Rachel Murphy explores Chinese children's experience of having migrant parents and the impact this has on family relationships in China.

This ground breaking work is the result of research by Plan International China and the China Agricultural University on children who have been left behind in their rural villages when their parents migrate to cities in search of work.

The authors examine the impact of migration on educational attainment in rural Mexico. Using historical migration rates by state to instrument for current migration, they find evidence of a significant negative effect of migration on schooling attendance and attainment of 12 to 18 year-old boys and 16 to 18 year-old girls. IV-Censored Ordered Probit results show that living in a migrant household lowers the chances of boys completing junior high school and of boys and girls completing high school. The negative effect of migration on schooling is somewhat mitigated for younger girls with low educated mothers, which is consistent with remittances relaxing credit constraints on education investment for the very poor. However, for the majority of rural Mexican children, family migration depresses educational attainment. Comparison of the marginal effects of migration on school attendance and on participation in other activities shows that the observed decrease in schooling of 16 to 18 year-olds is accounted for by the current migration of boys and increased housework for girls.

Transformative market reforms in China since the late 1970s have improved living standards dramatically, but have also led to unprecedented economic inequality. During this period, China’s educational system was restructured to support economic development, with educational reforms occurring at a startling pace. Today, the educational system has diversified in structure, finance, and content; it has become more market-oriented; and it is serving an increasingly diverse student population. These changes carry significant consequences for China’s social mobility and inequality, and future economic prospects. In Education and Reform in China, leading scholars in the fields of education, sociology, demography, and economics investigate the evolution of educational access and attainment, educational quality, and the economic consequences of being educated. Education and Reform in China shows that economic advancement is increasingly tied to education in China, even as educational services are increasingly marketized. The volume investigates the varying impact of change for different social, ethnic, economic and geographic groups. Offering interdisciplinary views on the changing role of education in Chinese society, and on China’s educational achievements and policy challenges, this book will be an important resource for those interested in education, public policy, and development issues in China.

A study of how China’s changing economy may leave its rural communities in the dust and launch a political and economic disaster. As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern. China’s growth has relied heavily on unskilled labor. Most of the workers who have fueled the country’s rise come from rural villages and have never been to high school. While this national growth strategy has been effective for three decades, the unskilled wage rate is finally rising, inducing companies inside China to automate at an unprecedented rate and triggering an exodus of companies seeking cheaper labor in other countries. Ten years ago, almost every product for sale in an American Walmart was made in China. Today, that is no longer the case. With the changing demand for labor, China seems to have no good back-up plan. For all of its investment in physical infrastructure, for decades China failed to invest enough in its people. Recent progress may come too late. Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle and Hell reveal that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. Over half of China’s population—as well as a vast majority of its children—are from rural areas. Their low levels of basic education may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and manufacturing jobs move elsewhere. In Invisible China, Rozelle and Hell speak not only to an urgent humanitarian concern but also a potential economic crisis that could upend economies and foreign relations around the globe. If too many are left structurally unemployable, the implications both inside and outside of China could be serious. Understanding the situation in China today is essential if we are to avoid a potential crisis of international proportions. This book is an urgent and timely call to action that should be read by economists, policymakers, the business community, and general readers alike. Praise for Invisible China “Stunningly researched.” —TheEconomist, Best Books of the Year (UK) “Invisible China sounds a wake-up call.” —The Strategist “Not to be missed.” —Times Literary Supplement (UK) “[Invisible China] provides an extensive coverage of problems for China in the sphere of human capital development . . . the book is rich in content and is not constrained only to China, but provides important parallels with past and present developments in other countries.” —Journal of Chinese Political Science

This edited book explores the complex and multifaceted connections between education and migration in an Asian context from multiple perspectives. It features studies from China, Japan, India, the Philippines, Thailand, and Timor-Leste and covers diverse migration and education experiences. These experiences encompass internal and international migration and forced displacement, as well as questions surrounding education such as school choice, education provision and training as human capital; education and social inclusion; and student performance in a post-conflict context. By covering a wide range of questions and situations, the original scholarship in this book reveals how human development concerns and higher rates of movement within and outside of Asian countries operate on multiple levels in a globalized world.

The book studies the educational needs of two disadvantaged groups of children in China (left-behind children in rural areas and migrant children in urban areas), aiming to optimize the social support system so that these disadvantaged children can realize their full potential. The author conducts two separate researches and introduces the research background, methodology, related theories and advanced theories. Main difficulties of left-behind children and migrant children include parents’ lack of attention to their children’s mental health, teachers’ lack of expertise in working with these two groups of children, and a lack of collaboration between schools and NGOs. It suggests promoting systematic reform, helping parents to develop effective parenting skills, and establishing positive interactions among the stakeholders of social support for these disadvantaged children. The book will be of interest to people who work with left-behind children in rural areas and those who work with migrant students in urban areas, including teachers, school administrators, local educational authorities, community-based service providers, and provincial and central departments of education.

There are more than 225 million rural-to-urban migrant workers, and some 20 million migrant children in Chinese cities. Because of policies related to the household registration (hukou) system, migrant students are not allowed a public high school education in the cities, so their urban education stops abruptly at the end of middle school. This book investigates the post-middle school education and labor market decisions of migrant students in Beijing and Shanghai, and provides a glimpse into the future of a crucial link in China’s development. The stories of how these migrant students seek upward mobility and urban citizenship also reveal one of the most intricate structural inequalities in China today. Based on quantitative data collected from middle schools in Beijing and Shanghai, and ethnographic data drawing on in-depth interviews with migrant children, their parents, and teachers, this book offers a portrait of the migration and educational experiences and prospects of second generation migrant youth in China today. It explores the urban experience of migrant students, contrasting it with that of local city youngsters, examining the migrant students’ family backgrounds, family dynamics, neighborhood and school experience, and interaction with locals. It goes on to look at the migrant students’ education and career aspirations, the structural obstacles preventing their fulfilment, and how migrant families respond to institutional constraints on educational opportunity. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of policy implications and offers proposals for resolving the dilemmas of migrant youth. This book will of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, Asian education, migration and social development.

The book grapples with social inequality, inclusivity, and diversity through the discussions of wellbeing, wellbecoming, and resilience of floating children and left-behind children. It invites families, schools, communities, social organisations, and governments to rethink and recognise the qualities of left-behind children and floating children. The book will be of interest to research students, sociologists of education, educational studies scholars, social workers, school professionals, and policy makers in and beyond China. The past two decades have seen exponential growth of urbanisation and migration in China. Emerging from this growth are a myriad population of floating children and left-behind children and the ever greater social-spatial interpenetration that places these children at risk of undesirable wellbeing. The living and schooling of these children are fraught with potholes and distractions in the context of migration and urbanisation. Extant work often treats floating children and left-behind children as two discrete populations and comes to grips with their wellbeing separately. The deficit model and the ‘do-gooder’ approach have prevailed for a long time, intending to fix the “problems” and correct the “abnormalities” associated with these children. This book differs, however, in its efforts to blur the dichotomy between floating children and left-behind children; in its transformative view and strength-based approach that recast vulnerabilities into opportunities; and in its focus on the nurture of enabling ecologies instead of the nature of individual inferiorities.

China's remarkable economic transition and capacity for dynamic growth has stunned the world. Throughout the period of economic reform, China has been moving towards the creation of a labour market. The scale of this transformation is unprecedented. New economic incentives, vast labour migration, draconian retrenchment of state workers, and sharply rising wage inequality are all characteristic of this unique transition. Drawing on more than a decade of survey-based research, the authors systematically document and analyse this important transformation. They use economic and sociological theory, institutional analysis and political economy to fully explain the causes, pressures, obstacles and consequences of the move towards a labour market in China. It is argued that much progress has been made towards the creation of a labour market but that the process is far from complete.