Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Wei-Jun Jean Yeung, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

This study examines the educational trajectory of rural Chinese adolescents from middle to high school, a crucial step for youth that can greatly influence their life chances. Due to China’s long-standing rural-urban divide and institutional discrimination, about 61 million rural children grow up in the absence of parents who have migrated for work. At the same time, under the competitive educational system in China, adolescents spend a tremendous amount of time studying and socializing in school. China therefore provides a valuable setting to explore the relative importance of family and school context in shaping the educational outcome.

Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from final-year middle school adolescents, their parents, schools and teachers in a typical migrant-sending county located in central China. Data show that overall parental migration has limited negative effects on academic performance and some negative effects on whether an adolescent transitions to high school. The beneficial effects of increased economic resources brought in by parental migrant work, and the resilience of the left-behind children in the Chinese cultural context may help to explain the modest adverse impact of parental absence. More importantly, school has served as a care center for adolescents and thus exerts salient effects over an adolescent’s transition to high school. The location of middle school seems to be the most significant factor in shaping educational outcome. In other words, within the same rural community, left-behind adolescents do not appear to fare worse in terms of educational attainment than their non-left-behind counterparts. Notable educational stratification by the location of school reflects that rural communities and adolescents are left behind as a whole.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hu Shu is PhD candidate with Department of Sociology and research associate with Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore. Her doctoral dissertation topic is about internal labor migration and adolescents’ wellbeing in rural China. Her research interests include stratification and inequality, family, education, and social change.

REGISTRATION

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