ABSTRACT
This chapter’s analytical focus is on the role of parental involvement in shaping the academic performance of migrant children in school. Adopting the theoretical lens of intersectionality and Bourdieu’s toolkit, the chapter reveals the unique identity of the migrant family, which has three key dimensions: migrant, rural and a working-class background. By focusing on the several dimensions shaping migrants’ habitus, it examines the habitus restructuring of rural-to-urban migrant parents in the urban social space. Further analysis indicates how the intersection of rural origin, migration status and working-class identities shapes the parents’ habitus and their exertion of capital in the urban education field. The findings show that the intersection of two aspects of their habitus – one, resulting from their rural background, leads them not to treat themselves as academic educators, and a second, arising from their migrant working-class status, the necessity to ‘strive for survival’. Since the parents’ actions do not match the teachers’ expectations of home-school cooperation, they are identified as ‘incompetent’.
