Ying Ma and Ewan Wright
This study aims to interrogate and expand on the flexible citizenship framework by illuminating students' emergent identities and imagined future mobilities in China's expanding…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to interrogate and expand on the flexible citizenship framework by illuminating students' emergent identities and imagined future mobilities in China's expanding international school sector.
Design/methodology/approach
In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with international school students and their parents in Shenzhen, covering their motivations for overseas higher education, experience with international schooling, self-perceived identities and imagined futures.
Findings
The participants aspired to overseas higher education for both symbolic capital attainment and embodied cultural cultivation to thrive in a globalised world. They expressed confidence that international schooling experiences prepared students for mobility to Western higher education and cultivated globally-oriented identities while not undermining their Chinese roots. They imagined their futures in terms of considerable flexibility, with a rising China viewed as an attractive and feasible option for career development.
Research limitations/implications
This research provides an enriched understanding of a new generation of globally mobile Chinese students. The participants held distinctively different outlooks, aspirations and attitudes than depicted in the flexible citizenship framework, which emphasised a one-dimensional and instrumentalist portrayal of Chinese international students. This study discusses cross-generational changes in the desire for overseas education and a global-national outlook among young people in the context of significant social transformations in urban China.
Originality/value
The originality of this study is in expanding the flexible citizenship framework with reference to the emergent identities and pathways of students in the international schooling sector in China.
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The worldwide expansion of higher education participation has destabilised the value of higher education as a currency of opportunity. An increasing number of graduates are…
Abstract
Purpose
The worldwide expansion of higher education participation has destabilised the value of higher education as a currency of opportunity. An increasing number of graduates are experiencing the precarity of unemployment, under-employment and low salaries. This study aimed to investigate how university students in China understand and respond to the changing relationship between higher education and career opportunities.
Design/methodology/approach
The research team conducted 100 in-depth interviews with final-year undergraduates at one elite and one lower-tier university in a metropolitan city in Guangdong Province.
Findings
The students were acutely aware of fierce competition in the graduate labour market. When asked “what matters most” for post-graduation career prospects, they identified elite universities and high-status fields of study as “traditional” currencies of opportunity. Nonetheless, to stand out in a competitive environment, they perceived a growing need to supplement higher education credentials through university experiences (internships, student governance, study abroad programmes), party membership, personal connections and (overseas) postgraduate education. Moreover, in a “race to the top”, they discussed how qualitatively distinctive university experiences and elite postgraduate education are “new” currencies of opportunity for high-status professional employment.
Originality/value
The study demonstrates how intensified competition for graduate employment can result in an “opportunity trap”. The students were participating in an “arms race” to accumulate positional advantages for their post-graduation careers. The net impact of such efforts on a systemic level is to create an upward spiral in what students are expected to do in preparation for their post-graduation careers and further destabilise the value of higher education as a currency of opportunity.
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Global participation in higher education has expanded greatly since the late twentieth century. The implications for the cultural, social, and economic fabric of societies have…
Abstract
Purpose
Global participation in higher education has expanded greatly since the late twentieth century. The implications for the cultural, social, and economic fabric of societies have been substantial. To explain transitions from elite to mass higher education systems, theoretical insights from Technical-functionalism, Neo-institutionalism, World Academic System, and Credentialism perspectives have been put forward. It is the contention of this paper that there are emerging and complementary factors driving steadily growing participation in “high-income” universal higher education systems. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
With reference to Ulrich Beck’s concept of the “risk society”, it is discussed how higher education participation is increasingly a response by young people (and their families) seeking to mitigate heightened instability in work and employment under a “risk regime”. Publicly available data from national and supra-national organisations are used to evidence trends and support the arguments put forward by this paper.
Findings
Participation is perceived as quasi-compulsory to “survive” amid concern that those without higher education attainment are being “left behind” in modern labour markets. This environment has contributed to more students from more diverse backgrounds viewing higher education as the only viable option to secure a livelihood regardless of rising private costs of participation and rising uncertainty over graduate employment outcomes. The expansion of higher education has therefore potentially developed a self-perpetuating dynamic as the perceived cost of non-participation escalates.
Originality/value
It is shown that to better understand higher education participation in “high-income” countries with universal higher education systems, one needs to consider the conceptual idea of “survivalism”, that underlines risk and the vulnerabilities of modern societies.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore how elite International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) schools in China function as a channel for international student mobility to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how elite International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) schools in China function as a channel for international student mobility to leading universities around the world.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve this, the authors conducted a mixed-methods study combining quantitative analysis of 1,622 students’ university destinations and qualitative analysis of interview data from five high performing and high tuition fee IBDP schools in China.
Findings
Results indicate that the IBDP in China can be conducive to a form of “elite international student mobility” for some students with 30 percent of participants attending one of the top 50 ranked universities globally. As an explanation, interview data points to the strong reputation of the program, the provision of structured opportunities for students to demonstrate “additional skills,” and the abundant resources of elite schools.
Originality/value
The authors provide a critical discussion about the implications of the IBDP’s function for “elite international student mobility” in connection with social contexts surrounding these international International Baccalaureate schools in China. In so doing, the discussion tackles two issues from a critical perspective: the role elite international schools in accelerating educational inequalities and challenges to authentic learning experience when elite schools play the “university admissions game.”
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Zhenzhou Zhao and Canglong Wang
This special issue aims to address the complexities and dynamics in contemporary China’s citizen-making processes, with a focus on the educational dimension.
Abstract
Purpose
This special issue aims to address the complexities and dynamics in contemporary China’s citizen-making processes, with a focus on the educational dimension.
Design/methodology/approach
The four articles in this special issue present citizen-making processes in both educational and cultural arenas. Based on the rich, first-hand data collected inside and outside China, the researchers revealed the dynamics of the educative processes, as the interplay of different mechanisms produces new understandings of citizenship practice.
Findings
This special issue sheds light on the rise of new types of citizens, who are emerging at the grassroots level in China, beyond the state’s strict direct regulations, along with the rise of market forces and multicultural communities in Chinese society today. Contributors to this special issue have captured an ongoing change, in that the diversified citizen-making mechanisms are, to a certain extent, mitigating the party-state’s definitive monopoly on forging citizens and are creating new spaces for individuals to develop fresh forms of political subjectivity and citizenship practice. In this sense, we argue for the unpacking of the citizen-making processes in present-day China not only from the lens of state-dominated, top-down initiatives but also from that of participatory, bottom-up initiatives performed by grassroots groups with differentiated socio-economic statuses and cultural traditions.
Originality/value
This special issue can be regarded as a contribution to the growing field of Chinese citizenship studies, which constitutes an integral part of the unfinished project of citizenship after orientalism.
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Riitta Hekkala and Mari-Klara Stein
This study examines emotionologies (Stearns & Stearns, 1985), that is, attitudes that members of an inter-organizational information systems (IOIS) project hold toward emotions…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines emotionologies (Stearns & Stearns, 1985), that is, attitudes that members of an inter-organizational information systems (IOIS) project hold toward emotions and their appropriate expression and regulation in this project. In order to understand attitudes toward emotions and emotion regulation, we suggest the adoption of the concept of emotion structure, consisting of emotion rules and resources (Callahan, 2004).
Methodology/approach
To investigate the kinds of emotionologies present in this IOIS development project, we have chosen a qualitative case study approach. Our data consists of 41 qualitative interviews, collected in two phases.
Findings
We trace how emotion rules and corresponding emotion regulation strategies change among the sub-groups working in the project throughout their first year of collaborating. We show that organizational actors are skilled emotion managers, whose behavior is guided not only by many collective emotion rules (professional, organizational, social) but also by personal emotion rules. Our findings also suggest the need to critically reflect on certain emotion rules, such as those pertaining to the expression of fear and anger, and their potential positive and negative implications on project work.
Research implications
We argue that group emotionologies with their professional, organizational, and social emotion rules interact with personal emotion rules, resulting in interesting emotion regulation strategies that often try to minimize emotional dissonance, sometimes at the expense of risking open conflict among project members. With this in mind, one theoretical and practical suggestion is to further explore the potential constructive implications of experiencing and expressing fear in projects.
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Jerome Carson and Robert Wright
The purpose of this paper is to provide a profile of Rob Wright.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a profile of Rob Wright.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a case study approach, Rob gives a short account of his background and is then interviewed by Jerome.
Findings
Rob’s is an amazing account of surviving a harrowing upbringing, which fortunately few of us reading this piece will have had to endure.
Research limitations/implications
Rob’s story perfectly illustrates why first-person accounts are so powerful. It is hard to imagine a statistical paper having the same impact as this description of one person’s lived experience.
Practical implications
Suicide is the greatest danger for anyone with a long-term mental health problem. Rob has faced this decision many times and has courageously battled on.
Social implications
Rachel’s simple, yet profound mantra, of “someone to love, something to do, somewhere to live,” is vital for all of our well-being. As Rob also points out, you still need money to put into the electric meter!
Originality/value
Some people have tough upbringings and some have cruel upbringings. Rob had both. His survival is a testament to the uncrushable nature of the human spirit.
Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis…
Abstract
Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.
THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that…
Abstract
THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.