Internal Migration and Citizenship Education in China’s Shenzhen City

Abstract

Migration’s influences on citizenship education were widely discussed in the literature. However, most studies were based on international migration that drew experience from, for example, North America and Europe. Less attention was paid to internal migration or developing areas. This article takes China as an example, which is a country that has experienced and will experience extensive internal migration, to analyze the relationship between internal migration and citizenship education. This article selects Shenzhen as a study site, for it reflects China’s population movements and city development in the last three decades. Interviews with 38 teachers in six schools and relevant university scholars, education bureau officers in 2008 were analyzed for this article. The article reports Shenzhen citizenship education’s responses to three challenges brought by internal migration. The analyses of the findings reveal that different from assimilation and multiculturalism approaches in citizenship education, Shenzhen’s citizenship education paid less efforts to diminish/reconcile migrants’ ethnic, cultural differences. Instead, it inclined to address the general problems caused by the migration phenomenon. Similarly, it also laid efforts on migrant integration and social cohesion.

Keywords

internal migration citizenship education China Shenzhen

Introduction

Citizenship is defined as inclusion in a shared community that confers a set of rights and responsibilities (Marshall, 1950) with legal, civil, political, social, and cultural aspects. Legal citizenship refers to the legal rights and responsibilities. Civil citizenship means rights that are protected by the legal system and the responsibility to respect the civil rights of others. Political citizenship means the rights and responsibilities to participate in the political activities of the nation-state. Social citizenship refers to rights to socioeconomic protections and responsibilities to work for the greater good of society. Cultural citizenship means the rights to belong to a community in ways that are felt recognized by others and to the responsibility to protect the dignity of that community. Based on Marshall’s work, the complex, dynamic nature of citizenship is further elaborated in recent years. Isin and Turner (2007) emphasized the flexibility of social membership and expand understandings of citizenship as not only rights but also identity and difference. Moreover, citizenship can be conceptualized, articulated, and manifested at the level of substate region, rather than the nation-state as the central and natural unit alone. As concluded by Syssner (2011), citizenship is an unstable set of processes and practices rather than a stable form or a singular status.

Migration, the movement of people across boundaries, is an old phenomenon (Luchtenberg, 2004) and a means of investing in human capital that enables migrants to secure employment for themselves and education opportunities for their children (Wegren & Drury, 2001). It greatly contributed to the evolution of citizenship. In the past century, it was heightened by globalization. On one hand, it made up stories of economic development and urbanization; on the other hand, it broadened our understandings of citizenship and citizenship education. The extensive migration has challenged traditional forms of citizenship that historically have dominated citizenship education in of nation-state citizenship (Bauböck, 2002; Brubacker, 1990; Castles & Davidson, 2000). Correspondingly, citizenship education showed a shift from assimilation to a multiculturalism approach. Assimilation, according to Brubaker (2001), means increasing similarity or likeness in general and abstract sense, means to complete absorption in specific and organic sense. The assimilation approach in citizenship education that affected individuals from different groups to give up their home and community cultures and languages to attain inclusion was challenged. Migration led to the promotion of diverse but integrated citizenship education, such as democratic citizenship education and multicultural citizenship education for social cohesion (Banks, 2008; Faas, 2011; Gillborn, 2006; Johnson & Morris, 2010). The multicultural notion argued that citizenship education should reflect the home cultures and languages of students from diverse groups (Banks, 2008; Gutmann, 2004) to enhance social justice and equality. Despite the differences between the two approaches, they similarly concerned about social cohesion, a term originally created by Durkheim. It refers to the mechanisms holding society together, such as “shared symbols, social coordination, a sense of common belonging, moral regulation” (Durkheim, 1999). In a growing diversified world, scholars defined it as having two dimensions: reducing inequalities and exclusion, and enhancing involvement and participation.

However, most of these studies were based on international migration that drew experiences from, for example, North America, Australia, or Europe, and less attention was paid to internal migration (Akar, 2010; Altinyelken, 2009; Hashim, 2007) or developing areas. In China’s case, studying internal migration and its influences on Chinese citizenship education is very important for the large migrant population. In the following sections, this article first reviews the literature on internal migration and citizenship education in China. Second, the article provides a general background on Shenzhen and describes the design and implementation of the study. Third, it presents its major findings. Finally, the article concludes with a discussion of the pattern of internal migration and citizenship education in Shenzhen.

Internal Migration and Citizenship Education in China

China has the largest internal migration population in human history. Since the adoption of market economy in 1978, increasing internal migration has been a main feature of Chinese society. The significant disparities in returns between the agricultural and nonagricultural sectors (Cook, 1999), wages in urban and rural regions, and coastal and inland areas are the main reasons for China’s internal migration (Chan, 2011). Till 2009, the population of internal migration (liu dong ren kou), defined as people who are not permanently registered in their current place of residence, reached 180 million, of which 82.8% were rural migrants (Chen & Yang, 2010).

However, China’s household registration system (hu kou), which was created in the late 1950s with the attempt to keep peasants in the countryside, experienced little changes in these decades (Cheng & Selden, 1994). It assigned citizens holding urban and rural household registration statuses different social rights. Solinger (1999) reported that urban dwellers had access to state-subsidized benefits such as food, life employment, medical insurance, housing, social security, and pension, but the rural ones were entitled to none of these. Moreover, one’s household registration status was passed through the maternal line. The transfer of rural household registration status to be an urban one, or from smaller towns to larger cities, is very difficult (Chan, 2011).

Since the 1990s, a lot of studies widely reported migrant children’s difficulties in accessing quality public education in Chinese cities (Goodburn, 2009; Li, 2006; Pieke & Mallee, 1999; L. Wang, 2006). A recurring theme in these studies is the migrants fulfilling responsibilities while receiving ignorance on their social and cultural belongings. As the margins of Chinese citizenship, according to Fong and Murphy (2006), reported that they have difficulties to transform the legal, civil, and political dimensions of citizenship directly, they struggled with the state to get access to social and cultural citizenship. Yet, how the internal migrants interact with the state in affecting Chinese understanding of citizenship in education is missing in the literature.

However, at the time when millions of people migrated to more developed areas, China’s citizenship education system underwent great power redistribution. Decentralization started with Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) decentralizing educational finance responsibilities to regional governments, local communities, and schools in 1985 (CCP, 1985), followed with decentralizing part of curriculum decision-making power to regional governments and schools in the late 1990s (CCP & State Council, 1999). Privatization reemerged in the socialist education system. Private schools (called min ban schools—schools running through the society energies) proliferated (Han, 2004), and by 2008, more than 42 million Chinese students were enrolled in private sections (Ministry of Education [MOE], 2008), approximately 10% of the total Chinese student population (Law & Pan, 2009). De-politicization happened. The reformers seek de-politicization, the formulation of few educational policies with political ends, and de-ideologization, the destruction of the ideological core of CCP and other Marxist–Leninist educational system. As a result, the traditionally CCP-dominant school citizenship education (Grade 1—postgraduate level) was seriously criticized by the newly emerged social, economic power as too subject-centered (particularly in its focus on Marxist theory), ineffective (Fairbrother, 2002), and unable to attract students’ interest (Lu & Gao, 2004).

Against this background, it was clear that the internal migration contributed to China’s economic growth (Chan, 2011; Solinger, 1999), which has dismantled the CCP’s monopoly in all aspects of Chinese society (Brook & Frolic, 1997), has made the emergence of new and influential economic and social groups possible, has greatly changed the social structure of receiving areas (Huang & Zhan, 2005), and, thus, may be accounted for the above power redistribution in citizenship education. However, how the internal migration, woven into the Chinese social power changes, expressed its needs in citizenship education was not clear.

This Study

To address this gap, this article uses China’s migrant city Shenzhen as a case to explore the relationship between internal migration, social power changes, and citizenship education.

The Study Site: Shenzhen City

Shenzhen is an interesting place to explore internal migrants’ interplay with state agency, such as school citizenship education to express their expectation on citizenship.

First, Shenzhen City offers a good opportunity to explore internal migration’s influences in all aspects of city life, including citizenship education. Shenzhen was a county in Guangdong Province. It was set up in 1979 as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) by the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), aiming to facilitate China to achieve the targets of the “Four Modernizations” by the year 2000. As predicted by the microeconomic theory in migration, Shenzhen has the pull factors such as higher wages, high demands for labor, entertainment, and even a Shenzhen dream and attracts millions of young migrants (Harris & Todaro, 1970). Shenzhen City changed from a fishing town with a population of 358,267 in 1979 to a city with a population around 10,357,900 in 2010. According to China’s Fifth National Population Census, 8% of Shenzhen population was born in Shenzhen, around 30% of the population was born in Guangdong Province, and the rest came from all over China. Therefore, different from the other Chinese cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, which have been urbanized for years before the mass internal migrants arrived, Shenzhen was mainly constructed by the internal migrants, with internal migrants making up its major population. This made it easier to distinguish migration’s influences in Shenzhen than in other Chinese cities.

Second, Shenzhen City showed capability and interests in reconstructing its citizenship education to attract internal migrants. As one of the most affluent cities in China, Shenzhen’s Education Bureau could dedicate far more resources to improve the quality of education than could other localities in China (Lai & Lo, 2006). Moreover, Shenzhen City proved willing to provide higher quality education than other areas in China to attract migrants. The CCP secretary of Shenzhen City, Wang Rong, clearly indicates its emphasis on education and city development:

Education quality not only closely linked to ordinary citizens’ interests, but also provided strong supports to city development. It was one of the vital factors increased our city’s attractiveness, competitiveness . . . (R. Wang, 2010)

Third, Shenzhen’s economic reforms allowed private interests to enter the state-ownership economy and decreased the influence of the central government and CCP in society. These economic forces, combined with migrants’ difficulties in sending kids to public schools and parents’ willingness to invest in their children’s education, caused a number of private schools to emerge. Till 2011, around 40% Shenzhen students (Grades 1-12) enrolled in private schools (Deng, 2011).

Moreover, Shenzhen’s leading role in China’s experiment with market economy, distance from the nation’s capital, proximity to Hong Kong and Macao, combined with the cultural diversity and pluralism caused by the migrants, have shaped a cultural people driven by individual motives (T. Wang & Leung, 2000) and made it necessary to tailoring CCP-dominant citizenship education to meet the unique needs of its students. Reported by Z. S. Liu (2005), by first promoting “time is money” in the socialist China, Shenzhen is leading in promoting values based on market economy needs, such as competition and individual interests.

Study Methods

The study’s primary aim was to explore Shenzhen’s citizenship education curriculum makers’ perception of internal migration and citizenship education innovation. This is done by interviews with the city’s education administrators, university experts, and schoolteachers (including school principals) from six schools about policies, perceptions, and practices relevant to their citizenship education innovations. The six schools located in four districts were nominated by the local education administrators and university experts as providing quality citizenship education addressing Shenzhen society’s needs. A total of 38 interviews were conducted (see Table 1). All education bureau officers and university experts were male. The interviewed principals comprised 1 female and 8 males. The interviewed teachers included 12 females and 8 males. None of the interviewed schoolteachers or principals was born in Shenzhen. Here, the interviews in Schools A, B, and C were also reported in the author’s doctoral study on power relationships in China’s citizenship education. The participants described their understandings of reconstructing citizenship education to meet internal migration’s challenges through semistructured interviews.

Table 1.

Interviewee List.

Education bureau officers		6
University experts		3
School A (Grades 1-9) founded in 1999	Long Gang district	3 principals	4 teachers
School B (Grades 7-9) founded in 1987	Nan Shan district	1 principal	3 teachers
School C (Grades 1-12) founded in 2002	Bao’an district	3 principals	4 teachers
School D (Grades 1-6) founded in 1999	Nan Shan district	1 principal	3 teachers
School E (grades 7-12) founded in 1964	Luo Hu district	1 principal	3 teachers
School F (Grades 7-12) founded in 1984	Bao’an district		3 teachers
Total		38

Three sets of questions guided the interviews; however, individual interview guides differed slightly to reflect the informants’ different positions.

What are the main features of citizenship education innovations? Why?

What are the major mechanisms to promote citizenship education innovations to better meet local needs?

What are the major factors facilitating/slowing down the citizenship education innovations?

The interviews took place in offices of the participants. Interviews with local education administrators lasted around 2 hr, compared with around 1 hr with other respondents; all were recorded on audiotape, with the permission of interviewees, two teachers preferred not to be recorded during the interview. All were conducted in Putonghua and transcribed into English for this article. As suggested by grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), themes from the interviews were categorized within a set of descriptive codes.

Major Findings

Several recurring themes appeared in the interviews: Frontline teachers reported that internal migrant parents lack necessary time, and psychological and emotional resources to support national citizenship education; school leaders and education bureau officers’ interests in changing citizenship education to better meet migrant needs; and local education bureau officers’ perception of difficulties to supervise citizenship education program in the private sectors and tensions in encouraging school citizenship education innovations while handling the top-down control. Responses to these challenges were reported by the interviewees, including reflecting internal migrant family/community needs in curriculum and shaping Shenzhen cultures in citizenship education.

Internal Migration’s Challenges to Shenzhen’s Citizenship Education

First, the frontline teachers reported that migrant families lack necessary time and psychological and emotional resources to support school citizenship education.

Parents are too busy to spend time with their kids. A teacher (T-1) from a private school suggested that “most parents in our school are business people. They do not have much time to look after their children.” Most teachers from public schools acknowledged that their students’ parents are busy to struggle for lives in a city like Shenzhen. Chi’s (2007) survey (2007) points out that due to migration, 53.6% of the respondents in Shenzhen feel guilty for not giving much care to their children.

Due to divorces or marriage problems (polygamy), parents also caused unexpected difficulties for school education including citizenship education. According to S. B. Feng and Yao (2011), Shenzhen’s divorce rate was twice the national average. In interviews, one teacher (T-2) complained, “when I was talking about emperors in Chinese history, I have to be very cautious thus not to hurt my students’ feelings. Six students in my class come from families with fathers having more than one wives.” Moreover, children from these families behaving quite differently challenged the traditional citizenship education. A teacher (T-3) reported,

one student’s father called me in the weekend. He told me that his daughter didn’t come home in the night. He was divorced and his daughter seldom talked to him. I asked the girl after she returned school but I could not be helpful.

Second, the interviewed education officers and school leaders showed interests in reconstructing citizenship education to better meet internal migrant needs.

Teachers perceived the differences between inland parents and migrant parents in Shenzhen. One teacher interviewed (T-4) claimed that unlike inland Chinese parents, they do not follow the Chinese tradition of respect for teachers:

When we adopted a new evaluation system for students’ performance in citizenship education, one student received a “C.” His parents did not accept the low grade, however, claiming that their child often earned “As” in the previous primary school; they accused our teachers of being unfair and questioned our professional competence.

Regarding the tensions caused by migrant parents, the Chief Secretary of Shenzhen Education Association (O-1) blamed teachers for not being able to meet migrant needs. He comments that “it’s not only a tension between teachers and parents. It is also a tension between relatively outdated ideas a teacher has brought from inland China and the culture of a rapidly developing immigration city.”

As a migrant city, with most schools recently founded, commented by the interviewed university expert (E-1) from Beijing, “Shenzhen doesn’t have Ming Xiao (prestigious schools) which can be compared to those in Beijing.” Schools in Shenzhen view citizenship education innovation as a good idea to win in competitions between and within cities. The interviewed education officer in charge of citizenship education in Shenzhen (O-3) suggested that

to those schools already famous enough, all parents want to send their kids to such schools, they do not need citizenship education innovation to bring extra fame; however, to schools not so popular, citizenship education innovations can bring unexpected gains.

The interviewed school principal from the private school (P-1) frankly suggested their reasons in citizenship education innovation: “There is no future for us in competing with public schools in student academic achievement.” Another interviewed principal (P-2) suggested that “there are already too many good schools in my district. At the very early days of our school, we decided to forge our competitiveness in citizenship education.”

Finally, the local governments, aiming to attract dispersed resources, and to attract more residents by virtue of education, including citizenship education innovation, faced challenges of state authority caused by internal migration.

One difficulty is to supervise citizenship education programs in the private sectors. Three interviewed education officers (O-3, O-4, and O-5) suggested big difficulties in supervising so many private schools in Shenzhen. The number of China’s government employers was based on the registered household in the district. However, according to Liu (2011), the population of Shenzhen residents without local household registration status is much larger than those with local household registration status. The education administration sector lacked enough people to oversee private schools, which made up nearly a half of schools in Shenzhen. One interviewed officer (O-5) explained,

I have hundreds of public schools to oversee and visit in one school term . . . Sometimes I visit several public schools in one day to ensure I finish visiting all the public schools in my district. I really don’t have time for private schools though I know citizenship education in private schools is also very important, perhaps more important than in public ones.

Another difficulty is to balance school autonomy and state control in citizenship education innovations. Take Nan Shan district for example, one of its schools this study surveyed enthusiastically promoted traditional Chinese virtues in its citizenship education, which according to an education officer (O-4) in charge of citizenship education in the neighbor district suggests that “teaching traditional values sometimes can be very controversial. Some traditional virtues were once seriously criticized as feudlism (feng jian) or rubbish (zao po).” The interviewed school principal (P-2) acknowledged that “once a high-ranking officer openly criticized our citizenship education program . . . however, our district education bureau office head supported our innovation by working as our program consultant, introducing our school for visitors.” One interviewed teacher in that school (T-5) commented on the local head’s support: “Spiritual supports were of most importance to us . . . we do not lack money.”

Shenzhen Citizenship Education’s Responses

Diverse contents were added to the CCP-dominant citizenship education in Shenzhen to address migrant needs. The interviewees in this study addressed these issues in their citizenship education, safety education, and environment protection education; increased attention on migrant students’ needs of love and care; and shaped Shenzhen cultures.

One school initiated safety education to protect students from the crimes in the migration city. The school’s safety education program, at the very beginning, included topics such as “do not open the door to the stranger,” “anti-kidnapping tips,” and “how to deal with sex offenders.” The interviewed teacher (T-6) suggested, “we are the first in China doing safety education. We realized the importance of protecting our students in such a society . . . Later the state started to realize the importance of this issue too.”

Environmental protection education was addressed in Shenzhen’s citizenship education too. One interviewed education officer (O-1) suggested,

I arrived at Shenzhen at its early days. At that time I was in charge of constructing a new middle school. The school was located on the hillside. We polluted the hills and rivers. I myself saw the hill-slide killed a migrant woman worker. It shocked me too much.

Shenzhen is famous for its rapid construction speed. The term Shenzhen speed was widely talked about in China for Shenzhen constructed buildings very fast. Another school initiated environmental protection education and the principal (P-3) suggested, “when we see the factories and local government pursuing monetary interests at the cost of polluting the environment, we are responsible to teach the next generation right from wrong.” One interviewed teacher (T-7) in this school reported their achievement in environmental protection education:

Our school is located near Moon Bay, where industrial pollution is serious. The Green Union organized our students to visit the factories near the Bay. Some of our students, after visiting the Bay, wrote to the mayor of Shenzhen, sharing their suggestions for environmental protection. Mayor Lv was impressed and even advocated that students in Shenzhen should try to be responsible citizens like our students.

Increased attention on migrant student psychological and emotional needs of care and love is reflected in two schools’ citizenship education programs.

One school focused on teacher–student relationships improvement. Teachers in this school are required to behave as student role models in and out of school, to love students and supervise their behaviors, to insist on an equal teacher–student relationship in classroom teaching, and to adopt aesthetic elements into citizenship education. One interviewed school principal (P-4) in this school suggested that her good relationship with students help to shape students’ good behaviors:

I have very good relationships with my students. They do not call me Principal, but Sister. The children are too practical . . . But they promised me that “in front of you, we will always behave well.” I think, at least they may keep the promise when I can see them.

Another school, on one hand, selected citizenship education contents to improve parent–kid relationships, and on the other hand, required schoolteachers to spend more time and provide attention to individual students. The school principal (P-1) suggested,

Most of our students come from affluent families. As the only child of their families, some of them were spoiled and took everything their parents did for granted, with no gratitude . . . Therefore, we included the virtue gratitude in our citizenship education program.

Gratitude, according to the citizenship education teaching materials developed in this school, is similar to Chinese tradition virtue, xiao (filial piety), which focused on expressing one’s gratitude to one’s parents. To respect and love one’s elders was the basic virtue that sustained the “three principal relationships” in ancient China (Luan, 2009). Moreover, this school reformed its informal citizenship education system and replaced the traditional class teachers with supervisor teachers. Rather than one teacher in charge of all students’ performance in one class, each supervisor teacher in this school took care of five to six students. In contrast to class teachers, supervisor teachers maintained closer contact with students’ families, tracked students’ performance in school, and worked as student consultants. The supervisor teachers can participate in citizenship education classes to ensure that their students get more attention. They can note the progress their students made no matter how tiny it was and encourage their students in time. As the school principal (P-1) explains, “in middle schools, students are at the adolescent age when they often feel confused, and do not find self-control easy. Supervisors who shape close relationship with them can guide them as elder friends.”

Finally, a concern on shaping Shenzhen cultures is reflected in citizenship education innovations too. School citizenship education showed interests in Chinese traditional cultures. Schools C and D developed citizenship education programs “Reading Chinese Classics” and “Character Education” to introduce Chinese traditional virtues. School F, through “Floating book bars” program, encouraged students to read books. The interviewed principal (P-5) indicated his attempts “to show that Shenzhen is not a ‘culture dessert.’” Moreover, Shenzhen citizenship education showed attempts in cultivating student awareness and skills in social and political participation: School B, by encouraging students to be aware of environment issues in the community, to send mails to the City Mayor, and to foster students’ civic ability and School F, by putting the books in open places, without librarians to provide a mock citizen participation opportunity to cultivate students’ citizen competencies such as managing public affairs, self-control, obedience of rules, and so on.

Discussion

Pattern of Migration and Citizenship Education in Shenzhen: Addressing the Problems and Creating Shenzhen Cultures

The above section reports Shenzhen citizenship education’s responses to three major challenges brought by internal migration. This section discusses the pattern of migration and citizenship education in Shenzhen and suggests possible explanations.

When compared with the assimilation approach in citizenship education, which required citizens to give up their first languages and cultures to become full participants in the civic community of the nation-state (Young, 2000), and the multicultural education approach, which insisted that the dominant culture of the nation-state incorporate aspects of migrants’ experiences, cultures, and languages (Gutmann, 2004), Shenzhen’s citizenship education paid less efforts to diminish/reconcile migrants’ ethnic and cultural differences. Instead, it inclined to address the general problems caused by the migration phenomenon. In the interviews, for example, interviewees showed their concerns about citizenship education’s capability of improving teacher–student relationship to ensure migrant children’s access to quality citizenship education, introducing contents addressing problems caused by extensive migration in the city, such as safety education and environmental protection education. These practices fall into the “ethnic-neutral replacement” category that Amersfoort (2005) suggested in integrating migrants. Rather than neglecting diversity or totally applauding ethnic diversity, this model laid emphasis on solving problems caused by migrants’ diverse backgrounds: “We should look at schools that struggle with language problems rather than at schools with a high number of immigrants. We should rather focus on community approaches than dividing community projects along the ethnic lines.”

Similarly, Shenzhen’s citizenship education also laid efforts on migrant integration and social cohesion. Two major approaches were adopted in school citizenship education: introducing traditional Chinese culture and promoting active citizenship. These school innovations reflect their thinking of shared cultures holding the migrant society together and promoting active cultural and social participation among the young generation in Shenzhen.

Possible Explanations

This section turns to the wider context of Shenzhen’s migrant and education policies to consider possible explanations for the pattern of migrant and citizenship education in Shenzhen.

First, Shenzhen citizenship education’s interests in solving problems caused by migration rather than addressing diversity can be explained by the local–state–individual power relationship in Shenzhen: The local community lacks a dominant host culture, the state’s citizenship education policies lag behind Shenzhen’s migrant needs, and the migrants have high-economic status.

Different from assimilation practices, Shenzhen lacks a dominant host culture to deeply affect migrants. Grown from a fishing town to a city consisting predominantly of migrants in a short period, Shenzhen reflected Eldering’s (1996) objective reality dimension of multiculturalism and the coexistence of different cultural/ethnic groups. These groups differ in history, number, and culture. Shenzhen’s original residents were Cantonese (guan fu ren) and Hakka (ke jia ren). Both were Han but speaking Cantonese and Hakka languages. Shenzhen’s migrants came from all over China and included 55 ethnic minorities. Cantonese and Hakka have lived in Shenzhen for more than 300 years. However, the original local people in Shenzhen, when compared with the migrants, were not dominant in sense of population number and social positions. Before the foundation of Shenzhen SEZ in 1979, Cantonese and Hakka languages were widely spoken in Shenzhen. Later, due to the extensive internal migration, Mandarin was used in media, government, and schools. L. C. Liu (2006) reported that even the old local people have to learn Mandarin. If not, they may have difficulties in communicating with the migrant tenants. Moreover, Shenzhen’s original residents mainly worked in agricultural lines. At the early days of Shenzhen SEZ, the urban development was mainly constructed by immigrants. Besides, the majority of Shenzhen’s intellectuals and government officers are migrants (L. C. Liu, 2006). Therefore, Shenzhen’s migrants face less pressure to be assimilated into the host cultures.

Different from multicultural education practices, which moved toward culture pluralism and argued that citizenship education should reflect the home cultures and languages of students from diverse groups (Banks, 2008; Gutmann, 2004) to enhance social justice and equality, Shenzhen’s citizenship education did not focus on the introduction of migrants’ diverse cultures. Instead, in this study, Shenzhen’s citizenship education devoted to solving problems caused by the extensive migrant phenomenon. This characteristic can be partly explained by Chinese citizenship education policies lagging behind the Shenzhen migrant needs. These policies caused challenges to all migrants in Shenzhen city, irrespective of their household registration status and ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The national citizenship education curricula barely address migrant needs. The most recently revised “Curriculum Standard of Character and Life” (Grades 1-3), “Curriculum Standard of Character and Society” (Grades 4-6), and “Curriculum Standard of Character and Ideology” (Grades 7-9; MOE, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c) didn’t touch the issue of internal migrants, let alone address their particular needs. Previous studies suggested that Chinese curricula and textbooks were urban-centered, which, according to Cheng and Selden (1994), was affected by Chinese authorities’ stress on the critical role of workers and the cities in industrialization process. Moreover, marginal cultures such as migrants have less opportunity to be included in textbooks. In Shenzhen city, the extensive internal migration raised several issues that the dominant citizenship education ignored, as shown by this study, such as how to protect children in high criminals community, how to deal with migrant families’ inability to provide time, care, or love to facilitate children’s citizenship education, teachers’ adaption to the migrant community in which they taught, how to teach the next generation about environment protection, migration, and economic development, and so on.

Finally, as a result, schools made bottom-up citizenship education innovations to address these problems. In interviews, this feature is suggested by different school leaders. One even claimed that due to their quality citizenship education programs, “the houses near my school become very expensive since parents all wish to send their kids here.” Shenzhen uses “entering schools nearby” policy in school (Grades 1-9) enrollment. The local education bureau also showed their interests of attracting the migrants and the resources. The Nan Shan district education bureau encouraged citizenship education innovation by giving schools more autonomy. The chief secretary of Shenzhen education research association even expected that schoolteachers to catch the migrant city’s steps thus serve them better.

Schools and local governments’ emphases on citizenship education innovation to address migrant needs, actually, reflected Shenzhen migrants’ high-economic status. Different from the classic internal migration model, which views rural–urban migration as a process “in which surplus rural labor was gradually withdrawn from traditional agriculture to provide cheap manpower to fuel a growing modern industrial complex” (Todaro 1976), Shenzhen showed a different employment structure. The Shenzhen migrants, rather than working for factories, worked for two major categories. Some were employed by the government, CCP-related agents, and state-owned organizations. They got Shenzhen household registration status. Some were business, self-employed (ge ti hu) people. Most of them did not have local household registration status. As suggested by Wang (2005), one’s access to resources and fortune in Shenzhen was more dependent on one’s individual ability and opportunities, rather than affected by the nation’s household registration system. Those working in small-scale mercantilism-characterized lines earned higher in Shenzhen. The high-income migrant population had more ability to invest in children’s education, as reflected in the proliferation of private schools in Shenzhen city. As shown by this study, parents influenced school’s citizenship education innovations.

Second, Shenzhen citizenship education’s interest in creating city cultures can be understood as the migrant society’s struggle for social cohesion.

This study showed that Shenzhen citizenship education’s interests in teaching traditional Chinese values, on one hand, bind the migrant society, and on the other hand, locate Shenzhen culture in the globalizing world. As a migrant city, Shenzhen lacked Chinese traditional interpersonal relationships to unite the society. According to the Confucian ideal, social relations were based on blood and marriage relations. As described by the “three principal relationships,” the monarch guides the subject, the father guides the son, and the husband guides the wife (F. Wang, 2004). It promoted collectivism and concerned social harmony over the individual (Chang & Holt, 1991). In contrast, G. H. Liu and Zhou (2010) suggested that the strong attempt to “make big money” explained migrants’ movement to Shenzhen and their interpersonal relationships. They were labeled as too practical business people and individualists. Moreover, as a city near Hong Kong and Macau, Shenzhen develops close contact with the globalizing world. Since 2003, Shenzhen government initiated a “training-abroad” plan to send its teachers abroad for professional training. As pointed out by Berry, Phinney, Sam, and Vedder (2006), intercultural contact and cultural maintenance happened in acculturation process. The first aspect refers to people’s attitudes toward seeking contact with other cultures and being influenced by their new experiences, while the second refers to the way in which people prefer to keep and maintain their own cultural heritage. In this study, one school included Chinese tradition virtue, xiao (filial piety) in their citizenship education program, as a strategy to glue migrant families and encourage kids to express their gratitude to parents. School leaders and teachers indicated that they have close contact with schools abroad. School principals showed their concerns about shaping students’ Chinese cultural identity. One school principal explained his reason for teaching traditional Chinese virtue education: “When I visited the United States, a Christian insisted to ‘save’ me for I didn’t believe in any religion. This shocked me . . . we have our own cultures and belief in Confucian.” Through citizenship education innovations, schools reflected thinking of Shenzhen’s relation to Chinese tradition, its social interpersonal relations, and identifying their links to the globalizing world.

This study showed that Shenzhen citizenship education encouraged students to participate in civil life and create a sense of belonging to the city. Shenzhen residents, due to China’s household registration system, lack sense of belonging. Till 2010, Shenzhen residents holding local household registration status only made up 18% of the whole population (L. Feng, 2010). L. L. Liu (2011) reported that only 23.6% of the surveyed Shenzhen residents (without Shenzhen household registration status) viewed themselves as Shenzhen people. In this study, one school citizenship education program provided students opportunities to acquire civil and political participation skills. Another school citizenship education program encouraged students to care about their environment, write to city Mayor to express their view on environmental protection, and behave as responsible citizens. School citizenship education’s attempt to cultivate future citizens’ sense of belonging, regardless of their household registration status, will contribute to Shenzhen city development and cohesion.

Conclusion

This article, by using the case of Shenzhen, reports three challenges internal migration brought to citizenship education: Migrant families lack necessary resources to support traditional citizenship education; citizenship education has to initiate diverse innovations to attract migrants and to maintain residents and resources for city development; and the expanding migrant population and their growing influences in citizenship education challenge the state’s authority. This article also describes Shenzhen citizenship education’s responses to these challenges, including reflecting internal migrant family/community needs in curriculum and shaping Shenzhen cultures in citizenship education.

This article concludes this pattern as addressing problems and creating Shenzhen cultures in citizenship education. This pattern differed from the assimilation and multicultural approaches in citizenship education for it paid less effort to diminish/reconcile migrants’ ethnic and cultural differences. Instead, Shenzhen’s citizenship education inclined to address the general problems caused by the migration phenomenon. Similarly, it laid efforts on migrant social cohesion by creating Shenzhen cultures too: promoting traditional Chinese culture to bind the migrant society and encouraging active social participation among the young generation in Shenzhen.

By linking the wider contexts of migrants and citizenship education in Shenzhen and China, this article considers possible explanations for the pattern of migrant integration in Shenzhen’s citizenship education. The local–state–individual power relationship in Shenzhen explains Shenzhen citizenship education’s interests in solving problems caused by migration rather than addressing diversity. It illustrates that due to migrants’ powerful economic and cultural influences, the host society, local government, and schools made adjustments to better meet their needs. It provides a case in which migrants interacted with the state in affecting citizenship education and creating a culture belonging. The migrant society, due to cultural and political influences, lacked social cohesion. This explains school citizenship education’s interests in introducing traditional Chinese cultures and promoting civil participation. It echoes Fong and Murphy’s view (2006) that it is difficult for marginal individuals/groups to transform legal, civil, and political dimensions of citizenship directly; they struggled for cultural citizenship. This article also shows that school citizenship education unconsciously works for social cohesion and is important for construction of national identity, social inclusion, and building society’s future citizens.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author expresses her heartfelt thanks to the education administrators, university scholars, school leaders, and teachers involved in this study, who took time out of their busy lives to answer her questions. Many thanks go also to Dr. Wing-wah Law, Dr. Ho-ming Ng, Mr. Yao Jiye, Professor Tan Chuanbao, and Professor Li Chenzhi for introducing her to education administrators and schools in Shenzhen.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Wangbei Ye is a lecturer in moral-political education at East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. She received her education in Beijing Normal University and The University of Hong Kong. Her teaching focuses on moral-political education teacher training, and her research interests include moral-political education, curriculum and instruction, and teacher education.

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