This monograph highlights the educational experiences of rural children who are 'left behind' by their migrant worker parents in China, analyzing how this situation impacts on their aspirations and self-identity. Via an ethnographic and qualitative case study of a rural school in southwest China, the author presents the real lives of these disadvantaged children along with their challenges and needs, and provides an in depth understanding of how being ‘left behind’ impacts on their future aspirations. Building on the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, the author makes an original contribution by combining seemingly incompatible disciplinary perspectives, such as cultural capital from sociology, rational action from behavioral economics, and self-efficacy from psychology. Hence, the book endeavors to transfer these Western theories to an Eastern context and demonstrates cultural nuances that are not always captured when applied in the West. The book will attract academic scholars and postgraduate students in the area of socially disadvantaged children and young people as well as those who are working on youth studies and rural education.

This book investigates how schools, enterprises and families in China have coped with the formal online education in the light of government policy throughout the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak, with special focus on the problems they have encountered and possible solutions. Using grounded theory, over 1000 posts retrieved from public online forums were analyzed under a 4*4 framework, referring to four special time nodes (proposal period, exploratory period, full deployed period, exiting period) and four major subjects (government, schools, enterprises, families). The book identifies four main issues faced by massive online education during the epidemic: platform selection in proposal period, teacher training in exploratory period, resource integration in full deployed period, and flexibility of returning to schools in exiting period. These findings enlighten us with a deeper understanding of the process of online learning in an educational emergency, helping to develop best countermeasures in similar situations, as well as to provide paths to follow for other countries. The book will appeal to teachers, researchers and school administrators of the online education and education emergency management, as well as those who are interested in Chinese education during the COVID-19 outbreak in general.

The book studies the educational needs of two disadvantaged groups of children in China (left-behind children in rural areas and migrant children in urban areas), aiming to optimize the social support system so that these disadvantaged children can realize their full potential. The author conducts two separate researches and introduces the research background, methodology, related theories and advanced theories. Main difficulties of left-behind children and migrant children include parents’ lack of attention to their children’s mental health, teachers’ lack of expertise in working with these two groups of children, and a lack of collaboration between schools and NGOs. It suggests promoting systematic reform, helping parents to develop effective parenting skills, and establishing positive interactions among the stakeholders of social support for these disadvantaged children. The book will be of interest to people who work with left-behind children in rural areas and those who work with migrant students in urban areas, including teachers, school administrators, local educational authorities, community-based service providers, and provincial and central departments of education.

Children are precious in China especially as its population ages rapidly. The unprecedented fast urbanization and massive internal migration have profoundly changed almost every aspect of society. They have impacted the livelihood of children of migrants most. Because of the hukou system and related policies, China’s internal migrants face major obstacles to assimilate into cities. But more than that, as this book shows, these policies have also torn families apart on a scale unseen heretofore. More than 100 million children grow up in unstable families and the great majority have suffered from prolonged separation from their parents in the migratory upheaval. This book provides an updated analysis of this mega and painful process unfolding at various geographical scales. The chapters revolve around the central notion of family togetherness, or the lack thereof. The book measures, dissects, and analyses the impacts of migration on children and recommends policies to address major problems from a variety of disciplinary perspectives employing different methodologies. The problems faced by the children of migrants remain enormous, and it is a looming huge crisis in the making. If unaddressed, those problems can damage a whole generation with serious consequences. The chapters in this book were first published in Eurasian Geography and Economics.