Fish Out Of Water: Cultural Marginality In Migrant School Discourse

The past decades have witnessed the progressive development of studies on migrant schoolchildren. It has gone through the transition from general statistical survey to in-depth case studies. Additionally, research methods have also undergone a great shift from the sole quantitative method to the integration of quantitative and qualitative research methods. A shared starting point can be traced in the overwhelming majority of these studies, that is, they all employed legitimate but arbitrary standards and principles to measure, evaluate, and judge migrant schoolchildren and then proposed improvement or innovation based on the research results.This study on New Hope School—a school for migrant schoolchildren in a certain city in China lasted two years (2006-2008). It is a qualitative research with an ethnographic approach. A large amount of data was collected in the form of recording, narrative writing, pictures and videos. The contents of these data involve classes, school activities, home visiting and dialogues with my subjects and talks among themselves as well. Terms like habitus, capital and field are employed from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to analyze and interpret my data.Three research questions are put forward as follows: 1) Is there a gap between legitimate pedagogic ideology and migrant schoolchildren's habitus? 2) Is there a mismatch between teachers' intention to teach according to agenda laid down by schools and the final purpose of education, which is to promote students' growth and development? 3) Is migrant schoolchildren's habitus valued as capital in the field of education?Two focal Chinese lessons, a dialogue with Ms Li and an outdoor game feast are presented and analyzed. The teacher's control of turn-taking, her employment of "praise and withdrawal of it" and repeatedly advocated ideal pedagogic ideology work together to silence students' own voices and make them illegitimate. The analysis of the dialogue shows that migrant schoolchildren's 'pre-existing habitus' do not play to their advantage in the 'game' of education. They are just like fish out of water. New Hope School is only a participant but not an organizer like other public schools in the game feast. The participant identity thus contributes to the marginality of New Hope School and its migrant schoolchildren.With the concepts of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, this thesis offers a new perspective for studies on migrant schoolchildren. It tries to interpret discourse in migrant school, thus contributing to a holistic understanding of migrant schoolchildren as well as culture and education.