This article attempts to answer the questions: "Why is quality education so important for the new Chinese middle class and what implications does quality education have on ideas of status and social standing?" My efforts to answer these questions are guided by two key concepts: social distinction and capital convertibility, which have been presented and analyzed in the work of Bourdieu. The present article advances a new framework for analyzing the different effects of schooling and youth education on ideas of class and social status for the new Chinese middle class. I do this by exploring different dimensions of cultural capital and their effects on social standing and class membership. My core argument is that youth quality education, which implies the accumulation of cultural capital, and therefore of suzhi, is the strongest driving force affecting middle-class families' life strategies, as well as their ideas of status. Furthermore, cultural capital is the primary resource that can generate other forms of capital, essential for middle-class reproduction. Ultimately, due to the fact that in China the access to quality education is strongly connected to housing strategies, housing and neighborhood have been selected as the salient lens for analysis.
The present article advances a new framework for analyzing the social mobility of domestic migrants, which centers on home owning and on the process of the "house" becoming a "home".
The present article centers on the home, the perceptions of which are challenged, and modified by rural-to-urban migration dynamics and outcomes. The core research interest hereby presented pertains to the effects of migration and social advancement on individuals’ perceptions of home: whereas some identify their original rural home as their “home,” others manage to achieve a “shift” of the home after migration, by relocating their “home” from their original home in the village to their created home in the city. These two opposite perceptions about where the home of primary reference is located are not coincidental. Rather, the article presents a pattern that connects home shifting to upward mobility and social advancement: in fact, the shift in the location of the home owes to three major driving forces that are key in social mobility processes: career development, locus, and networks. The findings of this research, reached through the analysis of empirical qualitative data, provide practical insights to post-migratory class formation as well as upward mobility dynamics.
This article examines China's national education system focusing on the city of Shanghai, in order to evaluate the school-related institutional constraints and opportunities of three major institutional categories: locals, Chinese outsiders and foreign expatriates. The study sheds light on the generated and perceived education-related inequality of each category and is aimed at stimulating reflection and discussion on a more inclusive education system. The empirical findings hereby presented are the result of qualitative research, which highlights a pattern in the educational evaluations of the different groups: the farther the geographical (and institutional) identity, the stronger the tendency to select private or international schools. This argument quite naturally spurs from institutional policies, which tend to favor locals as receivers of national education. The article is divided into three main sections: key educational policy elements for the city of Shanghai; institutional constraints and advantages for each of the aforementioned categories; school offer in Shanghai, as well as main research findings related to institutional frame, limitations, primary options and decisive factors related to the educational decisions of locals, outsiders and foreigners compared.
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