ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on past research on classed parenting and reports on a two-year qualitative study to illuminate a contemporary view of Chinese middle-class parenting from a western conceptual lens. Building on Bourdieusian conceptual work on ‘habitus’ together with a related concept ‘field’, this chapter unpacks the meanings of the future mobilities Chinese middle-class parents seek for their children. The chapter argues that within an era of globalisation, the concepts of both habitus and field can offer new insights into how social reproduction for future mobilities via a privileged non-Western cultural logic of parenting is accomplished. In doing so, it highlights the structural efficacy and individual agency in negotiating class reproduction within the changing educational landscape in Shanghai. The crisis of COVID-19 and recent regulatory bans on for-profit tutoring in Chinese education may also shift Chinese middle-class parental strategies for future mobilities and class reproduction. Nonetheless, understanding of classed parenting and pursuit of mobilities (as a marker of distinction) for children's future opens up conversations that extend beyond a particular version of habitus and field. This reflects the ‘relational’ character of Bourdieusian concepts—a point which is developed in the conclusion of the chapter.
