Raising Global Citizens: The Parental Dilemmas of School Choice among Western Expatriates during China’s Rise

Julian M. GROVES, Paul O'CONNOR

Research output: Other Conference ContributionsConference Paper (other)Other Conference Paperpeer-review

Abstract

China’s relatively recent rise in economic power has created a shift in thinking about educational choices faced by some expatriate parents in Hong Kong, and indeed parents around the world . Previously, expatriates living in non-English speaking countries sought to extend privileges to their children by sending them to elite private international schools (either at home or abroad) in which they would receive an education that followed the language, pedagogy and curriculum of their home countries, while providing a modicum of training in the dominant language and culture of the host country.

Parents who send their children to Cantonese speaking schools, however, seek to address the changing global order by providing their children with an education that they hope will allow them to traverse cultures and social classes, indicating a
reconfiguration of cultural capital that is oriented to the new global economy. Ironically, they are only able to do so by leveraging their racial and class privileges and preserving the pedagogies with which they are most familiar.

By focusing on the changing definitions of cultural capital elucidated by this small population, we seek to shift current focus on the economic and political
implications of China’s economic rise to the cultural, by looking at everyday decisions made by parents about their children’s futures.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 5 Dec 2015
EventHong Kong Sociological Association 17th Annual Conference: Sociological Imagination in a Pluralist World 多元世界得社會學想像 - Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Duration: 5 Dec 20155 Dec 2015
https://www.hksyu.edu/sociology/HKSA/conference.html

Conference

ConferenceHong Kong Sociological Association 17th Annual Conference
Country/TerritoryHong Kong
CityHong Kong
Period5/12/155/12/15
Internet address

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