Rural Migrant Children in Urban Schools

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The study examines the process by which rural-to-urban migration generates and sustains new forms of education segregation in urban areas. The project highlights whether and how urban schools exacerbate educational inequality when the rural-urban divide is brought into urban schools. More generally, the project uses the Chinese case to provide insights to inform Western theories on education segregation, which were developed when school segregation was already well in place. Since the mid-1980s China has seen increasing influx of rural people to cities for manufacturing and service jobs. This migration was first temporary and the children remained at home to go to rural schools. More recently, migrants have moved to cities permanently and many have brought their children along. However, children of rural migrants have limited access to urban public education because of the law linking migrant students' educational right to their rural home. The PI hypothesizes that new forms of educational segregation are emerging as a consequence of the large influx of rural migrant children into the urban education system. To learn about the causes, processes and consequences of this emergent education segregation in urban schools, systematic and longitudinal data and a rigorous analysis of these data are needed. The project will augment an upcoming nationally representative survey of Chinese 7th graders who will be followed over time, the Chinese Education Panel Studies (CEPS). Data will be collected from a supplemental sample of 6,400 seventh graders in 80 urban schools that primarily serve rural migrant children. In addition, a set of survey questions will be added to the CEPS core questionnaire regarding rural migrant children's school process in urban schools. Using the data from the augmented CEPS, investigators will document and explain the extent to which rural migrant children's access to urban education is limited and how teachers and peers treat them differently from urban students. These examinations will provide evidence for whether and how new forms of education segregation emerge and are sustained and rural migrant children are marginalized.Broader ImpactsThis project's data collection is efficient as it piggybacks on an upcoming national, longitudinal survey of students, benefiting from its sampling design, field preparation, fixed costs, and comprehensive core contents. The project will make a significant contribution to data and research infrastructure by adding a sample of 6,400 students in 80 schools. As a result, the project makes access to data on a total of 66,400 students in 830 schools to the U.S. research community. During the project duration U.S. graduate and undergraduate students will be trained to use theoretical and methodological tools from the Western literature to study educational inequality in China.