The Doubly Disadvantaged: How Return Migrant Students Fail to Access and Deploy Capitals for Academic Success in Rural Schools

Introduction

After a series of policy changes in China, migrant children, those who accompany their migrant worker parents from the countryside to urban areas, are increasingly participating in the compulsory education systems offered in the cities where their parents work (Wang, 2008). Despite this, migrant children are still blocked from enrolling in higher education in the same cities. If they wish to go to university, they have to return to their ‘place of origin’ – the place of household registration – for high school, in order to prepare for their college entrance examinations (Koo, 2012; Ming, 2013). Officially, migrant children are members of the rural population, even if they have lived most of their lives in the city. City governments make policies based on the presumption that the governments of the areas where the migrants are registered are responsible for their citizens’ educational needs. The unstated argument is that migrant children still have the same access to higher education that urban children do, but within the educational system of their ‘place of origin’ to which they return.

This research study explores migrant children’s academic performance and chances for a successful school transition by examining the resources that are available to their families, and the deployment of these resources within the rural education system. Drawing on a framework influenced by the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1990), this article conceptualizes migrant families’ academic resources in terms of economic, social and cultural capitals. Special attention is paid to two crucial components of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework: ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ (Dumais, 2002). ‘Habitus’, one’s view of the world as well as ‘a system of lasting and transposable dispositions’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 18), refers to the orientation one has toward using available resources. ‘Field’ refers to ‘a network or a configuration of objective relations between positions … that follows rules, or better, regularities, that are not explicit and codified’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 97–8), and is a pivotal idea about the rules of the game that sets standards and values for those resources.

Using the experiences of internal migrant students in China, this study shows how students move from one ‘field’ to another, when they transition from city schools to rural schools. We argue that it is only when we consider the concept of ‘field’ that we are able to have a complete understanding of the presence and effect of capitals. While most of the Bourdieusian studies of class reproduction focus on the unequal acquisition of capitals and treat the educational field as static, this article reports instead on the importance of studying habitus and field together, especially among agents with a migratory background. This research has far-reaching implications for sociological studies on education and migration.

Structural Barriers to Higher Education for Migrant Children in China

During the past two decades, China has experienced massive rural–urban migration as migrants leave the farmlands to search for higher income jobs in the city. From the beginning of the 21st century, migrants have increasingly brought their families with them when they move to the cities. In 2011, 32.79 million rural-to-urban migrants travelled with their families (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2012). This means that a large number of ‘migrant children’ reside in Chinese cities. They inherit their parents’ status and remain officially members of their parents’ rural community under the household registration system. They are not entitled to receive any urban welfare benefits, such as educational services (Liang and Chen, 2007).

The Chinese education system consists of six years of primary school, three years of middle school, three years of high school (after sitting the National High School Examination), and four years of college (after sitting the National College Entrance Examination). The government has stipulated since 1982 that primary and middle school education must be ‘universal’, but it has only been in recent years that public primary schools have become completely free of charge and attained a nearly 100 percent enrollment rate. The Chinese central government now requires city governments to accept responsibility for the education of migrant children in public schools. Some local scholars and officials argue that the barriers that keep migrant children from participating in the urban mandatory education system in public city schools are gradually being removed (Wang, 2008). However, migrant families still have to provide several legal documents, such as proof of employment and temporary residence, when they apply to urban public schools (Goodburn, 2009). They are also charged a variety of non-educational fees when they are admitted to public schools to cover the cost of items such as meals and uniforms. Therefore, only those migrant children whose parents are both socially and economically well-off can access the compulsory education offered in the cities’ public schools (Liang and Chen, 2007). As most migrant workers are hired as unskilled labor in cities (Meng and Zhang, 2001; Solinger, 1999), a large proportion of migrant children still have to study in substandard private schools for migrant students (Han, 2004). Though the status and quality of these schools are questionable, many migrant workers choose to send their children there, as the tuition is more affordable.

Although an increasing number of migrant children have been admitted into the cities’ basic education system in recent years, they are still unable to access public higher education. Under the current system in China, all children must take the National College Entrance Examination in their ‘place of origin’. ¹ As a result, migrant children are barred from taking the examination in the city they reside in. As students’ scores on this examination are the only criteria for admission to tertiary educational institutions, migrant children are, in effect, denied access to the country’s public post-compulsory academic system if they stay in the cities. If they want to attend university, their only option is to return and compete in their rural hometowns, where their household is registered.

Past studies of migrant children found that students with better academic performance and more family resources have been selectively sent back by their parents to their hometowns or villages after they finish their primary education or during their middle school years (Ming, 2013). However, evidence also shows that many of the students who went home for educational reasons actually returned to Beijing or other cities before finishing middle school (Koo, 2012). Although the high-performing students returned to their rural homes, most were unable to gain entrance to the high school of their choice – one that would offer them a reasonable chance at university entrance upon graduation – in their hometowns. Return migrant students regularly leave school prematurely and opt out of higher education.

This study investigates the educational resources accessible to migrant families for their children’s schooling and the deployment of their various types of capital in the rural school system, in order to understand these children’s disadvantages in education access despite their supposedly greater financial and cultural resources. We start with a systematic review of the different types of resources, specifically the economic, cultural and social capitals that are available to them to increase their educational outcomes. Then, we discuss the differences between urban and rural education systems in China, demonstrating that migrant students are actually participating in a different field of practice after their remigration.

Educational Resources of Return Migrant Students

Social scientists have developed multiple models of educational achievement that are used to explore the impact of differing educational resources on schooling. Parents are found to be the major providers of material, cultural and social resources that benefit their children’s educational development. For example, the causal relationship between economic resources and educational attainment is largely explained by parents’ direct financial investment in their children’s human capital (Becker and Tomes, 1994). Parents are expected to invest in their children’s educational resources, such as books, to enhance children’s school performance. Children also need their parents’ economic support to finance long-term educational costs, which include not only tuition fees but also forgone opportunity costs. A family’s economic background therefore has significant impact on schooling. Parents with higher incomes have a greater ability to provide educational resources.

In addition to economic capital, Bourdieu draws attention to cultural capital and its significant impact on children’s educational outcomes. Cultural capital usually refers to symbolic expressions and behavioral dispositions, such as the possession of nuanced language, aesthetic preferences and cultural goods. According to Bourdieu (1984), cultural capital can exist in three forms: embodied (dispositions of mind and body), objectified (cultural goods), and institutionalized (educational qualifications). Embodied cultural capital is the sum of the learned skills, knowledge, values, preferences and standards that have to be acquired and which are manifested in the particular habitus of a person, that is, the embodied cultural practices and their meanings shared by members of a particular social group, such as a family, a community or a school. The process of embodiment and incorporation takes time and effort. Unlike economic capital, cultural capital cannot be easily transferred, but is acquired and transmitted through a long-term process that starts with primary socialization. This transfer involves many forms of conscious and unconscious learning that happen through daily interactions with family and peers and creates learning potential that enables the person to increasingly acquire and incorporate the culture of his or her environment.

Social capital is another resource with significant impact on students’ educational outcomes. Bourdieu defines social capital as resources acquired through participation in social networks or group membership. He argues that the volume of social capital that a person possesses depends on the size of the social network that can be mobilized and on the volume of the various types of capital – economic and cultural – possessed by each person to whom he or she is connected (1986). Thus, within Bourdieu’s framework, the amount of social capital that an individual has depends, on the one hand, on the number of people to whom one is related, and, on the other hand, on the amount of economic, cultural and social capital that is under the control of those people. These different forms of capital do not operate independent of one another, but are interrelated (Skeggs, 2004). Bourdieu’s conceptualization is grounded in theories of social reproduction, with a focus on the benefits accrued by individuals or families through their ties to others.

Educational researchers have also argued that social capital offers important social ties that ‘inhere in family relations and in community organization and that are useful for the cognitive or social development of a child or young person’ (Coleman, 1990: 300). From this viewpoint, students’ performance in school is seen to be enhanced by strong social connections both within and between families. When parents have a close relationship with their child, they tend to monitor the child’s school progress closely and to provide guidance in school-related matters. Similarly, students and parents who are connected to the school and the community receive additional information and signals about the kind of behavior expected from successful students. Social ties both within the family and within the community, therefore, influence students’ performance in school (Coleman, 1988). Unlike other forms of capital such as economic capital, social capital is a less tangible method of resource transmission.

Researchers of traditional Bourdieusian studies argue that economic, cultural and social capitals are accessed and utilized through the interrelation of social positions. These researchers view social relations as the result of interactions between habitus, creating forms of capital within and across different fields. The forms of capital are convertible, although they differ in their liquidity, or the ease by which they can be converted. For example, economic capital is more liquid than others and can be more easily converted into other types of capital, either social or cultural. The production and reproduction of educational inequalities can be read as the result of an uneven distribution and deployment of capital among different social groups, as well as unequal encounters between working-class and middle-class habituses. However, the case of return migrant children in China (a class with unique habituses) in their place of origin (the field) is more complicated than the traditional Bourdieusian scenario.

Two Different Fields – Urban and Rural Schools in China

There are huge regional disparities in the availability of education between the economically developed areas of China and the less developed parts. The number of high schools, proportionate to the number of eligible students, is much lower in rural areas (Lin and Zhang, 2006). Students in rural areas also have lower rates of enrollment and graduation than those in urban areas (Wu and Zhang, 2010). According to official statistics published by the Ministry of Education, in 2006, 70 percent of graduates from urban middle schools were promoted into urban academic high schools; while only 9 percent of graduates from rural middle schools went on to attend rural academic high schools (Ministry of Education, 2007). Another study, using multiple sources of data and statistics, suggests that the transition rate from middle school to high school is 60 percent in urban areas and 31 percent in rural areas (REAP, 2009).

However, the urban–rural differences go beyond educational resources’ availability and student attrition. There are huge differences in curriculum content, teaching practices and performance standards (Hannum, 1999), as well as in school culture and ‘educational discipline’ (Kipnis, 2001) between the two systems. In rural schools, the most traditional system of Chinese education is still found – one that is ‘examination oriented’ (Lin, 2011). Students are forced to memorize by rote everything that is covered in the syllabus. Test scores are the only assessment of a student’s ability. Therefore, continuous drilling and reviewing are everyday practices among rural students in and outside of school. Discipline and hard work are valued as the core, and only, way to succeed.

Schools in cities usually place a stronger emphasis on a well-rounded education. Under the direction of the central government, urban schools have been undergoing ‘quality education reform’ since the late 1980s. They are reducing the emphasis on examinations, having fewer school hours and less homework, and focusing on nurturing creativity. Arts, sports, music and computing have been introduced into the curriculum. Even traditional core subjects are taught differently, with an emphasis on analysis and synthesis of knowledge instead of memorization. Such reforms have been especially enthusiastically embraced by big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Even the syllabi for their high school entrance examinations differ from the ones used in the rest of the country. Rural schools, however, have largely resisted these reforms because they lack the necessary teacher resources (Kipnis, 2001). This type of education reform and the difference in reception by rural and urban schools has essentially led to two systems of education in China. This has tremendous implications for migrant children that move between the two fields of practices.

It is well documented that migrants have lower social and economic status than non-migrant populations in urban areas (Meng and Zhang, 2001; Solinger, 1999). Many migrant families and children see education as the route to economic success, respect and status (Koo, 2012). When long-term migrant families accumulate sufficient financial and social resources, they often send their children to urban public schools to receive a better education (Ming, 2013). Migrant children who study in these schools have more opportunities to accumulate cultural resources that they can use to invest in further education. The longer their families live in urban areas, the higher their chances are in accessing the economic, social and cultural capitals that act as educational resources in the urban education system. Over time, migrant families’ lives in the cities improve, as they gradually acquire more resources and various forms of capital that are helpful for urban survival.

Unfortunately, the resources that migrant families accumulate while working in urban areas are not easily transferred to the context of rural schools. When migrant children are ‘forced’ to return to their hometowns, they bring with them a different set of dispositions (habitus) into the rural education system (field of interaction). As rural schools have their own set of rules, the forms of capital acquired in cities may no longer be valuable in the field. This affects students’ ability to deploy the right kinds of capital for educational success in the context of the rural schools.

Research Method and Design

This article looks at the academic performance and school experiences of students with a migratory background in understanding the mechanisms that lead to low educational achievement among return migrant students. An analysis of the possession and utilization of the capitals in different fields will also give us insight into the special position occupied by migrants in a world of increasing (both inter- and intra-national) mobility. The accounts here are from interviews with 39 return migrant students we conducted for an ongoing project concerning the educational opportunities of migrant children in China. ² Interviews were conducted at 12 middle schools from three counties in Hebei province. As Hebei province is adjacent to Beijing, it is among the capital city’s main sources of migrant workers (Zheng et al., 2009). The three counties are located relatively close to Beijing, each approximately two to four hours away by car.

All of the interviewed students had previously migrated to Beijing with their parents, but have now returned to their hometowns in Hebei for middle school education. They were 8th or 9th graders (aged 12 to 16) at the time of the interviews in the autumn of 2010. We outlined our research for informants before beginning interviews, and many of the return students were willing to tell us about their family background and share their school experiences in Beijing and Hebei.

All of the sampled students attended school in Beijing for at least two years. Although five of the children were born in Beijing, they all received the rural hukou status as their parents, as members of the rural population of Hebei. Nine students resided in Beijing for more than 10 years; and 28 of them returned to their hometown following completion of primary school in the city. As most of the students had been in Hebei for less than three years, many of them had strong feelings of dislocation and admitted that they were still in the process of adjustment. Both 8th and 9th graders were approaching the end of their compulsory education. They were all worried about their academic performance, and their chances of getting into a high school.

School principal and teacher interviews were also conducted in order to get more information about how the students were learning. All interviews were conducted in Putonghua (the official language of the People’s Republic of China). With informants’ consent, all interviews were digitally audio-recorded and transcribed in Chinese (all researchers involved are fluent in Chinese); they were later translated into English whenever necessary for further analysis.

Educational Disruption

Our data show that students with better academic performance and more family resources, regardless of their gender, had been selectively sent back ‘home’ for schooling. All of their families wanted them to be able to sit the National College Entrance Examination, which would give them a chance of a university education. However, nearly all of the interviewed students told us that they had experienced a drastic drop in school performance after their return. Confirmed by a number of teachers and principals of rural schools, return migrant students had great difficulty catching up with the local students. For example, Gao (c10), a boy in grade 8, who migrated back in grade 6, said:

I ranked among the top five in Beijing. But, after my return, I was among the worst in my class …

According to the students, the key reasons for this drop are the huge rural–urban differences in curriculum content, teaching practices and performance standards. When we asked our informants to compare their academic experiences in Beijing and in their rural hometowns, a common answer was:

Everything’s different, the teachers, syllabus, etc. The textbooks used here are more difficult than those used in Beijing … Things I learnt in the city are too simple, so, I don’t understand what the teachers teach here. (c05 – Hong, a girl in grade 9, who returned to her rural hometown when she was in grade 5)

A couple of students had attended several different schools in Beijing. Many of them said that the education provided by migrant schools was not comparable to that of the public schools, both in terms of school management and in terms of teacher quality. However, even the public schools in the city were commonly described as ‘easier’ than rural schools during our fieldwork. Local teachers also commented that rural students are at least one year ahead of city students. In their words, the ‘academic foundation of return migrant students is much weaker than the local students’. During interviews, return students frequently described how local students studied all day long throughout the year, with self-study sessions scheduled till midnight. When return migrant students transition from the city’s education system to their hometowns, they face significant challenges in adapting.

There are fewer subjects taught at schools at home. We don’t learn computer here, PE class means free time. Students spend all their time studying; focusing on the key subjects … There’s no self-study section in schools in Beijing, but we have self-study sections in the morning and at night here. (c11 – Wan, a girl in grade 8, who returned to Hebei after finishing grade 7 in Beijing)

Most of the students interviewed were proud to have had the chance to receive an education in Beijing. They thought city education had ‘opened their eyes’, ‘widened their horizons’, and ‘provided better facilities and opportunities to build their talents’, especially for those who had studied in public schools. Students enrolled in that system had been taught to be ‘more civilized’, ‘more cosmopolitan’ and ‘open-minded’. Qualities associated with urban experiences are sometimes highly praised in rural communities. As discussed in studies on migrant labor in China, local villagers always look up to the young migrants, considering them to be modern, informative, innovative and materially better-off (Lin, 2013; Murphy, 2002). In their eyes, these migrants or return migrants have been successful in being upwardly mobile as they have been able ‘to leave the farm’ – making a living in the cities and sending remittances home, or utilizing their skills, network and resources to become entrepreneurs in their hometowns. However, while urban working experiences bring success to migrant labor, urban educational experiences have not helped returning migrant students to produce higher test scores, the only assessment of students’ quality in rural schools.

Failure of Conversion of Cultural Capital

Students in our sample group had lived an average of five years away from their hometowns. About one-fourth of the students resided in the city for more than a decade. Many had difficulties adapting to life in their rural hometowns, such as coping with a different dialect:

When I had just returned, I couldn’t understand the dialect here. So, I couldn’t follow the teaching in class. When I was in Beijing, I only used Putonghua, even when I communicated with my parents. (c15 – Na, a girl in grade 9, who was born in Beijing and returned to Hebei when she was in grade 8)

Although the official language of instruction in China is Putonghua, some teachers in rural schools still use local dialects to teach. The language barrier is one example of an adaptation challenge that undermines students’ academic achievement after their return. As students in these rural areas mostly speak to each other in their own dialects, the language barriers faced by our interviewees also led to challenges in social life with peers and locals.

Weiwei (c07) migrated to Beijing at age two and lived there for 10 years before returning to Hebei. During a focus group, in the presence of her local peers, she communicated with us in a heavily dialect-accented version of Putonghua. When we conducted a one-on-one interview with her, she confirmed that her classmates had left the room and then switched to accent-free Putonghua. Later, she told us that it is not easy to learn and speak the hometown dialect, but she explained that she has to use the dialect:

I spoke Putonghua when I had just returned, and was criticized as ‘arrogant’. They said, ‘you’re at home now, how come you speak Putonghua? You should use hometown dialect.’ I was young at that time, so I didn’t understand … But now, I know. Now, I change back.

During interviews, some informants said that when they spoke with their hometown dialects in Beijing, they were identified as country bumpkins who could not speak Putonghua and were discriminated against. As a result, they avoided using dialects in the city. In the city, people with rural backgrounds are often regarded as having a negative manner, attitude and physical appearance (Anagnost, 2004). They are often discriminated against by their urban counterparts, as well as in urban public schools, as a consequence of their perceived ‘low-quality’ (Lin, 2011). In recent years, urban schools have put increasing emphasis on ‘quality education’ (Woronov, 2009). Students in city schools, including those with a rural background, are trained to cultivate ‘high-quality’ traits such as politeness and kindness. After years of schooling in the city, most of the rural-to-urban migrant students have internalized the disciplinary values being promoted by urban teachers and schools. They learn to change their language, habits, attitudes and even appearance during their years as migrants, in order to present themselves as having ‘higher quality’.

However, when these migrant children return to their rural hometowns for educational reasons, they have to face a type of ‘cultural shock’ that is a consequence of the shift from an urban to a rural lifestyle. Many of them confessed that they had great difficulty integrating into the rural community and getting along with their fellow classmates:

The male students here always use foul language when they argue. Their ‘quality’ is low. Even now, I can’t accept that … Not only students but also teachers would use foul language or use those uncivilized words casually! Teachers in Beijing never do that, they have higher ‘quality’. (c28 – Tai, a girl in grade 8 who was born in Beijing and has just returned to Hebei for one month at the time of interview)

Sometimes, I really cannot bear their improper behavior, such as throwing litter, shouting to others, etc. … If you disagree with them, they won’t listen to you. They refuse to discuss anything; they simply come up to you and fight. I still can’t get used to this type of behavior … Once, I heard my classmates use some disgusting words to argue with each other. I asked them to stop, as it’s too sickening! Later, I was told that I’m different from them. This upsets me … (c15 – Na)

In the scholarly discussion of ‘quality’ and ‘quality education’ in China, ‘proper behavior’ and ‘quality’ are distinguished as embodied capacities acquired through intensive child nurturing, educational inputs and training (Anagnost, 2004; Jacka, 2009; Woronov, 2009). Similar to the concept of embodied cultural capital in Bourdieu’s framework (1984), it is the sum and the quality of the learned knowledge, values, preferences and standards that have to be acquired and which are manifested in a person’s habitus. As many returnees were brought up in the city, they acquired, embodied and incorporated the ‘quality’, or behavioral dispositions, through the variety of conscious and unconscious learning habits that happen in daily family, peer and school interactions from childhood. This ‘quality’, as a form of cultural capital, should generate benefits that enable students to succeed in urban society – where cultural practices and their meanings are widely shared. However, when the migrant children return to their home villages, these same cultural dispositions have little or even negative value in the rural field. Many choose to conform to the new set of norms in order to get along well with their friends and classmates in their rural communities:

People here never say ‘thank you’ when they’re helped; never say ‘sorry’ when they step on another’s foot. So impolite! When I say ‘good morning’ to teachers, they just look at me, thinking that I’m behaving strangely. Not many teachers appreciate that … So, later on, I gave up. As nobody but me greeted the teachers, I looked different from them. Now, I don’t greet them any more. (c27 – Yi, a girl in grade 8, who returned to her rural hometown when she was in grade 6)

Failure of Conversion of Social Capital

During interviews, many students revealed that their best friends are classmates in Beijing, who have a ‘similar growing-up background’ like them. In contrast, they always detect a kind of ‘barrier’ that prevents them from fully communicating with their local fellow classmates. Much of the literature on residential mobility suggests that relocation has negative consequences for children as moving interrupts social relations with persons in the school and the larger community (Coleman, 1990; Hagan et al., 1996; Pribesh and Downey, 1999). For return migrant students, their return migration also damages, or completely severs, students’ social ties, which has an important impact on their social development and school performance:

[In Beijing], when exam results were out, we would tell each other our marks, compare them with each other and then encourage each other. The comparison gave me great motivation to study. However, I can’t find this type of friend here. Not that close, you know. It’s very sad. And this affects my learning too. (c07 – Weiwei)

I feel very lonely when I just returned. Everything was so unfamiliar to me. I stayed in school, lived in the same room with my classmates. But I had problems communicating with them, we don’t have anything in common … I was very isolated. (c28 – Tai)

In China, most middle schools outside of big cities are boarding schools that admit students from surrounding villages. Under this arrangement, return migrant students have to spend all of their time at school with classmates, whom they cannot ‘fully communicate with’. Lacking social support, many of them feel lonely and isolated. They further feel the absence of parents who could accompany and support students facing this difficult transition.

For most migrant families, the parents remain in the city to work after they send their children back to their home villages for schooling. Non-parent adults, typically grandparents, but occasionally uncles and aunts or even school teachers, are asked to act as the primary caregiver to these return migrant students. Migrant children who return alone are commonly known as ‘left-behind children’ in rural schools. During our fieldwork, we learned that most teachers considered these left-behind children to be ‘hard to educate’ and to ‘have a lot of emotional problems’. They also complained about the lack of interest from most of the guardians of these return migrant children – they seldom attend parent-teacher meetings, and they were completely unmotivated to discuss the children’s performance with their teachers. The separation of children and parents has significant negative effects on return migrant students’ development and schooling. Parent–child relationship often serves as an effective system to monitor and guide children’s positive behavior, such as good study habits (Coleman, 1988). In addition, the presence of parents leads to an increase in shared information with teachers and stronger connections with other parents in the community.

Before my parents’ return, I was known as a ‘left-behind child’, no one cared and monitored me. Gradually, I lost the motivation to learn. Teachers and people in the community looked down upon me … Now, things have changed. Although I’m still living in school during weekdays, the feeling’s different. I stay with my parents every weekend. My father guides me to study, asks about my schooling. I have high morale now … In the past, I also called my parents on the weekend. But it’s different. Having them at home is great! (c38 – Jing)

Jing (c38) is a girl in grade 9, who returned to Hebei after completing her primary school education. After her return migration, her academic performance dropped significantly. So, her parents decided to migrate back to join her two years after her return. During our fieldwork, we found that students whose parents migrate home with them perform better than those who return alone. All of these students told us that reuniting with their parents had a positive effect on their academic performance. Many also observed that schools and the community are more ready to accept return migrant families than ‘left-behind return migrant children’. In their words, staying with their parents made them ‘feel safe and secure’, ‘better able to concentrate on school work’, and ‘not willing to give up easily’.

Unfortunately, not many parents can afford to quit their jobs in the city and return to their home villages with their children. In some cases, the mother would move back to take care of her child while the father continues to work in the city. None of our student informants wanted to live separately from their parents, but they understood that their parents’ decisions to remain in the city to work is ‘to earn more for the families’, ‘to improve their overall living standard’, and ‘to raise money for their future education’.

In rural China, families’ economic resources have a strong effect on children’s educational opportunities, primarily in the period after children complete their compulsory education (Min, 2007). For example, it is not uncommon to find rural students, especially girls, drop out of high school for economic reasons (REAP, 2009). However, during the period of free and compulsory education, economic capital has a limited effect on the homogeneously harsh and poor school environment in the rural education system. Our findings show that when parents choose to stay in the city, they have no way of converting their economic capital into social capital that will contribute to their children’s academic success in the rural middle schools. The lack of social capital leads to poor academic performance, which makes it impossible for them to even enter high school. The economic capital that parents gain as migrants is cancelled out by the loss of social capital.

Chances of Success

The process of return migration and the educational disruption it causes puts a lot of pressure on return migrant students. Students that decide to return home for middle school are ones who are more ambitious and desire to enter university in the future. However, when we asked about how they perceive their chances of successfully enrolling in high school and then university, only a few of them expressed confidence. Some were prepared to repeat 9th grade if their examination marks were too low to gain entrance to high school. Others had already asked their parents to allow them to move back to Beijing for vocational training if they did not do well in the examination. The pessimistic view shared among return migrant students could be explained by an observation by a school principal:

In rural areas, only students from key high schools have a real chance to get into university. You could imagine how intense the competition is to get into a key school, as the admission rate is really low … In a regular middle school, like ours, about half of the students in the best class of the grade, 20 to 30 students each year, get admitted into key high schools … Unfortunately, none of the return migrant students are found in these best classes over the years. I haven’t met any. (a2 – principal of a rural school; about one-sixth of students in his school are return migrant students)

As confirmed by all the interviewed teachers and principals, return migrant students, on average, perform more poorly than local students in their middle school years. Among our sample group, there are students who have slowly caught up with the rest of their academic class. These were usually students who had been away from their hometowns for a shorter period of time, and migrated back with their parents. For them, their adaptation difficulties were temporary. After one or two terms, students were able to readjust to the rural schools and their grades gradually improved. Unfortunately, the local teachers commonly commented that this improvement came ‘too late’, as the National College Examination is held after the first term of the third year of middle school. It was even harder for students who were born in Beijing to integrate into the new school environment. These students usually came from families with a long history of migration; most of their parents chose to stay in the city when they were sent back to their rural hometowns. These ‘left-behind’ children make up the group that expresses the greatest frustration with their local schooling.

In Beijing, migrant students are excluded from the post-compulsory education system. Compared to their hometown peers, migrant families who have accumulated more economic capital might be able to secure a more privileged educational pathway for their children in the city, but only until the end of compulsory education. Our findings show that when migrant children are sent back to their hometowns for middle school education, they are again disadvantaged – the failure to convert and utilize capitals in the rural field leads to lower educational achievement and attainment in rural schools. With this disadvantage, they have limited opportunities to gain entrance into key rural high schools that could offer them a reasonable chance at being accepted by a university. Return migrant students are doubly disadvantaged in terms of educational opportunities.

Discussion and Conclusion

The findings of this study show that return migrant students encounter a variety of problems upon their return to their hometowns. Migration helps to improve the standard of living for many rural households in China. However, when migrant children are ‘forced’ to return home to continue their education, their families are unable to convert their advantages into educational success in their hometowns. A prime example is how the cultural capital of speaking Putonghua is looked down upon; another is how ‘quality’ behavior and knowledge valued in the city are devalued in the village.

According to Bourdieu, a school system is described as an educational field, within which the students who possess cultural capital are rewarded. Success in the education system, therefore, is facilitated by the possession of cultural capital and of higher-class habitus. This argument empirically applies to most industrialized societies, as seen by testing the presence and effect of capitals acquired by members of different classes in a single field (the same national system) that value the same type of activities and have similar rules of the game (Crook, 1997; Dumais, 2002; Georg, 2004; Sullivan, 2001). While a large and growing international literature shows that higher-class culture (in terms of cultural activities or interacting styles) has net positive effects on students’ educational outcomes, in China, cultural capital does not seem to work in the same way (having a positive effect) across urban and rural schools.

The negative experiences of return migrant students that put them at a disadvantage in the rural education system in China complicate the traditional Bourdieusian studies on cultural capital and the production and reproduction of educational inequalities in school systems. In China, the rural and urban education systems emphasize different curriculum content, require different educational disciplines, and assess different student characteristics. We argue that these two systems are representing two fields of interaction. In this study, return migrant children acquired ‘appreciated ways of knowing and being’ and more middle-class interactional styles while living in the city, but failed to transfer them to their social advantage in their hometowns – a different field with its own institutional logic. When test scores are the only assessment of a student’s quality, and the ability to work hard and to rote-memorize are the only valued skills in rural schools, the ‘modernity’ and ‘politeness’ of students has not helped them to obtain any preferential treatment or educational success. These cultural capitals are not applicable in the cultural setting of the rural system. Bourdieu’s argument of cultural reproduction is not applicable in the education system in rural China.

This study further revitalizes the importance of the concepts ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ that are inherent to Bourdieu’s work on capitals. It shows clearly that it is necessary to consider one’s resources (capital) and the orientation one has toward using those resources (habitus), as well as the school system (field), to fully analyze the production and reproduction of educational inequalities in the way that Bourdieu intended. In this study, migrants’ experiences in the city led them to believe that economic capital, which can be converted to other types of resources, such as cultural capital, is the crucial factor in educational success. Children also believed that accessing middle-class interactional styles would give them a social advantage in the educational system. When the students enter rural schools, the field of interactions change and the rules of the game also change. When they bring the same set of capital and disposition of the city to the new field, the capital and orientation may even put them at a disadvantage.

This article examines return migrant students’ educational resources and chances of success using Bourdieu’s work on capital to emphasize that relocation entails a re-evaluation of acquired capitals, and that capitals have to be carefully studied together with the habitus and field. We argue that ignoring any of these concepts diminishes their explanatory power and leaves Bourdieu’s theoretical framework incomplete in its analysis, especially in education and migration studies. Because our practice is socially situated, the value of the capitals and our modes of interactions should be specific to the field in which we are located. They are embedded in the requirements of the field. Yet during migration, the capitals acquired and the depositions developed before relocation are no longer automatically transferrable, as the rules of the game in this new social life are different. This article suggests the act of migration disrupts ideas of linear utilization and reproduction of educational capitals, since migration means that ‘the conditions of production of habitus’ are not ‘homologous to its conditions of functioning’ (Bourdieu, 1990). Therefore, in a world with increasing mobility, the complicity of capital, habitus and field should not be taken for granted, but subject to examination.