Uyghur Graduates’ Ethnicity in their Dislocated Life Experience: Employment Expectations, Choices and Obstacles

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is a case study that examines the contradictory implications of the dislocated educational policy for ethnic minority students from Xinjiang. The qualitative data is drawn from a longitudinal research project from 2010 to 2013 in China and Australia. The informants are a group of soon-to-be Uyghur university graduates from the Xinjiang Interior Class. The article explores their perceptions of employment, including expectations, choices of career planning and obstacles in job-seeking. The analytical concepts of “everyday life” (Karner, 2007) and “dislocated context” (Oommen, 1996) inform the theoretical perspective for exploring the Uyghur graduates’ ethnicity in their dislocated life experience. The article argues that the Uyghur graduates’ perceptions of employment manifest in conjunction with their de-ethnicisation and re-ethnicisation (Gill, 2000). Graduates are keen to forgo ethnic boundaries and actively seek quality employment opportunities in society, but they also activate their ethnic consciousness, and quietly resist everyday inequalities when faced with disadvantages in the job market.