Dogged Optimism: Striving and Waiting in Rural Chinese Students’ Negotiations of Social Mobility

Abstract

This critical ethnography examines the arduous pursuit of upward social mobility among young students in a rural mountain township in Southeastern China. It explores how rural Chinese students from Watershed School (pseudonym) navigate and negotiate upward social mobility within stratified educational and social systems. Despite the obstacles posed by stratified social class and the rural-urban divide, achieving social and geographical mobility has become a compelling imperative for rural youth in contemporary China. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from Global South youth studies and the sociology of education, this dissertation focuses on the role of education in shaping rural students’ life trajectories. It also investigates these students’ strategies to navigate the intricate interplay between schooling, stratification, and the urgent demand for social mobility. The stories underpinning this dissertation were derived from two years of fieldwork at Watershed School, beginning in 2019 when my participants were in ninth grade. This study reveals that Watershed School, produced as a stratified and waiting educational space, has profoundly shaped the life opportunities of its students with varying academic performances. Through the implementation of tracking practices, such as academic grouping and the incorporation of labor education, the school served as an influential institute that propelled some students to strive for educational success while leaving others waiting. Consequently, striving and waiting emerged as two distinct strategies adopted by the students in navigating the tensions between the desire for mobility and the stratified social reality. Both the striving and waiting rural students have developed a culture that I call “dogged optimism” to cope with the imperative for social mobility within a stratified system. The culture of dogged optimism serves as a form of social navigation, enabling them to navigate the challenges and opportunities inherent in being aspirational subjects in contemporary Chinese society. This dissertation argues that a critical rethinking of dominant narratives of social mobility rooted in education is necessary to go beyond the limitations of this positive yet tenuous optimism among marginalized youth. I argue that a pedagogy of the nearby, which prioritizes facilitating the capabilities for critical reflexivity and action rather than an illusionary distant future, opens up possibilities for rural Chinese students to reconstruct social relations and foster critical hopes. Engaging in critical dialogue within the field of Global South youth studies and considering the distinctive Chinese local contexts, this dissertation provides a localized cultural analysis of rural Chinese students’ subjective experiences of social mobility. It offers implications for interrogating the deeply ingrained connections between education and social mobility.