Anita Koo

Is there any chance to get ahead? Education aspirations and expectations of migrant families in China

In China, there is a growing group of ‘migrant children’, who reside in the city but do not have full rights to access education. Many have been granted a chance to study in public schools after the policy change, but they continue to have lower educational outcomes than the local students. To understand the inequality, this paper examines the educational goals of migrant families in Beijing. Based on the field interviews, it shows that even migrant children who aspire to attain higher education are nonetheless ‘blocked’ by discriminatory examination laws and limited resources. Their subjective outlook is derived from objective conditions and concrete experiences. Their family of origin determines the types of resources available to them, and thus plays an important role in the formation and justification of their educational goals. A realistic assessment of their chances of achieving their aspirations leads them to have lower expectations.

The Doubly Disadvantaged: How Return Migrant Students Fail to Access and Deploy Capitals for Academic Success in Rural Schools

A growing number of ‘return migrant children’, who have lived in cities where they had access to the compulsory education system, are sent back to their rural hometowns to prepare for higher education in China. This study explores the resources that are available to return migrant students for further educational development and examines their difficulties with activating their educational capitals and translating them into human capital, in the form of academic knowledge and educational success after their remigration (a change in their field of practice). Using a framework based on the work of Bourdieu, this article conceptualizes the educational resources available to migrant families in terms of economic, social and cultural capitals. This article contributes to a better understanding of the transformation and deployment of educational capitals by revitalizing the importance of the concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ inherent in Bourdieu’s work.

Expansion of Vocational Education in Neoliberal China: Hope and Despair among Rural Youth.

Abstract The rise of China as the world factory in the last few decades has been accompanied by a rapid expansion in vocational education. A growing number of youth from rural backgrounds now have the chance to receive post-compulsory education in vocational training schools. Using human capital theory as an analytical focus, this study examines their strong desire to acquire educational credentials and explores the stress and frustration they experience after finding out that graduates in vocational schools are sent to factories to work as cheap labourers. This article argues that reform of the educational system in post-reform China has channelled a large group of rural youth to vocational education without granting them enough chance of upward mobility. When China relies heavily on a labour-intensive manufacturing economy to secure its place in neoliberal globalization, most of the jobs available are regarded as ‘undesirable’, dead-end and low income. Returns of human capital investment among rural youth are not guaranteed.

Is Hong Kong no Longer a Land of Opportunities after the 1997 Handover?: A Comparison of Patterns of Social Mobility between 1989 and 2007

A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes many speculate that an increasing involvement of younger generations in politics in recent years results from their blocked social mobility. What remains unclear is whether new generations are indeed deprived of mobility opportunities in nowadays Hong Kong. We seek to address this issue empirically by analysing two datasets collected in 1989 and 2007. Situating our discussion against the context of the study of social mobility, we discuss our analysis from two perspectives of social mobility: absolute mobility (mobility due to structural changes) and relative mobility (mobility due to changes in social fluidity). Against a changing class structure over the set period, structural opportunities for upward mobility are actually available to the younger generations; but, seemingly, whether they could grasp such opportunities to get ahead has become more strongly dependent on their class background.

A "World-Class" (Labor) Camp/us: Foxconn and China's New Generation of Labor Migrants

The fact that in 2010 eighteen young workers attempted suicide at Foxconn production facilities in China has attracted worldwide attention. Drawing on research conducted in Foxconn factories in three regions of China — the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and West China — the authors trace the development of the Foxconn Technology Group as a case that demonstrates the aggressive nature of capital expansion in China and its impact on the lives of Chinese workers. While the Foxconn Group produces Apple products for the world’s consumers, it simultaneously produces a new Chinese working class, the majority of whom are young migrant laborers. The authors claim that in China the state played a significant role in accelerating global capital accumulation. The authors hope to make sense of the way that a state-capital alliance is shaping a new form of labor recruitment and labor use. This article analyzes the emerging labor regime, specifically, the use of student labor in the process of Foxconn’s expansion in China. First, the article discusses the ways in which the state contributes to the rise of monopoly capital by supplying workers who are both cheaper and younger. Second, the article examines how the new labor regime, established by Foxconn, generates more pressure on workers, leading to increased levels of anxiety and desperation among young factory workers. The article’s principal research question is how a labor crisis was structurally produced in a mega global factory regime, when a new youth working class was emergent in China.