ABSTRACT
This chapter examines migrant children’s social inclusion in urban schools. It moves beyond a ‘rucksack approach’ in many Bourdieusian-informed studies, which assumes that children of migrant background are always marked in the urban field by the habitus and capital of rurality of the first-generation migrant at the moment of entry into the field. What can be identified are migrant children’s internalisation of standard Mandarin as the normal way of speaking, their urbanised bodily hexis in terms of dressing, appearing and behaving, and their appreciation of extra-curricular activities. As a result, a well-integrated relationship between migrant and local children is found in the migrant majority schools. Unlike the migrant parents, social inclusion in school reinforces the children’s sense of belonging to urban society, producing a generation of ‘new urban citizens’. Yet, these new citizens might well become a new generation of the urban working class, like their parents, since their opportunities for upward social mobility are still limited because of their weak urban-specific familial cultural resources.
