Network for Research into Chinese Education Mobilities (NRCEM)

Research Highlighted

Ma, X. (2020). Rooted Cosmopolitanism and Transversal Politics: South Korean (Non-)Expatriate Parents in China and Their Choice of Schools. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 1-18. doi:10.1080/14442213.2020.1734070

Abstract

这个民族志研究考察了在华韩国人父母为子女的择校策略，以及这些策略中体现出的根植的世界主义认同。由于企业提供教育补助，外派员父母有条件将子女送进昂贵的国际学校接受教育，但是他们也很重视为孩子提供当地和母国教育的机会。非外派员父母的子女接受相对廉价的当地和母国教育，但父母的教育计划中并没有排除世界主义的展望。根植的世界主义指韩国人父母对不同文化开放的认同是以回到母国的需要为取向并同时扎根于当地社会的社会经济情境中。他们的择校策略是一种横跨的政治。本文认为，在华韩国人父母不是无根的精英，而是普通的外国人。

This article draws on the choice of schools for children as an important lens through which the practices and perceptions of South Korean (non-)expatriate parents in China are revealed. In line with Giddens (1991, p. 81), I argue that choices are ‘not only about how to act but who to be’, and the act of making choices implies the creation of self-identification. Expatriate parents who are globally mobile tend to choose international education for their children owing to their ideas of mobile futures and aspirations to become international (Hayden et al., 2000; Weenink, 2008). Recently, local schools have also become options for Western expatriate parents who anticipate arming their children with local knowledge and language proficiency, which they consider as an integral part of a cosmopolitan disposition (Farrer & Greenspan, 2015; Groves & O’Connor, 2018). Korean parents tend to diversify their choices and frequently transfer their children from one educational track to another, neither merely choosing an international nor a local school. This trait distinguishes them from Western expatriates.

Expatriate Parents: International Immersion and Pursuit of Local and National Engagements

Although most expatriate parents tended to choose the most expensive school for their children, namely, an international school, their options were seldom restricted. The replacement of international schools with bilingual schools often occurred. Parents were aware of the Chinese language becoming a hegemonic language globally, in addition to English. They have developed a ‘Sinocentric cosmopolitan’ view demonstrated in both their willingness to engage with Chinese culture and language and their pragmatic awareness of their home country’ s geopolitical stance between the two global superpowers, China and the United States (cf. Farrer & Greenspan, 2015).

For most expatriate parents, their children’s present immersion in an English medium programme did not necessarily generate aspirations to send them to an English-speaking country for higher education on account of the unaffordable cost. Most believed English competence to be beneficial for their children’s return to Korea for admission into a prestigious Korean university. The reason being that Korean universities reserve special quotas for the children of Korean nationals returning from overseas, which requires high scores in TOEFL and SAT to succeed in the admission to elite universities. As Sassen (2008, p. 63) puts it, ‘the global can be constituted inside the national’. Despite enrolling their children in non-native language programmes, these parents’ educational arrangements were predominantly home-oriented.

Non-expatriate Parents: Local and National Exposure with a Cosmopolitan Outlook

Due to inadequate education subsidies and family income, non-expatriate parents are likely to arrange Chinese or Korean educational tracks for their children. Despite their relatively less privileged socioeconomic position, these parents appeared to have no less cosmopolitan aspiration than their expatriate counterparts, demonstrated by their strong desires to send their children to a bilingual or pure English-medium programme in the future. Korean parents’ cosmopolitan striving with regard to their children’s education is by no means ‘entirely classed’ (cf. Park & Abelmann, 2004). It is because the burgeoning international education market in China provides affordable alternatives to international education for the rank-and-file families, including the non-expatriate Korean ones.

Parental pursuits are not only globally oriented but also paradoxically entangled with ethnonational consciousness, particularly when children experience Korean and Chinese styles of pedagogy. By transferring their children to a Korean school in China, the parents cultivated traits of ‘Koreanness’ in them whilst washing off their acquired undesirable ‘Chineseness’. Nonetheless, relentless criticism was also made regarding the overseas Korean education. The major concern was that its curriculum was neither sufficiently international nor superior to the average level of education provided in the motherland. This demonstrates the parents’ cosmopolitan pursuit is not so much an effort to raise the youngsters as ‘global citizens’ as a meticulous plan to equip them with necessary competencies in order to be able to compete against their peers in their home country (cf. Koo, 2016; Park & Abelmann, 2004).

Rooted cosmopolitanism and transversal politics

This article has examined the home-oriented cosmopolitan identities of South Korean expatriate and non-expatriate parents in China through their strategies in choosing schools for their children, which I frame as transversal politics. Cosmopolitanism is demonstrated as openness to alien cultures without losing one’s attachment to home as well as the desire to return home. Cosmopolitanism is not the absolute acceptance of cultures as inseparable entities but, rather, the process of selecting cultural aspects that are suited to the interests of individuals and families (Hannerz, 1990, p. 240).

I have deployed transversal politics as a term to conceptualise the specific educational strategies practised by Korean parents. These strategies are not constrained to the national education system but extend to different systems that signify non-national and international cultures. In contrast to Western expatriate parents in certain Asian countries, the identities and practices of South Korean parents in China are demonstrated as more likely to be multi-faceted, constrained and de-elitist. Neither expatriate nor non-expatriate parents in this study should be viewed as cosmopolitan elites. Rather, they are essentially ‘ordinary foreigners’ sojourning in the increasingly globalised Chinese social milieu (Seo, 2007). What remains to be known is whether their children will become ‘cosmopolitans’ owing to the hybrid cultural capital they have accumulated through their education in various school systems.

Author Biography

Dr Xiao Ma received her doctoral degree in Chinese Studies and Anthropology from Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, The Netherlands. She is currently conducting postdoctoral research in the Department of Sociology at East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai. Her research interests include migration and education, ethnic community and economy, foreigners in China, Korean migration, agency and structure. Her recent publications also include “Unpacking ‘Koreatown’ in Chinese Metropolis: urban governance, variations in ethnic incorporation and consequences” in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. She can be contacted via: xiaoma@ecust.edu.cn; maxiao8784@163.com.

References

Farrer, J., & Greenspan, A. (2015). Raising cosmopolitans: Localized educational strategies of international families in Shanghai. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 15(2), 141–160.

Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Polity Press.

Groves, J. M., & O’Connor, P. (2018). Negotiating global citizenship, protecting privilege: Western expatriates choosing local schools in Hong Kong. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39(3), 381–395.

Hannerz, U. (1990). Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture. Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2–3), 237–251.

Hayden, M. C., Rancic, B. A., & Thompson, J. J. (2000). Being International: Student and teacher perceptions from international schools. Oxford Review of Education, 26(1), 107–123.

Koo, H. (2016). The Global Middle Class: How Is It Made, What Does It Represent? Globalizations, 1–14.

Park, S., & Abelmann, N. (2004). Class and cosmopolitan striving: Mothers’ management of English education in South Korea. Anthropological Quarterly, 77(4), 645–672.

Sassen, S. (2008). Neither global nor national: Novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights. Ethics & Global Politics, 1(1).

Seo, J. (2007). Interpreting Wangjing: Ordinary Foreigners in a Globalizing Town. Korean Observer, 38(3), 469–500.

Weenink, D. (2008). Cosmopolitanism as a Form of Capital: Parents Preparing their Children for a Globalizing World. Sociology, 42(6), 1089–1106.

Research Highlighted:

Chan, A. K.-W., Chiu, M. M., Yang, S., & Ngan, L. L.-S. (2020). Mobility, belongingness and schooling experiences of Chinese cross-border students. Children and Youth Services Review, 111, 104870. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104870

In the last two decades, globalization has caused students of diverse migration statuses to flow into school systems, which contribute to the rising concerns of educational or international student mobilities. While the educational mobilities of young people and students of higher education have received much academic attention, those of younger children have not, despite the rising trend of many young children in Asia, China in particular, have crossed local or regional borders for better education (eg. Yeoh, et al. 2012).

On the other hand, belongingness has been a pertinent topic for scholars interested in immigrant students. As schools play a central role in integrating immigrant children and youth into their new society, studies have found that when immigrant students’ needs for belonging are met in schools, they show positive emotions, life satisfaction, and greater commitment to stay in the country of destination (eg. Chiu et al. 2016). Nevertheless, few research has examined whether and the ways in which young, mobile child migrants develop belongingness in the context of mobility, and whether and how schooling experiences mediate their belongingness. Therefore, our study on Chinese cross-border students (CBS) addresses these research gaps.

CBS in Hong Kong offers a unique example in the growing trend of young mobile children, because their daily commuting to school comprises physical, spatial and cross-border mobilities. CBS are young schoolchildren who are permanent residents of Hong Kong but live on the mainland and travel across the border to school every day. The phenomenon first emerged in the twenty-first century and intensified in relation to the changing economic relations between Hong Kong and the mainland, border policies and formation of diverse cross-border families (Chan and Ngai 2018). The growth finally subsided in 2012, after the Hong Kong Government introduced the zero-quota policy (see Chan et. al. 2017). The 3,567 CBS in 2002/3 skyrocketed to 28,106 in 2015/16 (with about 10,000 CBS kindergarteners and 15,000 primary school students). In 2018/19, about 20, 000 CBS attended primary school.

Our study, based on 417 Chinese CBS, has three research questions.

How did the sociodemographic characteristics of the CBS affect their sense of belonging to Hong Kong (SOBHK)?

How did the mobility of the CBS affect their SOBHK?

How did schooling experiences of the CBS affect their SOBHK?

We first used factor analysis to validate the instrument and create the construct index SOBHK, and then a structural equation model to assess whether sociodemographic characteristics, mobility or different dimensions of schooling experiences are linked to CBS’ SOBHK.

Our results indicated that SOBHK was not significantly affected by the cross-border students’ sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, parents’ Hong Kong permanent resident statuses, educational attainments or occupations). Our analyses also showed that cross-border mobility (hours on commuting) was not significantly related to the students’ SOBHK. Instead, we found that the CBS who had better relations with local peers, whose friends were mostly from Hong Kong, or who engaged in more extracurricular school-based activities in Hong Kong experienced stronger SOBHK.

This study has several important contributions. First, it includes mobility – an increasingly important feature of immigrant students – to education and migration studies of belongingness and schooling experiences. Second, it disentangles the relationships between sociodemographic characteristics, mobility and schooling experiences that may affect the belongingness of Chinese CBS to Hong Kong. Third, it widens the current concern of Chinese immigrant students, an important growing population (Kaisr, Ma, and Chao 2019), from higher education to other age groups.

Our study has also practical implication. In view of the rising tensions between Hong Kong residents and mainlanders (Xu 2015), which are further aggravated by the anti-extradition protests in 2019, we believe more positive intergroup interactions among young students of diverse cultural groups will foster mutual understanding and friendships, and reduce such tensions.

References:

Chan, A. K. W., Ngan, L. L. S., Wong, A. K.W., & Chan, W. S. (2017). “Border” matters in discussions of cross-border students. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, 13(1), 56–70. https://doi.org/10.1108/STICS-04-2017-0005

Chan, A. K. W., & Ngan, L. L. S. (2018). Investigating the differential mobility experiences of Chinese cross-border students. Mobilities, 13(1), 142–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2017.1300452

Chiu, M. M., Chow, B. W. Y., McBride, C., & Mol, S. T. (2016). Students’ sense of belonging at school in 41 countries: Cross-cultural variability. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47(2), 175–196.

Kaiser, M., Y. Ma, and Q. Chao. 2019. “Are Western Universities Doing Enough for Their Chinese Students?” Times Higher Education https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/are-western-universities-doing-enough-their-chinese-students

Xu, C. 2015. “Identity and Cross-Border Student Mobility: The Mainland China–Hong Kong Experience.” European Educational Research Journal 14(1): 65-73.

Yeoh, B., A. E. Lai, C. Alipio, L. A. Hoang, T. Lam, and M. C. W. Lu. 2012. Report for Children’s Geographies: Inter-Asia Roundtable on Transnational Migration and Children in Asian Contexts.” Children’s Geographies 10(1): 123–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2011.636594.

Author Biography

Dr Anita Chan is Associate Professor at The Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interests cover gender, education, family and migration studies. She is currently involved in several research projects on topics ranging from adoptive families, masculinities of young men, global childhoods, transnational families, and older women’s subjectivities. Her publications can be found in academic journals such as Mobilities, Children and Youth Services Review, Urban Studies, Journal of Consumer Culture, Gender and Education, Compare, and History of Education.