Network for Research into Chinese Education Mobilities (NRCEM)

Seventy years of Chinese language education in New Zealand: A transdisciplinary overview

Research Highlighted:

Wang, D. (2021). Seventy years of Chinese language education in New Zealand: A transdisciplinary overview. In Y. Zhang & X. Gao (Eds.), Frontiers in the teaching and learning of Chinese as a second language (pp. 170-184). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003169895-11 (Please feel free to contact the author for a published version of this publication).

Research highlights

This research output is supported by the Marsden Fund of the Royal Society of New Zealand. It is part of a large-scale project that aims to map out the past and present of Chinese language education in New Zealand. Due to its geographical isolation and its small population, New Zealand can be easily neglected or misunderstood compared to other English-speaking countries. It is apparent that the case of New Zealand has been a missing puzzle on the knowledge map of research on Chinese language education in Anglophone countries (Wang, 2020b). This article is the first to present transdisciplinary insights into Chinese language teaching and learning in New Zealand.

This chapter adopts the transdisciplinary framework in understanding and analysing the multifaceted nature of Chinese language education in an increasingly diverse and multilingual New Zealand. The transdisciplinary framework recognises language teaching and learning as a highly complex process that involves a variety of macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors that have the power to influence the rise and fall of a language in a country (Douglas Fir Group, 2016). It emphasises the importance of exploring language education from multiple levels of forces beyond the micro-level focus on cognitive and linguistic development (e.g., phonetic, lexical, grammatical, character reading and writing). Therefore, this study shifts the attention to a more macro level (e.g., demographic, economic, political, and cultural) and a meso level of language learning (e.g., formal, and informal education organisations such as schools, universities, and community schools).

Chinese language education in New Zealand has gone through a history of 70 years as of 2020. In terms of the time frame, Chinese teaching in New Zealand started in the same year as it did in China. In October 1950, the earliest Chinese lesson was published by a local Chinese magazine with a specific goal for New Zealand Chinese children to maintain their Chinese literacy skills and cultural roots (Stanbridge, 1990). This marks the beginning of the education of Chinese as a heritage language in New Zealand. Within mainstream society, the most prominent and earliest Chinese language programme appeared in a formal educational establishment in 1966. In this year, the University of Auckland formed a teaching team and began to provide Chinese language courses for university students for the first time in history. These students were purely European descendants curious to explore the mysterious Chinese language and culture.

Demographic shifts. Population censuses are by far the most common source of data to provide reliable evidence of the size, growth, and characteristics of language-defined population groups (Siegel, 2018). First, the People’s Republic of China has become the second-largest foreign birthplace for New Zealand people (2.9%), following England (4.5%). It is evident that New Zealand has an increasingly large group of Mandarin speakers, and the trend will continue to grow (Spoonley, 2020). Second, the Chinese language (Mandarin, Cantonese, and other Chinese varieties combined) has become one of the most commonly spoken languages in New Zealand.

Eco-political backgrounds. Eco-political backgrounds are important macro-level factors in understanding the complexity and vulnerability of Chinese language education in Western countries. In the New Zealand context, as Kennedy (2016) noted, Chinese “has experienced different trends in popularity, often partly depending on the country’s political and economic ties with New Zealand at the time”. New Zealand is the first developed country that signed the comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with China in 2008. As part of the Free Trade Agreement, New Zealand and Chinese Education Ministries put forward a Mandarin Language Assistants (MLA) Programme. It is worth noting that the stable and comparatively positive political and diplomatic relationships between New Zealand and China have provided a relatively favourable environment for the development of Chinese language education. In contrast, many other Western countries have witnessed drastic measures taken in closing numerous Confucius Institutes and a concerning trend towards politicising Chinese language teaching and learning (see, e.g., Weinmann, Neilson & Slavich, 2020).

Chinese as a heritage language. Chinese immigrants were one of the earliest and the largest non-European immigrant groups but were “never considered to be real New Zealanders” by the European settlers (Ip, 2009, p. 1). Chinese have suffered legislative discrimination and systemic racism for about a century in New Zealand, similar to what they experienced in other Anglophone countries. Despite the long history of Chinese settlement in New Zealand since the mid-19th century, Chinese language teaching practices only took place in the 1950s. Nevertheless, Chinese communities have shown fluctuating interest in preserving Chinese heritage, and the passion for Chinese learning gradually faded over the years. The views that associated Mandarin with communism remain relevant today both inside and outside the Chinese community (Clark, 2020). The political image of Mandarin could have influenced people’s interest in learning Chinese in a subtle but sophisticated way.

Chinese as an additional language. Mandarin Chinese was first introduced to New Zealand secondary schools in the 1980s and officially entered the New Zealand curriculum in 1995, although there were only a limited number of schools offering Chinese to students at that time. Today, compared to other Anglophone countries (see, e.g., Zhang, 2009), the overall development of Chinese language education in New Zealand is smaller in its total number of enrolments, but proportionally speaking, it is relatively larger. In 2017, there were 8.8% of total school students in New Zealand studying Chinese as a subject in all types of schools (Year 1 – 13). As a proportion of the population, more New Zealand students were studying the Chinese language than in Australia (4.7% in 2016) and the U.S. (2.13% in 2014-15) combined. However, the passion for Chinese learning “has cooled off on university campuses” (Wang, 2020a). The causes of the decline in language learning are complex, and the phenomenon is not unique to New Zealand. The calamitous decline of language learning has become a crisis faced by all Anglophone countries

(Lanvers, Thompson & East, 2021).

References

Clark, P. (2020). Time for a reality check on Chinese interference. https:// www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/paul-clark-time-for-a-reality-check-on-chinese-interference/DCLUAMEN36ZPQ3HFHFDU3JF2QQ/

Douglas Fir Group. (2016). A transdisciplinary framework for SLA in a multilingual world. The Modern Language Journal, 100(S1), 19–47.

Ip, M. (2009). The Dragon and the Taniwha: Māori and Chinese in New Zealand. Auckland University Press.Kennedy, J. (2016). An exploration of when and how New Zealand secondary school teachers introduce Chinese characters to beginners. The New Zealand Language Teachers, 42, 8–20.

Lanvers, U., Thompson, A., & East, M. (Eds.). (2021). Language learning in Anglophone countries: Challenges, practices, ways forward. Palgrave Macmillan.

Spoonley, P. (2020). The new New Zealand: Facing demographic disruption. Massey University Press.

Stanbridge, J. (1990). An early attempt at preserving Chinese literacy in New Zealand: An analysis of the Chinese lessons in the New Zealand Chinese Growers Monthly Journal [Unpublished MA dissertation]. The University of Auckland.

Wang, D. (2020a). Studying Chinese language in higher education: The translanguaging reality through learners’ eyes. System. 10.1016/j.system.2020.102394

Wang, D. 王丹萍. (2020b). 新西兰汉语教育发展与研究. 国际汉语教育史研究, 2, 205–217. [Research and development of Chinese language education in New Zealand. International education history of Chinese language. Commercial Press.]

Weinmann, M., Neilsen, R., & Slavich, S. (2020). Politicisation of teaching Chinese language in Australian classrooms today. https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=7595

Zhang, X. 张西平. (2009). 新西兰的汉语教育. 世界汉语教育史, 432–440. [Chinese language education in New Zealand. In History of Chinese language education. Commercial Press.]

Acknowledgment

This publication was supported by the Marsden Fund Council from New Zealand Government funding, managed by Royal Society Te Apārangi. The project number is UOA1925.

Author Bio

Danping Wang is Senior Lecturer and Major Specialisation Leader of Chinese at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She received the Teaching Excellence Award in 2014 and the Early Career Research Excellence Award in 2020. Since 2020, Danping has been invited by the New Zealand Ministry of Education to review the national qualifications for senior secondary school students. She is currently leading a Marsden Fund project supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand to explore new theoretical directions for Chinese language education through the decolonial lens in the New Zealand context. Her research focuses on translanguaging, plurilingualism, and Chinese language education. Email: danping.wang@auckland.ac.nz

Disenchantment revisited: school life in Northwest China

Research Highlighted:

Tong, L. & Zhou, Y. (2021). Disenchantment revisited: school life in Northwest China. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2021.2006149

Typically understood through a universal-statist framework, modern schooling in contemporary China often contributes to the disenchantment of rural, migrant, and ethnic students. High dropout rates, lack of educational infrastructure, low household socioeconomic status (SES), poor academic attainment, and passive withdrawal inside classrooms are common among these groups. Constructed under the modernization framework, schooling is often treated as an instrument for linear social progress. It is anchored on the contested triumphalism that literacy and numeracy pave the foundation of human capital formation and economic development. Yet, for the many of those mentioned above, such an ideology remains disconnected from their daily lives. In many cases, it contradicts their epistemic practices and beliefs altogether.

Previous studies have tended to treat disenchantment as a fixed state, despite the presence of constant changes. Using an ethnographic approach, we focused more on the flow of these students’ daily lives. The questions that perplexed us and remain critically underexplored are: What eventually became of the disenchanted youth? Is disenchantment a state of mind, a period of status, or an enduring character? Are those disenchanted students always disappointed with their school lives?

Based on year-long ethnographic research in a Tibetan-serving secondary school in Northwest China, we provide additional insights on these questions. We combined participant observation with interviews in daily field activities. We examined a school relocation project for a Tibetan-serving community. This school relocation project aims to recruit Tibetan children from underdeveloped regions to receive better secondary education in urban and modern settings. It resembles many issues embodied by contemporary Chinese ethnic schooling: most students are from pastoral herdsman families, they have a low level of parental involvement in a boarding environment, and they have a low level of academic performance.

Findings

Our research question stems from an empirical puzzle. It was apparent from our observations that the students were not interested in the academically oriented classes. They admitted that they struggled with learning. They did very poorly on standardized tests. In other words, these Tibetan students are clearly maladjusted to the most salient educational ethos of today’s China: academic-oriented learning. This predicament can be explained on two levels. At the practical level, modern academic learning implies incremental effort, which requires the learner to consolidate prior knowledge and practice regularly. However, these elements are absent at the elementary level for the students we met. Few of them developed any real academic foundation due to the harsh living environment, low household SES, poor educational resources, low parental involvement, etc. Moreover, students were met with additional challenges at the cultural level after the relocation. Language barriers, culturally irrelevant curriculum, and epistemic dissonances disengage them from academic pursuits.

However, spending time in this school also made us realize that the classroom experience should be contextualized within the school’s larger social setting. We agreed with Abbott (2016) that change is the norm in social life. When viewing disenchantment from a processual point of view, it is natural to seek how the disenchantment plays out in social space and social time. To understand the changing nature of schooling, we use the ecological/processual approach. In this approach, schooling, like any social structure, is viewed as being in constant flux. We argue that to treat disenchantment as a fixed state ignores the space-temporal quality of human action. The school’s social process is multiple and momentary in nature and often undermines the seemingly linear educational programming. Under the seemingly rigid school setting emerge social spaces that expand beyond academic lessons, which constantly make and remake social actors. We argue that such moments of making and remaking show the personal agency of the students. We illustrate this point using two instances, that is, blackboard newspaper and physical/artistic activities.

Although we observed passive withdrawal inside the classroom, the scene outside of it was quite different. We observe students engaging in social moments with focus, passion, and enjoyment. Those disenchanted students did—consciously or unconsciously—explore other channels to create a new social space. They appropriated school tasks such as putting up routine blackboard newspapers. They also took advantage of the officially designated ‘free time’ to engage in sports and artistic activities. In those spaces, students continue to interact among themselves and with teachers, where withdrawal and marginalization happen alongside negotiation, appropriation, and participation. While disenchantment anchors the classroom experience of many, it interpenetrates and enmeshes with other aspects of student lives and is interwoven over time. By considering this complex interplay of disenchantment we upend the notion of disenchantment as a singular state.

Conclusion

In our case, students spent three to six years in a relocated community with peers and teachers, where disenchantment, be it at the initial or later stage of studying, often was evident. But at the same time, disenchantment intersected with other aspects of social life. The students we observed quickly shifted their attention and energy toward more appealing subjects. They slipped in content that speaks to their religious and ethnic beliefs despite knowing that their expression of religiosity and ethnic identity is not officially encouraged. Simply put, the schooling experience extends beyond academic learning and involves a significant amount of leisure time, sports, and extracurricular activities.

In several cases, they were stereotyped, challenged, or disciplined. But more often than not, they were sympathized with, acquiesced to, and even encouraged in some instances by teachers and administrators. It is in this sense that this study provides new insights into the studies of disenchanted youth. Globally, previous studies tend to view academic schools as places rife with tension, especially for ethnic students. However, we argue that some school space is actually porous and elastic. Beyond the seeming rigidity of time arrangement and of classroom and behavioral norms, there also existed spaces that were relatively free or spontaneous.

Therefore, by studying the conditioning forces that surrounded disenchanted students, we seek to provide new insights into educational policy research, as well as connect with the literature of social process. Beyond the Chinese setting, this study also provides a lesson to educators who work with minority youth in many developing countries. Today, rural/ethnic students in many countries do face a similar dilemma. Their schooling experiences deserve researchers’ further attention.

Authors’ Bio

Liqin Tong (Corresponding Author) is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Macau’s Faculty of Education. Her research interests focus on sociology of education, anthropology of education, and culturally relevant pedagogy. She can be contacted via email: yb87104@connect.um.edu.mo.

Yisu Zhou is an associate professor at the University of Macau’s Faculty of Education. He obtained his doctoral degree from Michigan State University’s College of Education. Yisu’s doctoral work is about the teaching profession (out-of-field teachers) using a large-scale survey from OECD. Yisu’s research interests in education policy span across various topics, including educational finance, teacher education, sociology and economics of education. He has published in American Journal of Education, Journal of Contemporary China, Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, Journal of School Health, Sociological Methods and Research, Social Science Computer Review, etc. He is currently serving on the editorial board of Multicultural Education Review.

From Digital Shock to Miniaturised Mobility: International Students’ Digital Journey in China

Research Highlighted:

Qi, J., Shen, W., & Dai, K. (2021). From Digital Shock to Miniaturised Mobility: International Students’ Digital Journey in China. Journal of Studies in International Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/10283153211065135

Abstract:

As Asia’s largest host country of international students, China’s digital placemaking is impacting on international students’ experience whilst studying and living in the country. This qualitative study addresses the issue of international students’ transition to the digital environment in China. It draws on the theoretical perspectives of international students’ digital journeys and miniaturised mobilities to inform thematic analysis of artefact-mediated student interviews and social media posts. Findings show that international students’ digital journeys in China are characterised by three modes of digital adaptation including digital shock, digital border crossing and digital approachability. We argue that engaging in these modes of digital adaptation has reconstituted international students’ subjectivity through empowering miniaturised mobility, but also a sense of digital in-betweenness as they operate between two different virtual worlds.

Introduction:

China has become the largest study abroad destination in Asia. This paper explores the digital experience of international students at the inter- section of two major trends in China, namely its intensive digital placemaking, and the rapid scaling up of its international student sector. We focus on the research question: how do international students make transitions to the Chinese digital landscape for their life and study? How have their uses of digital and mobile technologies in China impacted their lived experience and subjectivity?

Theoretically, the research design is underpinned by Chang and Gomes’ (2017, 2017) concept of international students’ digital journey and Elliott and Urry’s (2010) miniaturised mobilities. We conducted artefact-mediated interviews with inter- national students about their uses of digital and mobile technologies in China and collected international students’ posts on Chinese social media platforms. The findings through thematic analysis enable us to develop a new conceptualisation related to the interrelationship between China’s digitalisation and international students’ experiences and subjectivity.

Research Methods:

Informed by constructivist perspectives to research, this qualitative study collected two data sets including interviews with international students, and international students’ posts on Chinese social media platforms. The main data set for this study was generated through semi-structured, artefact-mediated interviews with individual international students. Participants were recruited using a snowballing technique, based on the criterion that they have studied in a Chinese university for a minimum of 12 months. A total of 12 international students were interviewed to elicit narratives and comments about their digital journey. These international students came from diverse economic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. Iterative coding was conducted with a focus on the process and action of international students’ digital relocation to China, and their reflections on subjectivity.

Findings:

international students’ digital journeys in China are characterised by the three recurring themes of digital shock, digital border crossing, and digital approachability. We use the term digital shock to describe the state of mind of international students in China upon commencement of an intense digitally-enabled lifestyle. Such a digital shock, involving both excitement and anxiety, derives from their becoming aware of the pervasive digitalisation of everyday activities in Chinese urban spaces, the imperative of a new digital bundle, the linguistic challenge of the Chinese language cyberspace, and the idiosyncratic cyberspace control in China. Digital induction for international students includes organised or semi-organised university orientation programmes, student volunteer systems, and interaction with diasporic communities. Afterwards, international students transition into a digital culture that necessitates multiple practices of digital border crossing. These encompass guarding the border of convenience and overreliance, engaging multiple digital bundles, and transcultural and translanguaging online participation. Their digital experience is also influenced by issues of digital approachability associated with user designs of online platforms and proliferation of online education software post Covid-19.

Discussion:

International students’ digital journeys in China bear much resemblance to those of international students in Australia. Like Chang et al.’s (2021) findings about the latter, international students in China also demonstrated diverse online behaviours for information seeking. However, international students in China resort more to social networking sites rather than their institutions’ websites. This is due to the predominant role that WeChat plays in Chinese social and professional lives, but also the inadequate development of university websites in China.

Another similarity concerns the instrumental role of diasporic communities of assisting the digital transition of international students. These communities provide well-tailored spaces and networks for international students to seek information from others like themselves (Chang et al., 2021). These communities play a significant role in digital induction for international students to become acquainted with the affordances and challenges associated the new digital environment. One important difference for international students in China, compared to those in Australia, is a higher level of need to incorporate the new digital bundle into their digital resources. A digital journey that is marked by digital shock, digital border crossing and digital approachability lends fresh insights into understanding the digital subjectivity of international students in China. Miniaturised mobility is sustained by various infrastructures to support ongoing mobile connectivity. Paradoxically, international students’ miniaturised mobility in China is accompanied by challenges to accessing the internet outside of China. Whilst feeling frustrated by the Great Firewall, they exercise their agency through the uses of VPNs to access both digital bundles in order to keep up their networks and access additional learning resources. Therefore, international students’ digital subjectivities are moulded along and across the borderline of what one interviewee distinguishes as between ‘the Chinese internet and the international internet’. As they shift between different virtual worlds during their digital transition, their digital subjectivities are marked by a sense of in-betweenness.

Conclusion:

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, new modes of digital (dis)connectivity in China had been remaking the urban spaces. This paper argues that digital placemaking in China in recent years has significant implications for international students’ digital transition to the new environment. International students’ digital journeys in China are marked by digital shock, digital border crossing, and digital approachability. We argue that engaging in these modes of digital adaptation has reconstituted international students’ subjectivity through empowering miniaturised mobility, but also a sense of digital in-betweenness as they operate between two different virtual worlds. These findings will be useful for higher education institutions and other international education stake- holders in China who seek to improve international student experience through engaging digital and online technologies. In addition, the internet industry in China may also find these nuanced insights useful to inform future designs of digital products that are more user-friendly for international students.

Authors’ Bio

Jing Qi is a Senior Lecturer at Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University. Jing publishes in the areas of digital education, transnational education, language edu- cation, doctoral education, and teacher education. Her book, Knowledge Hierarchies in Transnational Education, was published in 2015 by Routledge. Email: jing.qi@rmit.edu.au

Wenqin Shen is an Associate Professor of Higher Education at Graduate School of Education, Peking University. His research areas include internationalization of higher education, research training systems and doctoral education, and history of higher education. He has published extensively in these fields including two research monographs. Email: shenwenqin@pku.edu.cn

Kun Dai is an Assistant Professor based at Department of Educational Administration and Policy, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on transnational education, intercultural learning and adjustment, and international student mobility. His book, ‘Transitioning in-between: Chinese Students’ Navigating Experiences in Transnational Higher Education Programmes’, has been published by Brill. Email: daikun1219@163.com

Transitioning in-between: Chinese Students’ Navigating Experiences in Transnational Higher Education Programmes

Research Highlighted:

Dai, K. (2022). Transitioning ‘In-Between’. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004505131

Introduction:

by Dr Kun DAI, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

In the past few decades, a growing number of scholars have explored topics related to transitional higher education (TNHE) and other relevant concepts (e.g., neoliberalism, globalisation, internationalisation, and marketisation). According to de Wit (2020), from 2010 to 2020, the number of international students has rapidly increased, and different types of TNHE (e.g., franchise operations, articulation programmes, branch campuses, and online education) have also been developed. The development of TNHE cannot be separated from the influence of globalisation. Higher education has been widely exported and imported between many developing and developed countries. Moreover, with the rapid development of the global economy and ICTs, especially the Internet, different cultures, societies, and countries have more opportunities to connect with others. Such close connections become an essential factor that promotes more in-depth cross-national communications in the field of higher education. However, students’ experiences in TNHE are still under-researched.

This book offers an account of Chinese students’ intercultural learning experiences in China-Australia transnational articulation programmes (TAP), which is one type of TNHEs. While these students learn in programmes that Chinese and Australian partner universities collaboratively operate, differences in educational practices still make them encounter barriers. To deal with cross-system differences, some students indicate a positive sense of agency. However, some of them feel disempowered. Notably, many students develop a sense of in-betweenness through learning in such programmes. Based on the investigation, Kun Dai argues that intercultural learning and adjustment in the transnational higher education context may become more complex than other forms of international education.

This book has eight chapters. The first chapter outlines the background, significance of this study, and research design. In Chapter 2, theoretical concepts/frameworks and empirical literature are discussed, respectively. From Chapters 3 to 6, findings are illustrated. Specifically, Chapter 3 focuses on illustrating students’ motivations and initial concerns in their TAPs. Chapter 4 maps their trajectories of intercultural learning and adjustment, especially as experienced in the Australian context, and compare their experiences in China. In Chapter 5, key factors influencing students’ intercultural learning and adjustment in TAPs is analysed. The author’s reflexive analysis as an “in-betweener” is presented in Chapter 6 to compare his experiences with participants’ journeys. In Chapter 7, Kun Dai systematically discusses the findings and attempt to propose a new conceptual lens to understand different types of “intercultural learning and adjustment” in a cross-cultural context and at a micro-political level. The last chapter, Chapter 8, concludes this book by pointing out the limitations of the reported research and providing future research suggestions.

Author Bio

Dr. Kun Dai is an Assistant Professor based at Department of Educational Administration and Policy, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on transnational education, intercultural learning and adjustment, educational policy, and international student mobility. His research outputs have appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, such as Compare, Journal of Studies in International Education, and Higher Education Research & Development. Dr Dai serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of International Students. Email: daikun1219@163.com.

Finding a Chulu (Way Out): Rural-origin Chinese Students Studying Abroad in South Korea

Research Highlighted:

Lan, S. (2021). Finding a Chulu (Way Out): Rural-origin Chinese Students Studying Abroad in South Korea. Pacific Affairs, 94(4), 661-681.

Based on multi-sited research in China and South Korea, this paper examines the motivations for rural-origin Chinese students to study abroad in South Korea and how their overseas experiences are mediated by the intersection of internal and international educational hierarchies. Existing literature on transnational student mobility from Asia mainly focuses on students from urban middle-class background, little attention has been paid to students from less advantaged background. Scholars have noted that China’s seemingly meritocratic gaokao (national college entrance exam) policy in reality functions to perpetuate the structural marginalization of rural students in its educational system. This research moves beyond the internal migration paradigm by examining how social inequalities associated with the rural/urban divide get reproduced and re-articulated by the intersection of class, gender, place of origin, and time management at the transnational scale.

Existing literature on Chinese students in South Korea often treat them as a homogeneous group, rather than making distinctions based on class, gender, and place of origin. This research attends to the heterogeneity within the Chinese student population by focusing on a relatively invisible group of students from rural background. In 2018 when this research was conducted, there were 68,184 Chinese students enrolled in universities in South Korea, constituting almost half of the total foreign student population. Although the majority of them are from urban middle-class or lower middle-class backgrounds, there is a small group of rural-origin students who identify themselves as from wage-earning or low-income families. They remain invisible in the Chinese student community for several reasons. First, social stigmatization associated with the rural often makes them hesitant to identify their rural origin. Second, rural students usually do not share the conspicuous consumption behaviors of more affluent Chinese students and are thus marginalized in the social circle of Chinese students. Last but not least, they are usually busy working at multiple part-time jobs to cover their tuition and living expenses. Although most Chinese students in South Korea engage in some type of part-time employment, those from rural background face more pressure to work hard to support themselves due to their family’s lack of financial resources. This research investigates the following questions: What motivates rural students to study in South Korea? How do class, gender, and place of origin mediate their overseas educational experiences and future mobility trajectories?

Scholars have noted that the expansion of China’s higher educational system has become the main engine for the production of a new generation of educated middle-class. Yet they also note that this new educated middle-class is internally stratified due to university ranking in China.This research contributes a transnational dimension to the formation of the educated middle-class by examining social stratifications among overseas Chinese students. Due to the hierarchical ranking of study abroad destinations and the prevalence of a global educational hierarchy, rural-origin graduates from South Korea will most likely occupy the lower stratum of the educated middle-class compared to their urban peers. Tang and Unger further divide the educated middle-class into those who hold jobs “within the system,” i.e. the public sector, and those who work “outside the system”, i.e. the private sector. The two argue that jobs within the system are not only secure (in terms of welfare benefits) and financially sustainable, but provide privileged access to “within-the-system” resources that may generate significant grey income outside the system. Due to their less privileged educational credentials and rural family background, and lack of localized social networks in big cities, my respondents usually turn to the transnational realm or the private sector for job opportunities. Despite their overseas degrees and transnational experiences, they are still marginalized within the Chinese social system.

Robertson et al develop a “mobile transitions” framework to examine the intertwinement of youth’s aspirations for transnational mobility and their transition to adulthood. The popularization of overseas education in China means that an increasing number of Chinese youth are transitioning to adulthood during their time studying abroad. However, such mobile transitions are marked by stratifications along the line of class, gender, and place of origin. The marginalization of rural students in China’s educational system has pushed some of them to become new consumers of overseas education. However, the rural/urban divide continues to shape rural students’ study and work experiences in South Korea in important ways. This research finds a notable tension in my rural participants’ narratives of educational mobility. On the one hand, they are highly aware of structural inequalities in both the Chinese and the transnational educational systems; on the other hand, they also embrace the neoliberal ideology of self-responsibility and self-entrepreneurship. While appealing to the desire for transnational mobility among youth from different social backgrounds, China’s liberalization of policy in the self-funded study abroad market also functions to hide structural inequalities in its social and educational system. Although overseas education offers some rural students opportunities to negotiate their structural marginalization in Chinese society, it also reflects the expansion of internal social spatial inequalities to the international realm. The rural/urban divide and the regional scale of their transnational capital conversion have largely pre-determined rural youth’s disadvantaged position in a stratified Chinese society.

Author Bio

Shanshan Lan is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and a member of the Moving Matters research group. She received her Ph. D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She had worked as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and Connecticut College in the United States. Before joining the University of Amsterdam, she was a Research Assistant Professor in the David Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University. Lan is the Principal Investigator of the ERC project “The reconfiguration of whiteness in China: Privileges, precariousness, and racialized performances” (CHINAWHITE, 2019-2024). Funded by the European Research Council, this project examines how the western notion of whiteness is dis-assembled and re-assembled in the new historical context of China’s rise as a global superpower.