The Institutional Marginalization of Chinese Migrant Workers and Their Families: An Understanding of Education, Gender and Hukou Citizenship

Abstract

Exploring one of the intricacies of China’s internationally renowned rapid rates of economic growth and development, this research aims to tackle the issue of migrant marginalization and social exclusion, through the exploration of access to education for migrant children. While vast literature on access to education for migrant children in urban settings currently exists, the existing literature largely lacks a gendered understanding and/or analysis. This research thus, aims to initiate discussion, and provide for a preliminary attempt at understanding the manifold relationships, and contemporary realities of deeply rooted ‘son preference’ across Chinese culture, and the socially exclusionary functions of the hukou citizenship system, through a historical institutionalist lens, within the context of one of the greatest mass migrations “possibly, in the history of the world,” (Nielsen, Smyth & Vicziany, 2007, 1). The research presented is rooted in a case study, conducted in Dongguan, Guangzhou, China in the summer of 2013, which involved surveying and speaking to migrant parents in the region. The primary data collected allowed for a preliminary analysis and thus, insight into a gendered evaluation of access to education for migrant children, highlighting trends and changes in gendered values across the migratory process. Additionally, this research further ignited a theoretical and conceptual discussion on the hukou citizenship system in the framing of hukou status as “inherited property,” a concept derived from the work of Shachar and Hirschl (2007), and further analyzed alongside North’s work on Institutions (1989, 1991), lending to a comprehensive and contemporary understanding of the hukou citizenship system and the barriers it causes in the upward social mobility of migrant workers.