{"title":"A Life's Work? Unpacking the Existential Meaning of Educational Mobilities for Migrant Families","authors":"Johanna L. Waters","doi":"10.1111/glob.12513","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12513","url":null,"abstract":"<p>It is axiomatic that middle-class Asian migrant families invest heavily—practically and emotionally—in their children's education. Scholarship has linked this investment to strategies of capital accumulation. There has been little discussion, however, about the transformative nature of these strategies and how they might be framed in terms of migrants' whole lives. This paper applies theoretical concepts from migration studies and a framework proposed by philosopher Charles Taylor, to argue that educational migration should be seen as profoundly life shaping.</p>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glob.12513","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Childhood, Migration and the Pursuit of Happiness in MIDDLE-CLASS EAST ASIA","authors":"Fanni Beck, Pál Nyíri, Sofia Gaspar","doi":"10.1111/glob.12511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12511","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This special issue explores the shifting landscape of global middle-class migration within and from East Asia by taking the relationship between mobility, parenting ideals and changing educational desires as its focus. Contributions explore how East Asian middle-class families balance the emergent emphasis on their children's well-being with the demands of global competitiveness as these often-antagonistic desires are projected onto old and new migration destinations against the background of global geopolitical and economic power shifts. Instead of reifying the simplistic binary of hierarchical, achievement-oriented East Asian ‘Confucian educational norms’ versus democratic, well-being-focussed Western ideals, the contributions offer a nuanced understanding of how these educational ideals coexist within the social, cultural, political and economic contexts of families. By carefully assessing the dialectically entwined intimate experiences of parents and children, the articles collected here set out to broaden our understanding of how middle-class families in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China attempt to negotiate the tension between prioritizing children's happiness and maintaining global competitiveness result in a variety of strategies from migrating to less obvious international destinations to crafting domestic alternatives. Taken together, the articles reveal consistent patterns of middle-class migration and child-rearing decisions that contest and reshape conventional notions of success, attesting to a shift in global middle-class migration trends and to the importance of child-rearing in migratory decisions.</p>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glob.12511","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Navigating Stepwise Lifestyle Mobilities via the Global South: Japanese Migrant Families’ Negotiation of Educational and Lifestyle Aspirations in Malaysia","authors":"Hiroki Igarashi","doi":"10.1111/glob.12510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12510","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Studies of the transnational migration of East Asian families have examined how they enhance their status and well-being by moving their children to schools in Western anglophone countries. Although recent studies have identified Southeast Asia as a new, affordable destination for less affluent families, we do not know their future transnational trajectories. To fill this gap, this study employed interview data from 46 Japanese families who had migrated to Malaysia with their children and investigated how they navigated their transnational mobilities from Malaysia. To explain their pattern, I introduce the concept of ‘stepwise lifestyle mobilities’, transnational mobility pathways adopted by relatively affluent people from developed countries, who may face constraints due to factors such as race, ethnicity, limited global experience or financial limitations but a desire for an international experience. They start from a low-cost, low-risk country like Malaysia and seek staged lifestyle migration regionally and/or globally.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Commentary: East Asian Educational Migration as Narrative Quests","authors":"Jing Xu","doi":"10.1111/glob.12512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12512","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>I interpret the rich conceptual insights and empirical findings of the special issue <i>Childhood, Migration and the Pursuit of Happiness in Middle-Class East Asia</i> through the lens of understanding migration as a journey of narrative quests. Drawing from moral philosopher McIntyre's theory of narrative self and the pursuit of a good life, I highlight the dialectic and dialogic aspects of ‘narrative quests’ across multiple cases of East Asian educational migration (educational migration broadly construed). I highlight key features, central themes and tensions of narrative quests among these migrant families. I also pose questions for expanding further inquiry under this theoretical framework.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Susanne Y. P. Choi, Xiaomin Cai, Yu Pei, Lingxi Chen
{"title":"The Cultivation of Transnational Cultural Capital in Childhood: Experiences of Chinese Global Multiple Migrants","authors":"Susanne Y. P. Choi, Xiaomin Cai, Yu Pei, Lingxi Chen","doi":"10.1111/glob.12506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12506","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study shows how class advantage is transferred to the next generation through parental strategies that cultivate their children's transnational cultural capital from an early age. It combines the concepts of cultural capital and concerted cultivation and adopts a novel methodology, examining parental aspirations (PAs) and strategies from the perspective of the children. The data are derived from the life stories of Chinese global multiple migrants. The article shows that the cultivation of transnational cultural capital amongst elite and middle-class families in China is linked to traditional, neoliberal and non-materialistic PAs. It reveals how parental capital is related to their aspirations and shapes their use of six cultivation strategies. It also discusses the contradictions, dilemmas and disagreements relating to concerted cultivation; examines children's agency and places the findings within global and national contexts. The results provide insights into culturally specific class mechanisms of intergenerational reproduction of privilege in an era of globalization.</p>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glob.12506","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142428997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Educational Exit and the Pursuit of a Happy Childhood Among Singaporean Middle-Class Families","authors":"Kristina Göransson","doi":"10.1111/glob.12498","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12498","url":null,"abstract":"<p>On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork in Singapore, the article explores the tension between children's academic success and emotional wellbeing, and the ways in which middle-class parents navigate these conflicting aspirations. It delves into families with young children who pursue alternative lifestyles by moving abroad to a presumably less stressful environment or by homeschooling their children. The study aims to understand how parents who ‘opt out’ perceive their children's future and the sacrifices they make in pursuing alternative education for their children. Decisions were made to ‘protect’ the child from the potentially negative effects of a competitive education system, while pursuing an alternative childhood and school–life balance. East Asian education systems are globally renowned for their high academic standards and for producing students who score at the top on international assessment tests and rankings. In this context, alternative educational pursuits are both less established and less well understood, yet they are central to understanding emerging aspirations of wellbeing as well as the reconfiguration of conventional ideals of upward social mobility.</p>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glob.12498","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Educational Fetish and Chinese Emigration to Poland","authors":"Krzysztof Kardaszewicz","doi":"10.1111/glob.12496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12496","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Educational migration to Poland has recently served to reshape the local Chinese community, previously known largely for trade and small entrepreneurship. This marks a broader trend, with a number of European countries promoted in China as sites of elite learning and increasingly fetishized among the Chinese middle class. Drawing on research among families, students and intermediaries, I discuss the process through which Poland has been embraced as one of such ‘imagined’ destinations, meant to provide an alternative to the pressures of life in modern Chinese society. I also show how, despite the growing access, the actual pursuit of new aspirations remains complex, often leading to a conflicted experience abroad.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142428900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Pragmatists’ and ‘Rebels’: Ambivalent Success Frames of Chinese International Secondary School Graduates in the United States","authors":"Siqi Tu","doi":"10.1111/glob.12492","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12492","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Upper-middle-class Chinese families send children to the United States for high school to exit what some perceive as an ‘unhappy’ educational environment in China or in pursuit of a ‘better education’ in the United States. However, for some students, the American high school experience itself may be marked by ‘unhappiness’, endured in the pursuit of ‘success’. Based on ethnographic interviews with Chinese youth attending private American high schools, this study illustrates how narratives of unhappiness surrounding such transnational educational choices result in multiple success frames among students, categorized as ‘pragmatists’ and ‘rebels’. Those who downplay happiness or experience unhappiness in the US context tend to adopt the ‘pragmatic’ frame, while those emphasizing their exit from an ‘unhappy’ situation are more likely to align with the ‘rebel’ frame. Despite slight deviations from parental expectations, the relative economic security of these families enables Chinese youth to develop ambivalent success frames based on their familiarity with both US and Chinese contexts, questioning the dominance of a singular success narrative.</p>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glob.12492","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theorizing Transnational Class Formation: Novel Approaches to the Study of Transnational Inequalities and Class-Making","authors":"Sören Carlson, Karolina Barglowski","doi":"10.1111/glob.12491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12491","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Transnational class formation has been a subject of considerable interest in recent years. This article provides the theoretical and thematic framework to the special theme on ‘Transnational class formation: identities, practices and symbolic classifications’ and presents a review of current literature on transnational social classes, arguing that we need to complement this literature by also considering transnational class-making. We introduce several theoretical approaches and concepts, emphasizing the role of (self-)classification, distinction, symbolic boundaries and intersectionality for analyses of transnational class-making. Drawing on the contributions collected in this special theme, we conclude by presenting some potential challenges and unresolved questions concerning the issue of transnational class formation.</p>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glob.12491","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141488584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Not to Study, But to Experience: Parental Aspirations, Children's Happiness and Alternative Pathways to Going Global in South Korea","authors":"Yoonhee Kang","doi":"10.1111/glob.12493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12493","url":null,"abstract":"<p>South Korea has been known for high rates of ‘early study abroad’ (ESA) or <i>jogi yuhak</i> participation, in which pre-college students go abroad for an international education. However, this trend has declined recently. Instead, many Korean parents and their children are seeking the benefits of ‘studying abroad’ without leaving Korea for long periods. Based on in-depth interviews with Korean parents, I explore various strategies they employ to provide their children, aged 4–12, with ‘study abroad experiences’ without actually studying abroad for an extended period. These approaches include English immersion programmes, such as English kindergartens and camps designed to expose children to foreign cultures and languages. I analyse how Korean parents’ aspirations to nurture ‘happy children’ while securing their future success shape diverse strategies that transcend traditional local–global and sedentary–mobile dichotomies. This highlights more complex motivations behind educational choices, emphasizing goals beyond mere capital accumulation or lifestyle consumption.</p>","PeriodicalId":47882,"journal":{"name":"Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/glob.12493","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}