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

Anita Koo*, Holly Ming, Bill Tsang

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    42 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    A growing number of ‘return migrant children’, who have lived in cities where they had access to the compulsory education system, are sent back to their rural hometowns to prepare for higher education in China. This study explores the resources that are available to return migrant students for further educational development and examines their difficulties with activating their educational capitals and translating them into human capital, in the form of academic knowledge and educational success after their remigration (a change in their field of practice). Using a framework based on the work of Bourdieu, this article conceptualizes the educational resources available to migrant families in terms of economic, social and cultural capitals. This article contributes to a better understanding of the transformation and deployment of educational capitals by revitalizing the importance of the concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ inherent in Bourdieu’s work.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)795-811
    Number of pages17
    JournalSociology
    Volume48
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Aug 2014

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Sociology and Political Science

    User-Defined Keywords

    • China
    • educational resources
    • field
    • habitus
    • migrant children
    • return migration

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