrates how meso-level policy designs generate macro-level distributive outcomes.

Author

• Xin He, Duke University