Learning to be safe citizens: state-run boarding schools and the dynamics of Tibetan identity

Abstract

Drawing on individual interviews with graduates of the state-run boarding program in the Chinese heartland called ‘inland Tibet classes’ (ITC), this paper examines how such individuals respond to state schooling aimed at minority citizen-making by interpreting their ethnicity and negotiating ethnic boundaries in the Han Chinese-dominant society. Considering citizenship as a process of being made and self-making in relation to state powers, this paper examines the complexities, internal tensions, and dilemmas in citizenship making for these young Tibetans. This paper finds that push and pull factors – their ontological insecurity in inland cities and state-guaranteed secure jobs and ontological security in Tibet respectively – together have contributed to the process of ITC graduates studied learning to be ‘safe citizens’. Although the ITC policy succeeded in cultivating numerous ‘safe citizens’, the state’s failure to establish a ‘safe space’ at large for Tibetans might jeopardize the larger aims of this state project in the long term.