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3 - Sacrifice and Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2020

Rachel Murphy
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Chapter 3 explores how study and educational aspirations underpinned families’ migration projects. In daily life, the children were subjected to family members’ and school’s efforts to encourage them to accept the logic of parent-child striving teams. Study provided the children with a stake in their family’s migration project, a way for them to honour their parents’ sacrifice, a way for them to win their migrant parents’ recognition, a distraction from missing their parents, and a route to securing a better future than the lowly lives endured by their migrant worker parents. Children of primary school age were the most able to accept that their migrant parents’ sacrifice would be worthwhile if they studied hard, because at this stage their academic promise had yet to manifest itself. By contrast, some teenagers’ feelings about the work-study team’s promises generated inner conflict as it became apparent that they were unlikely to pass milestone exams. Some teenagers felt that they were ‘useless’ because of their low grades. Crucially, though, a few teenagers who had access to viable vocational training options felt more positive about their left behind pasts and about their futures than did low academic performers without such options.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Sacrifice and Study
  • Rachel Murphy, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Children of China's Great Migration
  • Online publication: 06 August 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108877251.003
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  • Sacrifice and Study
  • Rachel Murphy, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Children of China's Great Migration
  • Online publication: 06 August 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108877251.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Sacrifice and Study
  • Rachel Murphy, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Children of China's Great Migration
  • Online publication: 06 August 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108877251.003
Available formats
×