Invitation to Colloquium Series "Global Migration as the New Social Question" Sociology of Transnationalization, Development and Migration Wednesday, April 19, 16-18 c.t. Room: X-C3-107

Immigrant Educational Optimism in China: Is it Selectivity or Migration Experience Effect?

In this talk Héctor Cebolla-Boado explores differences in the expectations of attaining tertiary education among junior high school students in China. He makes a two-way comparison between (1) the children of internal migrant households with those who did not migrate within China; (2) children wishing to migrate themselves internationally when they grow up with those who do not report intentions to move abroad. By so doing, he intends to contribute to the literature on immigrant optimism, which seeks to account for the higher educational expectations of immigrant-origin children conditional on social origin and school attainment.

He aims to find out if optimism results from having experienced (internal) migration or if adolescents who desire to become international migrants in adult ages are already more optimistic than those who do not intend to move abroad, and whether these two processes are related. Our analysis confirms the second possibility. He finds that, whereas internal migration does not impact on expectations, potential migrants (within China or abroad destinations) are indeed selected in terms of ambition and other unobserved characteristics. His findings shed light on the paradox of optimism sociologists have largely detected in several Western destination countries.

HÉCTOR CEBOLLA BOADO has a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) and the Juan March Institute (Madrid, Spain). His research deals with the explanation of educational and health inequalities by social background and migrant state and school effects. He has published papers in interna-tional journals including European Sociological Review, Acta Sociologica, European Journal of Population, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Socioeconomic Review, Demographic Research or the British Journal of Sociology of Education among others. He is currently associate professor in the Department of Social Stratification at Spain’s Open University (UNED). As a co-Investigator in the Bright Futures Project (Bielefeld, Essex, Tsinghua) he studies the selectivity of Chinese migration to Europe.