Search

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]

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]

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]