Abstract:

In the last few decades, there has been some research conducted which focuses on examining how Chinese students fare in the Canadian post-secondary system, their motivations for choosing Canada for their university education. However, relatively little research has been conducted on those individuals and families who take the immigration pathway to Canada from China for education purposes. In particular, little research has focused on the gendered experiences of these immigrants. This paper aims to focus on the experiences of highly educated Chinese women who immigrate to Canada for the purpose of enabling their children and themselves to obtain a Canadian education.

Drawing on interview data from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded research projects, this paper focuses on education migration as a gendered process and a strategy for economic mobility and social reproduction in the new country. The paper focuses on Mainland Chinese immigrant women, and investigates how the women adopt transnational migration practices as a strategy to provide what they perceive as better educational opportunities for their children and for themselves.

The recurring theme of the Chinese immigrant women interviewees who decide to immigrate to Canada, primarily for their children’s education is their perception that the Chinese educational system is too rigid, and too academically competitive for their children. Conversely, they perceive the Canadian educational system as more relaxed and not very competitive. The women’s negative perception of the education system in China, coupled with their preference for Western education and their dissatisfaction with the high cost of living in China, can be linked to the larger context of economic restructuring in China. The growing middle class in China are exemplified by an increasing sense of cosmopolitan aspirations facilitated in large part by the emergence of the English language as the dominant language of globalized capitalism, in a globalized context in which Western cultural and social norms are promoted and privileged. As such, English-language education in a Western countries becomes not only a market commodity for the Chinese middle class, but also a marker of class distinction linked with values of worldliness, modernity, and progress.

Some women opt to invest not only in their children’s education, but also in their own educational advancement. Education migration as a strategy for social mobility and social reproduction also functions as a source of hope for the highly educated women who are struggling in Canada with de-skilling, downward mobility, and precarious employment, as well as prolonged family separation. It is recommended that immigration policies be better coordinated with educational policies to more effectively provide immigrant children with the appropriate educational programs at various levels of schooling; and to better accommodate foreign trained immigrant professionals seeking Canadian educational credential to integrate into the Canadian labour market.

Keywords:

Gender and education, globalization and education mobility, education and mobility.