Educational optimism in China: migrant selectivity or migration experience?

This paper addresses the so-called paradox of immigrant optimism, which accounts for the higher educational expectations of immigrant–origin children, compared to non-immigrants in destination countries, conditional on social background and school attainment. We are interested in clarifying whether the mechanisms behind this optimism are related to migrant selectivity or family migration experience. To do this we use data from the China Education Panel Study, a representative survey of junior high school students in China. We use a two-pronged analytical strategy. Firstly, we look at whether having experienced family migration (within China) is associated with higher educational expectations. Secondly, we take a step back and explore whether adolescents who wish to migrate themselves when they grow up report higher educational expectations. Our findings confirm that adolescents who wish to migrate themselves when adults are already more optimistic even before any intentions of moving come to fruition. This we take as an indirect proof of selectivity. In contrast, we find no effect of family migration on expectations

Why study abroad?:Sorting of Chinese students across British universities

This research contributes to the booming literature on the mobility of international students in higher education. Specifically, it analyzes university-level factors that affect the sorting of Chinese international students across British universities. To do so, we produced a unique dataset merging university-level data from the the 2014 UK Higher Education Statistics Agency and the Higher Expectations Survey, supplemented by qualitative evidence from six focus groups which we use for illustrative purposes. Our results, using nationally representative evidence for the first time, confirmed that university prestige is the most important driver of the sorting of Chinese students across British universities, together with further effects of the broader social and cultural offerings the universities provide. Interestingly, cost of study and marketing strategies deployed by universities do not seem to drive the Chinese students’ university choices. Overall, our findings underline the importance of diffuse institutional factors such as university rankings and their taken for granted status by students themselves

Disability differentials in educational attainment in England: primary and secondary effects

Childhood disability has been largely overlooked in social stratification and life course research. As a result, we know remarkably little about mechanisms behind well-documented disability differentials in educational outcomes. This study investigates educational transitions of disabled youth using data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. We draw on social stratification literature on primary and secondary effects as well as that on stigma and labeling in order to explain disabled young people’s educational outcomes. We find that disability differentials in transition rates to full-time academic upper secondary education and to university are largely the result of primary effects, reflected in differences in school performance between disabled and non-disabled young people. However, we also find evidence for secondary effects, with similarly achieving disabled young people less likely to pursue full-time academic upper secondary education compared to their non-disabled peers. We examine the extent to which these effects can be explained by disabled youth’s suppressed educational expectations as well as their experiences of being bullied at school, which we link to the stigma experienced by disabled young people and their families. We find that educational expectations play an important role at crucial transitions in the English school system, while the effect of bullying is considerably smaller. By drawing attention to different social processes contributing to disability differentials in attainment, our study moves beyond medical models that implicitly assume a naturalized association of disability with poor educational outcomes, and demonstrates the parallels of disability with other ascriptive inequalities

Bright futures: Survey of Chinese international students in the UK 2017-2018

This is a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of Chinese international students in the UK, with a comparison group of UK home students. It is part of a wider study with other surveys in Germany and China. The study population are taught (undergraduate and postgraduate) Chinese students studying in UK universities. Areas covered in the questionnaires: Socio-demographic characteristics and course details; family background (parental education, occupation, household income, siblings); prior education (academic achievement and educational migration); motivations for study abroad and decision-making process; personality traits and values (e.g., risk-taking attitude); study experience in current course; health and wellbeing; future life course aspirations; cosmopolitan vs national orientations.Young people moving away from home to seek 'bright futures' through higher education are a major force in the urbanization of China and the internationalization of global higher education. Chinese students constitute the largest single group of international students in the richer OECD countries of the world, making up 20 percent of the total student migration to these countries. Yet systematic research on a representative sample of these student migrants is lacking, and theoretical frameworks for migration more generally may not always apply to students moving for higher education. Bright Futures is a pioneering study that investigates key dimensions of this educational mobility through large-scale, representative survey research in China, the UK and Germany. We explore this phenomenon in two related aspects: the migration of students from the People's Republic of China to the UK (this data collection) and Germany for higher education, and internal migration for studies within China. This research design enables an unusual set of comparisons, between those who stay and those who migrate, both within China and beyond its borders. We also compare Chinese students in the UK and Germany with domestic students in the two countries. Through such comparisons we are able to address a number of theoretical questions such as selectivity in educational migrations, aspirations beyond returns, the impact of transnationalization of higher education on individual orientations and life-course expectations, and the link between migration and the wellbeing of the highly educated. Bright Futures is a collaborative project, involving researchers from University of Essex, University of Edinburgh, UNED, University of Bielefeld and Tsinghua University. The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), German Research Foundation (Germany) and the National Natural Science Foundation (China). </p