Confrontation or cooperation: Spaces of action for student grievance in Chinese universities

This dissertation investigates the ways Chinese college students handle their grievance with universities against the backdrop of China's move to rule of law and shift to mass higher education.;Connecting a modified ecological perspective with social action and conflict resolution theories, this interdisciplinary study expands the horizon of inquiry from traditional educational law research's focus on lawsuits or "law on the books" to "law in action" and examines students' responses to grievance in their organizational, historical, social, legal, and cultural contexts. The opportunities within and between these contexts constitute "spaces of action" in which students handle conflicts with their universities. The study reconstructs the "spaces of action" embedded in seven student responses: checking rules, showing a good attitude, contacting school- or department-level administrators, parents, and peers, seeking professional legal help, filing a complaint, launching a lawsuit, and releasing the grievance to the media or the Internet. Particular emphasis is given to the internal structure within the legal space of action and its interactions with other spaces. The study finds that China's rule of law project opens up new spaces of action. Students not only challenge university discipline based on established rules but also sometimes ground their claims in procedural and substantive values demanded by the system of rule of law. In doing so, the boundaries of their legal rights are expanded. At the same time, the legal space of action is enlarged or constrained in its interactions with other spaces. Students take a cooperative or confrontational stance or a combination of both when dealing with their institutions.;Data were collected from surveys and focus group interviews with college students in ten universities located in four different Chinese cities, and from individual interviews with students and/or their lawyers in important students' rights cases.;The study offers a significant example of integrated bottom-up and top-down policy/legal changes and illuminates a trend toward legal accountability in student discipline procedures in Chinese higher education. By comparing college students to other emerging rights-claiming populations such as peasants and workers, the study also has broad implications for citizenship development in China.