Author: Xin Fan

Research Highlighted:
Fei, M. (2024). Concerted cultivation from afar: Wealthy Chinese families and their children at Swiss international boarding schools. Swiss Journal of Sociology, 50(2), 193–208. https://doi.org/10.26034/cm.sjs.2024.6036 

This study examines a rarely explored education and parenting practice among a hard-to-reach population from China––namely, the early study abroad of Chinese children at Swiss international boarding schools (SIBSs) and the “concerted cultivation from afar” practiced by their affluent families. Existing literature primarily focuses on the parenting practices of the middle and working class, often defining class in broad strokes (Sherman, 2017). Additionally, study abroad literature in the case of China typically characterizes it as a middle-class phenomenon, collapsing more economically privileged families into the “middle” category (e.g., Zhou et al., 2019; Wang, 2020). The study expands the scope of existing research on both studying abroad and parenting by highlighting the practices of a highly privileged population. 

Theoretical Framework 

The study adopts Ma and Wright’s (2021) “outsourced concerted cultivation” as its guiding theoretical framework, a new framework built upon Lareau’s (2003) original discussions on concerted cultivation within the context of Chinese parents sending their children abroad for education. While Ma and Wright (2021) focus on how “new rich” Chinese families outsource concerted cultivation to international high schools and educational consultants in China, this study discusses how affluent Chinese families do so with SIBSs while still practicing concerted cultivation from afar. 

Methods 

Seven participants who 1) self-identified as Chinese and 2) had children who were studying or had studied at SIBSs within the past five years were recruited in my social network and through snowballing. While I did not specify any gender preference when recruiting participants, all participants happened to be mothers. I identified the participants as “wealthy” as they could fund their children’s SIBS tuition without financial aid from the schools, which cost from around 70,000 CHF to 150,000 CHF per year. Semi-structured interviews in Mandarin Chinese conducted mostly online in late 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic were the primary data collection method. They lasted between 40 and 166 minutes, with a median of 63 minutes.  

At the time of the study, all participants lived in top-tier Chinese cities except for one, who had accompanied her child to Switzerland for one and a half years. Five participants had two children; two had one child. Only one participant sent both her children to SIBSs. The age at which the children started school at a SIBS ranged from 7–15, and they had spent 1.5–5 years at SIBSs at the time of the study. 

Findings 

I identified two main themes from the interviews, which answer the question of how wealthy Chinese families cultivate their children through schooling at SIBSs. The participants were confident that their children would inherit their social class advantages and continue their lifestyles. Therefore, while they valued their children’s education, they did not demonstrate class anxiety and disagreed with the competitive parenting practices that are prevalent among the middle class in China. Their decision to send their children to SIBSs demonstrated what Irwin and Elley (2011) call concerted cultivation in the present, placing value on diverse cultural pursuits and socio-emotional development at school. 

At the same time, participants in this study strived to make up for a lack of direct parental support entailed by the ESA practice. At the very beginning of their children’s ESA journey, they made on-site visits with their children to make informed school choices. After their children enrolled at a SIBS, they traveled to Switzerland frequently, closely monitored their children’s well-being, kept regular contact with the school, and intervened in institutional settings when necessary. Therefore, while it seemed like the participants had outsourced concerted cultivation (Ma & Wright, 2021) to the SIBSs, they still practiced it from afar, made possible by their economic resources, time, and cultural dispositions in some cases. 

Implications 

This study has the following implications. First, it adds to the literature on parenting practices of the wealthy, an area to which existing research pays little attention. Relatedly, the study confirms the finding of Irwin and Elley (2011) and Maxwell and Aggleton (2013) that class anxiety is not necessarily the main drive for concerted cultivation. Additionally, the study foregrounds economic resources in the practice of concerted cultivation, as suggested by Ma and Wright (2021). It also highlights the importance of cultural knowledge, which enabled the participants to be more engaged in their children’s schooling than the parents in Ma and Wright (2021). 

Note: This article is part of the Swiss Journal of Sociology’s special issue titled “Switzerland as a Site of Capital Accumulation: The Case of International Education,” edited by Lillie and Delval (2024). This issue explores how and why foreign families and individuals, as well as local institutions, capitalize on the Swiss private schools’ market. Click here to read more. 

References 

Irwin, S., & Elley, S. (2011). Concerted cultivation? Parenting values, education and class diversity. Sociology, 45(3), 480–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038511399618  

Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. University of California Press. 

Lillie, K., & Delval, A. S. (2024). Switzerland as a site of capital accumulation: The case of international education. Swiss Journal of Sociology, 50(2), 127–142. https://doi.org/10.26034/cm.sjs.2024.6033 

Ma, Y., & Wright, E. (2021). Outsourced concerted cultivation: International schooling and educational consulting in China. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 32(3), 799–821. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2021.1878565  

Maxwell, C., & Aggleton, P. (2013). Becoming accomplished: Concerted cultivation among privately educated young women. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 21(1), 75–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2013.764032  

Sherman, R. (2017). Conflicted cultivation: Parenting, privilege, and moral worth in wealthy New York families. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 5(1), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-016-0011-3 

Wang, X. (2020). Capital, habitus, and education in contemporary China: Understanding motivations of middle-class families in pursuing studying abroad in the United States. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(12), 1314–1328. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1767074 

Zhou, X., Li, J., & Jordan, L. P. (2019). Parental intent for children to study abroad: The role of educational aspiration and children’s characteristics. Cambridge Journal of Education, 49(6), 789–807. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2019.1590526 

Author bio

Mianmian Fei is a Ph.D. Candidate in Higher Education and Student Affairs at The Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology in the United States and a Research Associate at the QualLab qualitative research center. Before her Ph.D. studies, she earned a Master’s in Anthropology and Sociology as a Hans Wilsdorf Scholar at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland and worked for the Science Consulate of Switzerland in Shanghai and the UNESCO International Bureau of Education. Her research interests include international and comparative higher education, qualitative methodology, and the sociological aspects of education. Email: fei.132@buckeyemail.osu.edu. 

Managing Editor: Xin Fan

Research Highlighted: 

Kang, E. (2024). The influence of the Chinese hukou system in motivating and shaping the geography of Chinese international student mobility. Population, Space and Place, 30(1), e2734. https://doi-org.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/10.1002/psp.2734

International student mobility (ISM) refers to the processes of movement of ‘internationally mobile students’, defined as people who leave their country of citizenship primarily for education (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2014). Scholars have found that institutional barriers significantly influence the ISM process (Lomer, 2018; Lulle & Buzinska, 2017). However, this understanding usually refers to international migration. There is little knowledge about how institutional barriers to internal migration affect ISM. To fill the important gap, this paper relates to the data from 50 semistructured interviews with returning master’s graduates in Shanghai to examine the effect of the Chinese hukou system on different stages of ISM experience, including pre-departure, upon and after return, among Chinese international students. Specifically, this paper asks whether the hukou restriction of internal migration may motivate some students to study abroad. If so, how does the hukou system affect the ISM experience of middle-class Chinese international students? The main contribution of this paper is the revealing of the thus far underacknowledged relationship between ISM and domestic institutional barriers to mobility. 

The Chinese hukou system is an appropriate starting point for exploring how domestic institutional barriers affects ISM. This is partially because China is one of the largest ISM-sending countries in the world (Wen & Hu, 2019).These students came from different regions of China, but upon their return were concentrated in several developed coastal cities, such as Shanghai and Guangzhou (Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange CSCSE, 2018). In other words, returnees were often internal migrants within China. Additionally, the hukou system is an important social institution to control internal migration in China. The hukou system is a household registration system in China that classifies the population according to two frameworks: hukou type (agricultural or nonagricultural) and place of registration (local or nonlocal) (Song, 2014). The hukou system significantly influence on internal migration in the country (Qian et al., 2020; Song, 2014). On the one hand because individuals’ citizenship rights are connected with their hukou registered regions (Song, 2014). It is difficult for internal migrants to access diverse welfare benefits without local hukou status in their destinations (Chan & Buckingham, 2008; Song, 2014; Zhou & Cheung, 2017; Zhou & Hui, 2022). On the other hand, changes in hukou status are highly regulated and are difficult for individuals to achieve (Qian & Qian, 2017; Zhou & Hui, 2022).  In recent years, hukou reforms have allowed returning international students to access hukou status in developed cities (Brooks & Waters, 2021; Zhai, 2020). These reforms provided enhanced potential opportunities for middle-class students in economically peripheral regions to access hukou status in core cities via ISM. The mechanism of this process is the focus of this paper. 

Based on an analysis of interviews with 50 returning students, this analysis generated three main findings that address important current limitations in understanding the effects of institutional barriers on ISM. First, overcoming restrictions from the hukou system motivates many Chinese students to study abroad. Young people hope to migrate from other parts of China to developed Chinese cities because of the regional inequalities that have occurred in Chinese urbanisation in recent decades (Zhai & Moskal, 2022). Students who belong to the ‘middle-category migration’ participate in ISM to achieve future internal migration. Second, the data demonstrate that students emphasise being away for a short study time, with some choosing specific destinations that are closer to China, lowering the emotional and monetary costs of ISM. This finding indicates that hukou can impact the geographies of ISM destinations because students belonging to the ‘middle category’ of migration could access hukou status by paying less to study internationally in specific destinations. Finally, this paper found that distinctive requirements for accessing hukou status in different areas affect returnees’ decisions regarding internal migration after returning. These findings have two major implications on ISM studies. 

First, this paper highlighted the effect of institutional barriers on the geography of ISM, which shapes the geographies of both ISM destinations and return destinations. Previous studies have focused on institutional barriers in ISM-receiving countries (Tuxen & Robertson, 2019). Only in recent years have some scholars identified the hukou system as an institutional barrier that influences ISM (Brooks & Waters, 2021; Zhai, 2020). However, this is the first study to explicitly demonstrate how the hukou system affects the ISM process. Second, this paper found that the hukou system helps scholars better understand the ISM experience of students from a ‘middle-category migration’ background. International students are usually regarded as a privileged group within ISM research. Students’ diversity in terms of socioeconomic and sociopolitical backgrounds is usually disregarded (Lipura & Collins, 2020). The hukou system provides a tool to distinguish ‘middle-category migration’ international students from the commonly held viewpoint that ISM involves students of a particularly elite class.  

Reference: 

Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2021). International students and alternative visions of diaspora. British Journal of Educational Studies, 69(5), 557-577. 

Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange (CSCSE) (2018). Zhongguo Liuxue Huiguo Jiuye Lanpishu (Blue Book of China’s returned employment) 2018. Beijing: Zhongguo Yanshi Chubanshe (China Yanshi Press). 

Chan, K. W., & Buckingham, W. (2008). Is China abolishing the hukou system?. The China Quarterly, 195, 582-606. 

Lomer, S. (2018). UK policy discourses and international student mobility: The deterrence and subjectification of international students. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 308-324. 

Lipura, S. J., & Collins, F. L. (2020). Towards an integrative understanding of contemporary educational mobilities: A critical agenda for international student mobilities research. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(3), 343-359. 

Lulle, A., & Buzinska, L. (2017). Between a ‘student abroad’and ‘being from Latvia’: Inequalities of access, prestige, and foreign-earned cultural capital. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(8), 1362-1378. 

Qian, Z., Cheng, Y., & Qian, Y. (2020). Hukou, marriage, and access to wealth in Shanghai. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(18), 3920-3936. 

Qian, Y., & Qian, Z. (2017). Assortative mating by education and hukou in Shanghai. Chinese Sociological Review, 49(3), 239-262. 

Song, Y. (2014). What should economists know about the current Chinese hukou system?. China Economic Review, 29, 200-212. 

Tuxen, N., & Robertson, S. (2019). Brokering international education and (re) producing class in Mumbai. International Migration, 57(3), 280-294. 

UNESCO. (2014). Higher Education in Asia: Expanding Out, Expanding Up – The Rise of Graduate Education and University Research. Available at: http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/higher-education-in-asia-expanding-out-expanding-up-2014-en.pdf 

Wen, W., & Hu, D. (2019). The emergence of a regional education hub: Rationales of international students’ choice of China as the study destination. Journal of Studies in International Education, 23(3), 303-325. 

Zhou, J., & Hui, E. C. M. (2022). The hukou system and selective internal migration in China. Papers in Regional Science, 101(2), 461-482. 

Zhou, S., & Cheung, M. (2017). Hukou system effects on migrant children’s education in China: Learning from past disparities. International social work, 60(6), 1327-1342. 

Zhai, K. (2020). Social mobility and international graduates in China (Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow). 

Zhai, K., & Moskal, M. (2022). The Impact of Place of Origin on International and Domestic Graduates’ Mobility in China. International Migration Review, 56(1), 123-154. 

Authors’ Bio 

Erli is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at the University of St Andrews. Before moving to the UK, he worked as a researcher at Fudan University in China. Erli’s research has been funded by the University of St Andrews, the Government of Shanghai and the Ministry of Education, China. Erli’s research interests include international/internal migration, international higher education and social inequality. He has presented his studies at the 12th International Conference on Population Geographies and the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference and published part of his studies in Population, Space and Place.

Managing Editor: Xin Fan