From the Countryside to the Margin of City——An Ethnographic Study on the Education for Rural Workers’ Children

Ai Qiong

China's Education: Research & Review ›› 2005, Vol. 9 ›› Issue (2) : 181-225.

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China's Education: Research & Review ›› 2005, Vol. 9 ›› Issue (2) : 181-225.

From the Countryside to the Margin of City——An Ethnographic Study on the Education for Rural Workers’ Children

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Abstract

With the progression of modernization and urbanization China witnesses an unprecedented tide of rural workers flooding into big cities to make a living while having to face the fact of the rural workers becoming the marginalized group. Based on this context, this paper is focused on the second migrants (i.e. children of the rural workers )’ education in cities. Traditionally the marginalized group is one of the most important research objects of educational ethnography, so I chose a typical simply-equipped school established especially for the children of the rural workers and hope to probe into the process of these children’s social psychological change on the view of inner culture and provide some valuable theory basis for the policy-maker. The paper is composed of 5 parts: Part 1 gives a brief introduction of the problem to emphasize its importance, And interprets some anthropological terms. Part 2 retrospect to the history of China’s labor migration, and analyzes the reason and points out the peasantry’s psychological change. Part 3 as fieldwork, and to accumulate the culture capital so as to transform it into economic capital and social capital. Part 4, a lot of typical cases on the basis of thorough fieldwork and draws a conclusion that it’s a far cry from their imagination that they wish to transform the accumulated culture capital to the other two capitals. While colliding with the city culture, they form a transitional character, i.e. dissociating from the fields while wandering from the city. Consequently it draws the theoretical conclusion of the cultural consistency and the formation of habits, generation gap, cultural tradition and cultural identity. Finally, it emphasizes the significance of the education of the rural workers’ children from the view of the culture.

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Ai Qiong. From the Countryside to the Margin of City——An Ethnographic Study on the Education for Rural Workers’ Children[J]. China's Education: Research & Review, 2005, 9(2): 181-225
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