“What do you want your children to do in the future?”

“I don’t know. I just hope they will pursue a degree as high as they can. I don’t mind how much it will cost as long as they learn knowledge, not like me… then they will have a better life.”

This conversation happened between me and a single father with two daughters in the winter of 2019 while I was conducting my fieldwork in Guiyang, Southwest China. This father moved from one of the country’s poorest cities, Bijie, to the capital of the province, becoming one of the 236 million rural-to-urban migrants in China. Guiyang for them is a place brimming with opportunities where they will be able to pursue a better life than their agricultural work, but also may face discrimination and inequities. Most migrant workers are employed in manufacturing and construction industries with low pay and low social status: largely due to low levels of education. However, the migrant parents place an extremely high value on education. As the father indicated at the beginning, schooling is the ladder for their social mobility. Without this path, the lives of migrant students would often follow the same pattern as their parents’. 

Despite the pivotal role of education, there are still more than 2 million (21.3%) migrant children unable to enrol in urban public schools in their destination cities. The main reason is that the Chinese educational system assigns responsibility for compulsory education to local governments at the county or district level. Funding for compulsory education is allocated by the number of children with household registration and does not transfer across administrative units. Although the central government urges local authorities to accommodate the educational needs of migrant children, some of them lack the incentives and financial resources. Therefore, privately-run migrant schools (PMSs), which are low-cost private schools, cater to millions of children. Generally, they are the sole providers of educational opportunities for this minority who would, otherwise, very likely be “left-behind” children or who may drop out of school. 6.97 million children are left behind in their rural hometown alone or with a distant relative. Hence, PMSs play an important role not only in meeting migrant children’s educational needs but also keeping migrant families together in the receiving city.

To better understand how migrant children educate themselves when state schooling is unavailable, I conducted three-month fieldwork in Guiyang to explore how PMS schools operate and the nature of their educational and social circumstances. I hope to shed light on the challenges and needs of PMSs that might otherwise remain invisible from the public and officials. A larger purpose of my research is also to highlight the circumstances of these migrant minorities, bearing in mind that a nation’s citizens are its most valuable resource. If this resource is unable to participate in society to its fullest potential, both citizens and the nation are losing out.

Yao Wang is a recipient of the ASI’s 2020 John Blundell Studentship, our grant programme for talented graduates pursuing research that advances economic and personal freedom.