Educational disparities in China are rooted in the country’s longstanding rural-urban divide, which the hukou system has institutionalized. However, following a comprehensive reform of the hukou system (2014-2020) disparities in access to education remain ubiquitous. This raises questions regarding the reform itself, in terms of its agenda and effectiveness, as well as regarding the real driving factors of educational disparities in urban China. It is a complex issue that requires a multidimensional analysis, which shall consider both the hukou and other exclusionary factors as potential causes. These include mechanisms inherent to China’s education system, culture, and historical dynamics of social stratification.
Making an in-depth review of the literature through institutionalism lenses, this research takes shape in the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of equality of opportunity and social mobility. Supported by empirical indicators and qualitative data, it provides an in-depth and timely understanding of the hukou and underlying factors of educational exclusion that undermine equality of opportunity and hinder upward social mobility among migrant children.
This research finds that hukou status is still the biggest determinant of people’s equality of opportunities and social mobility in China and argues that the reform had the potential to make a positive difference. Thereby, this research's main explanation for the resilience of educational disparities in this context is that the 2014 hukou reform’s core intent was to modify migrant spatial distribution in favour of small and midsize cities, as opposed to their current concentration in megacities, and, in doing so, policymakers overlooked many challenges and barriers associated to migrating to lower tier cities and undervalued the importance of education for migrants. This research thus concludes that, rather than a definite lack of political will for solving educational disparities, the reform fell short on schooling issues because economic ambitions have taken precedence over social development and equal access to welfare, including education, among all Chinese citizens.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/44527 |
| Date | 17 January 2023 |
| Creators | Bourgeois-Fortin, Camille |
| Contributors | Laliberté, André |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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