Sending children to the interior cities and enabling them a promising future – a qualitative study of Tibetan parents’ educational decisions

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the complexities behind the educational decisions of Tibetan parents on sending their children to the interior cities for dislocated secondary education. Drawing on qualitative data through multiple methods, we find that their educational decisions are driven both by a rational calculation of the benefits and costs and by a moralised ideology of good parenting. Educational opportunities are prioritised over ethnic cultural learning in parents’ decisions. However, parents hope their children will make up for this loss at a later life stage, at college and work. Parents’ temporary compromises reflect their positioning of priorities at different life stages. This study offers a new lens to understand the politics of dislocated schooling in China from ethnic minority parents’ perspective.