Beyond Hukou-Based Exclusion: Revisiting Rural Migrant Parents’ Active Agency in Educational Involvement and Impacts on Their Children’s Educational Trajectory

Abstract

China has witnessed significant growth in the number of children affected by internal rural–urban migration. These children predominantly suffer from educational inequalities. Most relevant studies have primarily attributed such inequalities to hukou-based exclusion. However, the active agency of rural migrant parents in their reactions to such structural barriers has been downplayed in these studies. We conducted qualitative investigations with migrant parents, their children, and schoolteachers from a private migrant school in Beijing in 2014, 2015, and 2019. We found that in the post-2014 period, rural migrant children still faced increased and systematic marginalization in the urban public education system. Faced with this evolving policy context, most rural migrant parents proactively addressed the structural barriers to maximize the quality of education their children could receive. The data further suggests that the educational involvement of parents from disadvantaged backgrounds is likely to be shown in the school choice and enrollment process and is influenced by their economic conditions and social networks in urban and rural communities. This study contributes to understanding rural migrant parents’ differentiated abilities in educational involvement in the light of economic and social influences and the resulting precarity and increased mobility in their children’s educational trajectories.