ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 establishes the conceptual and theoretical basis of the book. It provides an overview of seminal research in the field of child and youth resilience. As the chapter unfolds, effort is made to recast the traditional notion of ‘resiliency’ into the notion of ‘resilience’. The former is built on the grounds of an ontogenic, individualistic framework and considers resiliency to be a personal trait. The latter, however, is emphatic about the individual-environmental interaction and considers resilience to be a social process. In light of the paradigmatic shift, this chapter proposes a sociology of resilience. Reframed through the social practice theory of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, resilience can be understood as an empowering process of socialisation that enculturates floating children and left-behind children into a set of dispositions (habitus) and capacities (capital) required for rebounding from adversities in the context of internal migration in China.
