Internal Migration and Citizenship Education in China’s Shenzhen City

Abstract

Migration’s influences on citizenship education were widely discussed in the literature. However, most studies were based on international migration that drew experience from, for example, North America and Europe. Less attention was paid to internal migration or developing areas. This article takes China as an example, which is a country that has experienced and will experience extensive internal migration, to analyze the relationship between internal migration and citizenship education. This article selects Shenzhen as a study site, for it reflects China’s population movements and city development in the last three decades. Interviews with 38 teachers in six schools and relevant university scholars, education bureau officers in 2008 were analyzed for this article. The article reports Shenzhen citizenship education’s responses to three challenges brought by internal migration. The analyses of the findings reveal that different from assimilation and multiculturalism approaches in citizenship education, Shenzhen’s citizenship education paid less efforts to diminish/reconcile migrants’ ethnic, cultural differences. Instead, it inclined to address the general problems caused by the migration phenomenon. Similarly, it also laid efforts on migrant integration and social cohesion.