1Among the studies on migrant children in China, access to education is an important issue. Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that the numbers of migrant children and rural left-behind children in the compulsory education stage in 2017 were 18,9745 million and 15,5056 million, respectively, totaling 34,48 million. From 2012 to 2017, the number of migrant children in compulsory education increased by 2,8386 million, with an increase of 17.6 %, whereas the number of left-behind children in rural areas decreased by 5,762 million. Data from Beijing show that the overall education level of migrant children after junior high school is relatively low; the enrollment rate for senior high school (including vocational high school) is less than 40 %, and the enrollment rate for university is less than 6 % (Song, Zeng and Zhang 2017). Some scholars believe that because migration itself will reduce the opportunities for migrant children to access education (Jiang 2017), migrant children will, in the process of migration, fall into an environment that is dually disadvantageous, making it difficult for them to convert educational capital into academic knowledge and pursue further education, leading them to bottom reproduction. Therefore, for migrant children floating in the gap between urban and rural areas, education is more a path of class reproduction than a ladder of upward mobility (Lu, Liang and Hou 2015).

2However, in our field cases, we found that in the face of many disadvantages, migrant children can still find opportunities for further education in an adverse institutional environment, and they improve their academic qualifications. We hope to find out the internal mechanism of migrant children’s access to further education through case studies. In Li’s case, the adult education system is a path beyond the general education and vocational education systems, one which is not limited by the hukou (household registration). In the following, we will discuss the obstacles in the hukou system (household registration system) and the opportunities for further studies faced by the children of migrant workers in China, as well as the role of education in the labor market and the role of the adult education system.

Obstacles in the Hukou System and the Lack of Opportunities for Further Education

3With the trend of “family-oriented” migration among the new generation of migrant workers in China, a large number of school-age children need to receive compulsory education in cities, and the issue of educational equity has become a growing focus for the country and society (Shi and Sun 2015). Some of the children of the migrant population grow up in their hometown and become left-behind children, while others follow their parents to study in the city and become migrant children. Studies have shown that both migrant children and left-behind children in China face educational disadvantages, and the situation of migrant children is different from that of left-behind children. In addition to the problems that left-behind children often face, such as fatigue, absenteeism, and dropping out, migrant children also face other obstacles in their enrollment (Liang and Chen 2007), that is, whether they can enroll in a school, which schools they can choose from, and where the schools are. The reason is that a large number of migrant children are still excluded from the formal urban education structure after entering the city, and they do not have educational opportunities that are truly equal to those of urban children (Luo, Zhong and Zeng 2015).

4One of the important reasons for the inequality in educational opportunities is the localized supply of basic education in China and the hukou system; that is to say, China’s compulsory education and the hukou system are closely connected. In China, local governments provide financial support for compulsory education. Local governments use hukou to count the number of school-age children, so they can allocate educational resources. When children leave the place where their hukou is located, they cannot get local education subsidies in Shanghai, to which they immigrate. For the local government, its financial burden is greater when the actual enrollment demand is greater than the planned number, if public schools must fill all of this demand. In order to protect local and departmental interests, local governments at all levels try every means to shun these responsibilities, so they tend to set a higher threshold for migrant children to enter local public schools. Due to the emergence of a large number of domestic migrants since the 1980s, the education supply related to hukou has hardly been able to meet the educational needs of migrant children. In 2001, the central government put forward a policy stipulating that the local government should provide compulsory education for migrant children and should try to improve the educational situation of migrant children. However, there are logical differences and conflicts of interest between national policy-making and local implementation. Local governments tend to seek benefits and avoid disadvantages in the implementation of specific policies, which directs the actual policy implementation away from its original intention, directly leading to the birth of “invisible classes” and “street children” in some regions (Zhang 2018). Some scholars believe that the emergence of this kind of educational inequality is not only linked to the national education equity policy, but also to the national new urbanization policy, the sustainable development of megacities, individual family background, and social capital in practice (Fu, Feng and Wang 2017). Fundamentally speaking, migrant children’s school enrollment is the product of the current hukou system and the urban-rural dual policies (Xiang 2005).

5In Shanghai, the education policy of migrant children has undergone several changes since the 1990s. At first, the threshold for migrant children to attend public schools was very high, and only a small number of migrant children were able to enter public schools. In 2008, with the relaxation of the policy, on the one hand, some private schools for migrant children turned into public schools; on the other hand, the government lowered the requirements for migrant children to enter public schools, enabling a large number of migrant children to enjoy the resources for compulsory education that were provided by the Shanghai municipal government. However, with the introduction of Shanghai’s population control policy as a metropolis in 2013, in order to limit the number of migrant children in Shanghai, the threshold for public schools was raised again. In this process, the government successively shut down schools for migrant children.

6The schools for children of migrant workers are a product of a special historical period in the 1990s. When a great deal of migrant children were excluded from local public schools, and their parents could not afford local private schools due to their economic conditions, the high number of migrant children for whom education was still compulsory gave rise to private schools for migrant children. At that time, there was a gray zone in the policies on cross-provincial compulsory education in China, which offered opportunities for the opening of these schools. The schools were started by migrant workers, some of whom had been teachers in their hometown, and some of whom had no teaching experience, which resulted in the schools having varying levels of educational quality. Besides, these schools did not receive any financial subsidies from the government and had to bear all of the profits and losses; they were faced with high operation risks. There was a period of time when schools for migrant children were opened and shut down one by one. The school where Li studied after he came to Shanghai was a school for migrant children. In terms of educational quality, these schools lagged far behind the public schools in Shanghai. Compared with rural primary schools, the educational quality of some primary schools for migrant children was much better. As a matter of fact, in the best period of development of this kind of education, the schools for migrant children could only provide the compulsory amount of education; that is to say, migrant children leaving their third year or junior high school faced obstacles pursuing an education at a senior high school, which were related to the hukou system.

7The obstacles of the hukou system not only hampered opportunities for migrant children to attend primary school and junior high school, but they also affected their chances of further studies after junior high school. In Shanghai, migrant children are not eligible to take the senior high school entrance examination. Therefore, to prepare for the senior high school entrance examination, those students who perform better academically will transfer back to their hometown schools when they are in the first or second year of junior high school. Some students whose academic performance is poor will choose to work directly after graduation from junior high school. In 2007, Shanghai opened the door for migrant children to qualify to attend vocational secondary schools; that is, migrant children could now be admitted to vocational high schools in Shanghai, which provides opportunities for these children to continue a vocational education. After the implementation of this policy, some migrant families who did not want their children to work early chose to send their children to vocational schools for further study. In Li’s case, he had the opportunity to enter vocational schools and continue his studies, but because he was addicted to the Internet in junior high school, he ended his studies and started work.

8From the perspective of the education experiences of migrant children in Shanghai, the enrollment policies formulated by local governments directly affect whether migrant children have equal rights to a local education. In fact, the educational policies for migrant children in some medium-sized cities are relatively loose, while those in megacities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, are stricter.

The Significance of an Academic Degree and an Adult Education Diploma

9In China, educational background largely determines whether an individual will engage in physical or mental work. Although Li—who dropped out of school in the second grade of junior high school—was too young for getting a job in a steel plate workshop, Li’s relative introduced him to his first physical job by concealing his real age. This job was in a workshop that made steel plates. Li’s daily work was to move steel plates between different machines. He worked very intensively for long hours. His parents thought the job was too hard for the teenage Li, so he quit within a month. Li’s second job was as a security guard in a large enterprise. In terms of work content and labor intensity, this was a relatively easy, stable, and well-paid job. However, at this time, Li found that this was the only type of work he could get with his level of education as a junior high school graduate, but it wasn’t the type of work he really wanted to do. His real work experience changed his view of education. He previously only wanted to find a job to earn money; later on, he found that it would be difficult to get a better position and salary in the enterprise if he had skills but no respective educational background. It can be seen that in China’s domestic labor market, education level is not only a factor in distinguishing between whether one’s job involves mental labor or physical labor; it is also an important qualification for internal or external promotion. By contrast, whether one has a local hukou has little impact on the possibility to get jobs outside the state-owned system.

10Li, who hoped to improve his education level, encountered the obstacles brought on by his hukou. Because he wasted months working, he also missed the opportunity to enter Shanghai’s local vocational school or to return to his hometown to study in the third year of junior high. At this time, a teacher told him that he could continue to study in secondary school through the adult education system, which is equivalent to vocational high school education, and in this way he could have the opportunity to continue to study in junior college. In China’s educational system, the adult education wing provides a large number of working people with the opportunity to receive higher education, which is a way for people to pursue higher education without having to enroll in a full-time higher education program, and the graduation certificate certified by the state will be issued upon the completion of studies. The local government only sets the hukou threshold in the general education system, not in the adult education system. This means that to register for adult education an applicant only needs to have the corresponding pre-qualification certification. This enables migrant children who, like Li, have the desire to further their studies but are unable to enter the general education system, to cross the barriers of hukou and get the opportunity to continue their education.

11Because adult education is meant for people who are working, in the process of learning the students need to balance both learning and work. It is no easy task for many people who have already worked to devote almost all their spare time to study in order to earn a higher diploma. Therefore, compared with the general education system, the learning process of adult education often requires more perseverance and determination. Li began to study in technical secondary school in 2011. By the time of the interview in 2015, he had completed his study in technical secondary school and was studying in junior college. The decision to continue learning also changed Li’s criteria for choosing a career. In choosing a job later, he mainly considered whether he would have enough time for rest in order to pursue his study.

12It should be pointed out that although the national education system, as represented by adult education, provides an alternative for improving the academic qualifications of migrant children outside the general education system, from the perspective of the signaling function of education (Spence 1978), when selecting candidates employers pay attention not only to the level of education, but also to the quality of schools the candidates attended. When making a horizontal comparison among candidates of the same caliber, the adult education degree is still at a disadvantage. But for migrant children, it is also a choice for them to transform from ordinary workers to skilled workers or even managers.

13To sum up, in Li’s case we can see the institutional barriers to education faced in Shanghai by the migrant children born in the 1980s and the 1990s, barriers that make it difficult for them to obtain opportunities for further education through the general education system. What is more, we also find that the national education system beyond the scope of the general education system provides these children with another kind of opportunity to improve their personal education.