Socially Mobile Underclass in Transitional China

Abstract

An ethnographic study of a group of migrant children in Beijing, this thesis systematically explores their life stories and pays close attention to the educational opportunities that migrant children can receive from within their social structures. Social factors related to politics, market forces, and civil society, which can facilitate migrant childrenb s access to opportunities, are mentioned and analyzed. While these factors follow different logics and they provide migrant children with developmental resources in different ways, they share a commonality: all of them work toward improving the living conditions and educational opportunities available to migrant children.