ABSTRACT
The opening chapter sets the scene of the book. It portrays floating children and left-behind children in the contemporary migration context of China. This is followed by a panoramic and penetrating analysis of how oscillations of government ideologies come to shape central and local migration and educational policies regarding the schooling and wellbeing of floating children and left-behind children. Drawing insight from the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory (e.g., three-level field analysis, cross-field effects), the chapter debates how power and politics behind policy making influence these children’s educational, cultural, and social participation. Such debate elicits the fundamental research question of the book: How to realise the potentialities of floating children and left-behind children and facilitate the resilience process of these children in the face of structural constraints and dynamics in the migration context of China?
