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Despite the large number of working-class students having to work while attending schools, their work experience and the potential of class solidarity have been largely unaddressed. By bringing in a social psychological perspective, this article revives the sociological debates of working-class solidarity and challenges the defeatist view of solidarity since the neoliberal turn of the global economy. This article comprises two studies. In Study 1, a "working-class solidarity measure" (WCSM) was developed through interviews, followed by factor-analysis of a vocational school sample in China (n = 509). In Study 2, we validated the factor structure of the WCSM and adopted structural equation modelling to show that prosocial behaviour positively predicted solidarity among vocational school students (n = 2534). Contrary to the understanding that the working-class is divisive and fragmentary, our work shows that working-class solidarity can be built and consolidated through layers of prosocial behaviours by students with work experience.

Adolescent behavior is often negatively viewed especially regarding work experience. By introducing a concept of prosocial behavior, our study attempts to provide an alternative view on the effects of teenage job and work experience. We hypothesized that work experience could generate more prosocial behaviors. By surveying a large group of working-class youth (N = 2,860) from eight Chinese vocational schools and using structural equation modeling, we confirmed that the pattern of "having less, giving more" could be found in our sample. Our findings revealed that work experience could facilitate prosocial behavior via the increase of knowledge of both contract-based rights and labor action. By understanding working-class youth's prosocial behavior as a positive outcome of work experience, this study calls for further research on other positive outcomes, such as cooperation, civic engagement, and solidarity, among working-class youth.

Situating in the different social, political and cultural contexts of schooling in China, which is more embedded in mixed neoliberal value, authoritarian state control and collective morality, we use a somewhat different theoretical angle to understand the process of 'learning to labour' and the reproduction of working class at school and at work. Our study extends the horizon of Willis' analysis of cultural reproduction at school by seriously analysing students' work experiences through their internship at the site of production. Taking a sociological rather than cultural analysis approach, we re-conceptualize working-class agency embedded in a double contradiction of schooling as a site of contestation. This double contradiction is generated by conflicting experiences caused by inevitable conflicts among the three spheres of material production, social reproduction and cultural reproduction in educating ideal labour subjects to serve the state, market and family, providing fertile soil for re-negotiating working-class solidarity.

The rise of China as the world factory in the last few decades has been accompanied by a rapid expansion in vocational education. A growing number of youth from rural backgrounds now have the chance to receive post-compulsory education in vocational training schools. Using human capital theory as an analytical focus, this study examines their strong desire to acquire educational credentials and explores the stress and frustration they experience after finding out that graduates in vocational schools are sent to factories to work as cheap labourers. This article argues that reform of the educational system in post-reform China has channelled a large group of rural youth to vocational education without granting them enough chance of upward mobility. When China relies heavily on a labour-intensive manufacturing economy to secure its place in neoliberal globalization, most of the jobs available are regarded as "undesirable", dead-end and low income. Returns of human capital investment among rural youth are not guaranteed.

Despite the large number of working-class students having to work while attending schools, their work experience and the potential of class solidarity have been largely unaddressed. By bringing in a social psychological perspective, this article revives the sociological debates of working-class solidarity and challenges the defeatist view of solidarity since the neoliberal turn of the global economy. This article comprises two studies. In Study 1, a working-class solidarity measure (WCSM) was developed through interviews, followed by factor-analysis of a vocational school sample in China (n = 509). In Study 2, we validated the factor structure of the WCSM and adopted structural equation modelling to show that prosocial behaviour positively predicted solidarity among vocational school students (n = 2534). Contrary to the understanding that the working-class is divisive and fragmentary, our work shows that working-class solidarity can be built and consolidated through layers of prosocial behaviours by students with work experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kinmen, located in Taiwan's remote border area, has become increasingly embedded in the global economy by opening its border for trade and tourism with China. Previous rural youth studies mainly focus on decisions and experiences of migration while neglecting the experiences of those who stay in their hometown. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the experiences and subjectivities of young people who stay in the periphery for adulthood transitions. Based on our ethnographic data gathered in Kinmen, it shows how the enlarged employment with the new markets supported by Chinese tourists bring hope for the youth. At the same time, our findings explore how the highly dependent tourism economy and the overdependence on a single source of tourists bring them worry and uncertainty. Analyses of the paper highlight spatial elements in the economic, cultural and political processes of structuring young people's lives and subjectivities under globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, there is a growing group of "migrant children", who reside in the city but do not have full rights to access education. Many have been granted a chance to study in public schools after the policy change, but they continue to have lower educational outcomes than the local students. To understand the inequality, this paper examines the educational goals of migrant families in Beijing. Based on the field interviews, it shows that even migrant children who aspire to attain higher education are nonetheless "blocked" by discriminatory examination laws and limited resources. Their subjective outlook is derived from objective conditions and concrete experiences. Their family of origin determines the types of resources available to them, and thus plays an important role in the formation and justification of their educational goals. A realistic assessment of their chances of achieving their aspirations leads them to have lower expectations.

We interviewed Vietnamese and Chinese technical intern trainees who went to Japan under Japan's Technical Intern Training Program (TITP). We showed how Vietnam's and China's temporary labor‐export institutional arrangements differed, and contributed to the two countries' intern trainees having varied migration experiences and outcomes. We also explored the reasons TITP failed to achieve its stated objective—international skill transfer. Guided by human capital theory, we attempt to make sense of the different migration expectations and experiences of Vietnamese and Chinese trainees under different institutional arrangements and contribute to the debate of temporary labor migration and international skill transfer. We argue that the government of a temporary migrant labor‐sending country must exercise sufficiently good socio‐technical infrastructural governance to steward labor‐export policy and industrial policy to match national development goals in order to make international skill transfer possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of rural youths leave their families to receive education and training in urban vocational schools before seeking employment in China. This article aims to reveal and highlight the collectivist attitudes young migrants develop during their school-to-work transitions, even though they embrace the individualisation discourse of neoliberal self-development and self-reliance. When the young people reflexively adopt the principles of the market culture and neoliberal system to fit into the labour market, they are conscious about the important role of their disadvantageous family origins in their development. To deal with an unequal and competitive society, they rely on mutual support and co-operation to combat their risk collectively. This article suggests that collective sentiments and social networks remain extremely important in these Chinese young people's moral understanding despite the overwhelming influences of individualisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In dialogue with the new gender ideology "egalitarian essentialism" which reveals uneven transformation of gender equity in public and private spheres, this study looks into the nuanced gender ideologies among Chinese youth, their antecedents and socio-psychological impacts on the young people. We apply latent class analysis to data on gender-role attitudes that were collected in 12 vocational colleges in China (N = 4,793). The three gender ideology profiles that we identify—egalitarian, essentialist, and neutral groups—demonstrate an alternative version of "egalitarian essentialism" in post-socialist China which highlights that a continuation of egalitarian attitudes in families co-exists with a growth of essentialist attitudes in employment. Furthermore, multivariate analysis shows that the three gender ideology profiles are structured primarily by sex and socio-economic backgrounds. We also find that the gender ideologies contribute to the prediction of the youth's subjective well-being, especially their future expectations and psychological distress—the relations that have been under-researched in previous studies in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent behavior is often negatively viewed especially regarding work experience. By introducing a concept of prosocial behavior, our study attempts to provide an alternative view on the effects of teenage job and work experience. We hypothesized that work experience could generate more prosocial behaviors. By surveying a large group of working-class youth (N = 2,860) from eight Chinese vocational schools and using structural equation modeling, we confirmed that the pattern of "having less, giving more" could be found in our sample. Our findings revealed that work experience could facilitate prosocial behavior via the increase of knowledge of both contract-based rights and labor action. By understanding working-class youth's prosocial behavior as a positive outcome of work experience, this study calls for further research on other positive outcomes, such as cooperation, civic engagement, and solidarity, among working-class youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the existing argument that the logic of capital has monetised almost every aspect of human relationships to the realm of exchange value, this article explores the social values that are practised by Chinese working-class youth as an alternative form of agency and everyday practice. Instead of understanding social values as a realm of value operating entirely outside the logic of exchange value, this article takes social values as the constitutive other of exchange value embodied in the neoliberalised form of capitalism. It attempts to develop a micro-foundation of social values or a social mechanism of values for understanding social protection and class solidarity. Employing in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations in vocational schools in China, at sites for the education and nurture of working-class youth, we ask what social values are, how they are perceived and exercised, and by whom. From students' practices of care in schools, cooperation in the workplace and solidarity in the community, our goal is to build a micro-foundation of social values that challenges and goes beyond the logic of exchange value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situating in the different social, political and cultural contexts of schooling in China, which is more embedded in mixed neoliberal value, authoritarian state control and collective morality, we use a somewhat different theoretical angle to understand the process of 'learning to labour' and the reproduction of working class at school and at work. Our study extends the horizon of Willis' analysis of cultural reproduction at school by seriously analysing students' work experiences through their internship at the site of production. Taking a sociological rather than cultural analysis approach, we re-conceptualize working-class agency embedded in a double contradiction of schooling as a site of contestation. This double contradiction is generated by conflicting experiences caused by inevitable conflicts among the three spheres of material production, social reproduction and cultural reproduction in educating ideal labour subjects to serve the state, market and family, providing fertile soil for re-negotiating working-class solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes many speculate that an increasing involvement of younger generations in politics in recent years results from their blocked social mobility. What remains unclear is whether new generations are indeed deprived of mobility opportunities in nowadays Hong Kong. We seek to address this issue empirically by analysing two datasets collected in 1989 and 2007. Situating our discussion against the context of the study of social mobility, we discuss our analysis from two perspectives of social mobility: absolute mobility (mobility due to structural changes) and relative mobility (mobility due to changes in social fluidity). Against a changing class structure over the set period, structural opportunities for upward mobility are actually available to the younger generations; but, seemingly, whether they could grasp such opportunities to get ahead has become more strongly dependent on their class background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of China as the world factory in the last few decades has been accompanied by a rapid expansion in vocational education. A growing number of youth from rural backgrounds now have the chance to receive post-compulsory education in vocational training schools. Using human capital theory as an analytical focus, this study examines their strong desire to acquire educational credentials and explores the stress and frustration they experience after finding out that graduates in vocational schools are sent to factories to work as cheap labourers. This article argues that reform of the educational system in post-reform China has channelled a large group of rural youth to vocational education without granting them enough chance of upward mobility. When China relies heavily on a labour-intensive manufacturing economy to secure its place in neoliberal globalization, most of the jobs available are regarded as ‘undesirable’, dead-end and low income. Returns of human capital investment among rural youth are not guaranteed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We apply latent class analysis to data on parent–teenager interaction that was collected in the Youth Panel of the British Household Panel Survey. The three parenting styles that we identify—authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive—correspond quite closely to those proposed by child development psychologists. Multivariate analysis shows that parenting style in contemporary UK is structured primarily by family structure and not by social class. There are consistent and strong associations between parenting style and a wide range of youth outcomes, including subjective well-being and self-esteem, health and risky behaviour, and school results and enrolment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]