ABSTRACT

Scholarship has examined how immigrant parents in North America and Europe acculturate their children to the education system in their receiving societies, with a focus on overcoming language barriers and coping with cultural differences in education between home and host societies. However, relatively less attention has been paid to the efforts of migrant parents in circumventing structural obstacles to the education access of their migrant children. To address that gap, this study draws on the qualitative data obtained from 23 rural-urban migrants in South China to investigate how these parents help their migrant children access urban education resources in a social context where structural obstacles outweigh cultural/racial differences. This study defines migrant parents as active agents who use strategies and actions to adapt to, manoeuvre within or circumvent the structural constraints to augment urban education resources for their migrant children. The migrant parents’ agency includes persistent efforts in obtaining urban hukou for their children; applying strategies to increase their children’s qualification for public schools that use a point system; exploring guanxi and using tiger parenting to get their children into public schools; exchanging economic resources for education opportunities in elite private schools; purchasing extracurricular education services; and actively maintaining parent-teacher partnerships to support their children’s schooling. While valuing the migrants’ agency, this study also indicates that the efficacy of their actions and strategies is affected by disparities in their socioeconomic resources.

摘要

奖学金研究了北美和欧洲的移民父母如何使其子女在接受社会中适应教育系统，重点是克服语言障碍和应对家庭社会与寄宿社会之间的文化差异。但是，对移徙父母在规避其移徙子女受教育机会的结构性障碍方面所做的努力的关注相对较少。为了解决这一差距，本研究借鉴了华南地区23名城乡移民的定性数据，以调查这些父母如何在结构性障碍超过文化/种族差异的社会背景下，帮助其移民子女获得城市教育资源。这项研究将移民父母定义为积极的行动者，他们使用策略和行动来适应，在结构性限制内或规避结构性限制，以增加其流动儿童的城市教育资源。移民父母的代理机构包括为获得城市住房而做出的不懈努力。他们的孩子的户口；实施策略以提高孩子在使用积分系统的公立学校中的资格；探索关系并利用老虎育儿让他们的孩子进入公立学校；为精英私立学校的教育机会交换经济资源；购买课外教育服务；并积极维持家长与老师的伙伴关系，以支持子女的就学。在评估移民机构的价值的同时，这项研究还表明，他们的行动和策略的有效性受到其社会经济资源差异的影响。