| This thesis explores the immigration and schooling experiences of the teenage children of immigrants of the two largest incoming groups to Hong Kong: from Mainland China and from South Asia. Most people in Hong Kong think that both groups are culturally backward and economically impoverished, which means that both do not fit in, despite the fact that they have utterly different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. I seek to understand the factors that are shaping their educational pathways and identity formation, which I consider to be two interrelated and overlapping concepts against the backdrop of socialization. Data are largely drawn from ethnographic fieldwork, from a few months to more than a year, in four secondary schools in Hong Kong which admit a large number of immigrants.;I argue that despite their different backgrounds, both groups of students face very similar structural constraints and disadvantages in Hong Kong's education system. I also argue that teachers perceive very similar learning problems in these two groups of students, but they see the problems to have stemmed from different causes, and have different understandings how much teachers can do. This has implications on the teenagers' identities as members of society. I further argue that both groups, albeit to different extents, claim their belonging to Hong Kong in terms of their identity. However, they seem to base their claims on different grounds, and have different understandings of their belonging to Hong Kong.;What goes on in the classroom is important because it reflects in the larger society how people understand and practice who they include and who they exclude; how the ideologies and practices at work change in different historical, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts; and how individuals negotiate the shaping and the inclusion or exclusion. My thesis adds a new perspective for us to rethink theories of migration and education in an era of globalization when the mass movement of people is defining and redefining the socioeconomic and demographic landscapes in many parts of the world. |
