ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 investigates the resilience process of floating children and left-behind children against the structural constraints in the internal migration context of China. Drawing on data collected from parents, children, and teachers, the chapter sociologically analyses the ways in which socioeconomic status shapes resilience into an embodied disposition (habitus). Although the notion of resilience is traditionally rooted in the school of psychology, this chapter rethinks resilience as a sociological notion and a class-based, intergenerational project. When the neoliberal logic behind mainstream praxis uproots many working-class young people out of their cultural communities, it also rips valuable indigenous dispositions out of their body and coerces them to leave their heritage culture and epistemology happily behind. In response to the socially defined and desired outcomes, some floating children and left-behind children engage in a social practice of resistance to mainstream ideologies. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory, the chapter re-theorises resistance as a sociological praxis of resilience.
