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Applying Bourdieu to Chinese Transnational Students: A Research Agenda
- Scott Davies, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy; Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto
- 8:00-9:20 PM, Thursday, March 20, 2025 (China Standard Time)
- Seminar hosted via Zoom
Abstract
Recent cohorts of Chinese students are the largest in world history. Large numbers are forging new transnational pathways in education, creating sizeable imprints on stratification across a range of jurisdictions, whether as domestic or international students, and/or as immigrants and their children. This presentation adapts Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, particularly his concepts of cultural capital, field and habitus, to understand some of these impacts. It describes my recent theoretical work, preliminary interviews with Chinese international students in Toronto, and a planned empirical project on a key transnational pathway – that between Shanghai and Toronto. I highlight 4 emerging themes:
- “field-switching” as students move from China’s hierarchical university system with intensive and rationalized educational competitions to Canada’s relative institutional parity and less intensive and rationalized competition;
- ways that cultural practices adapt to this new field and become capital;
- the forging of a “transnational habitus” that mixes elements of Confucianism with North American individualism and its emphases on therapeutic well-being; and
- ways that Chinese student populations have inadvertently fueled North American culture wars over educational standards, affirmative action, mass immigration and the funding of higher education.
I conclude by describing a planned project aimed to investigate these themes using mixes of surveys and interviews with students in Shanghai and Toronto.
Biography
Scott Davies is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, and also Sociology, at the University of Toronto. He is former Canada Research Chair in Data, Equity and Policy in Education. He teaches and conducts research in Sociology of Education. His most recent work is focusing on adapting Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework to understand new forms of educational stratification in emerging transnational settings.