Educating the Children of Migrant Workers in Beijing ─ Migration, Education, and Policy in Urban China

Educating the Children of Migrant Workers in Beijing is a timely book that addresses the gap in the provision of basic education to migrant children in China. It examines the case of Beijing, with a focus on policy implementation at the municipal and district levels and its impacts on migrant schools and their students.

Rural migrant workers in the cities usually lack local hukou (household registration) and face serious obstacles in accessing basic social services, including schooling for their children. The educational situation of these children, however, can vary both across and within localities, and, despite policies and regulations from the central government, there have emerged broad and sometimes even extreme differences in the implementation of these policies at the local levels.

This book uses evidence from qualitative interviews and the analysis of policy documents and materials to provide readers with a rare glimpse into the local politics surrounding migrant children’s education in China’s political center, including the nature of and motives behind policy implementation at the municipal and district levels and the implications for the survival and development of migrant schools in the city.

Educating the Children of Migrant Workers in Beijing is a unique and in-depth contribution to an important area and will appeal to scholars and students across a range of disciplines, including China studies, migration studies, education, social policy, and development studies, as well as to practitioners and policymakers working on migrant issues and social welfare provision in China.

Myra Pong earned her PhD from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Hong Kong in 2014–15. She has Bachelors and Masters degrees in international relations and affairs from Brown University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Peking University.