ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the main bodies of literature and knowledge relevant to the education of the children. It proposes an analytical framework that allows for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics surrounding migrant children's education in Beijing and ultimately creates a stronger foundation upon which to improve the situations of the city's migrant schools and their students. The chapter explores the literatures on migration-education linkages, rural-urban migration and urbanization, and educational inequality in China and how they relate to migrant children's education and trends in social stratification. The chapter turns to the literature on policy processes in which policy history, local context, and the involvement of civil society are increasingly relevant considerations. It demonstrates that assumptions about the hukou system's predominant impact on policies concerning rural-urban migrants are grounded in a more linear interpretation of policy processes, in which such institutional regulations operate in a relatively straightforward and insulated manner.
