In Search of the 'Best Option Available': Outsourcing Secondary Education to the U.S. and Anxiety among the Chinese Upper-Middle Class

• In Event: Creating an (un)equal playing field: parenting practices and educational strategies among China’s emerging middle- and affluent classes

Proposal

Educational choice has increasingly become a global matter. Previous research on this topic has mainly focused on international students seeking higher education or treating education as part of a migration strategy for global households. This paper instead focuses on families who made the choice mainly for educational purpose and to “parachute” their children at an earlier stage. It discusses the educational strategies of a rapidly rising group of Chinese urban upper-middle-class families who sent their only children to the United States for private secondary education and documents the motivations and risks of this educational choice. Based on interviews with 35 parents in megacities in China, I argue that Chinese urban upper-middle-class families choose this strategy as a silent exit from the Chinese educational system and at the same time face the risks of many layers of uncertainties due to unfamiliarity with the American institutional context. This research sheds light on the struggles and strategies regarding education and stratification for a privileged group in a neoliberalizing urban China. The lived experiences of these families also provide a productive lens for further theorizing about the implication of seemingly individualized and apolitical educational strategies on the state-society relationship.

Author

• Siqi Tu, The Graduate Center, City University of New York