Doctoral Dissertation Research: Structural Constraints to Economic Mobility Among Highly Educated Youth

博士论文研究：受过高等教育的青年经济流动性的结构性限制

• 批准号: 1558732
• 负责人: Jennifer Cole
• 金额: $ 0.55万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-03-15 至 2017-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1558732&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Structural; Constraints

Contemporary youth are confronted with a paradox in their aspirations for upward mobility: higher education is increasingly becoming an economically necessary investment, while it is becoming less subsidized and more difficult to capitalize on in the short term. The establishment and maintenance of a stable middle class has long been regarded as essential to the health of the economy, and the viable pursuit of upward mobility is a key measure of confidence for that system. This project, which trains a graduate student in conducting rigorous, empirically grounded scientific fieldwork, asks how educated youth are able to maintain aspirations for upward mobility in the face of significant structural challenges. The findings will be useful to policymakers, planners, and practitioners interested in sustainable economic development. Robert Miles Loomis, under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer Cole at the University of Chicago, examines how members of a growing underclass of educated but irregularly employed rural graduates living on the margins of major metropolises negotiate the tension between aspirations for upward mobility and present realities of poverty and precarious employment. The research specifically such one such group in China (yi zu; or "ant tribe"), an ideal site for exploring this question as it has seen a rapidly developing middle class since initiating its policies for "reform and opening" (gaige kaifang) in the late-1970s. Much of the population now sees education as only way out of poverty. Rural parents, especially, often spend all of their savings to ensure that their children attend college and land jobs in urban areas. The turn to education as a means of social mobility was itself encouraged by the government's decision in 1999 to radically expand the university system, making higher education more accessible through marketization. Yet despite the greater availability of tuition-based degrees, the Chinese economy has not generated enough white-collar jobs to absorb this massive influx of graduates. Yet members of this group, as educated youth, remain hopeful about their ability to enter into China's "high quality" workforce. By providing an in depth ethnographic look at this growing population, this project will explore how marginalized rural youth make sense of and act upon the terms of their social participation in contemporary urban China, and the ways they may be reproducing or challenging the nature of value and social hierarchy as they do so. Methods include participant observation and interviews at four different sites in and around Beijing.

当代青年在向上流动的愿望中面临着悖论：高等教育越来越成为经济上必要的投资，而在短期内，高等教育变得越来越降低，更难以利用。稳定中产阶级的建立和维护长期以来一直被认为是对经济健康至关重要的，而对向上流动性的可行追求是对该系统信心的关键衡量。该项目培训了一名研究生进行严格，经验扎根的科学现场工作，询问受过教育的年轻人如何在面对重大结构性挑战的情况下保持渴望向上流动的愿望。这些发现将对对可持续经济发展感兴趣的政策制定者，规划师和从业者有用。 罗伯特·迈尔斯·洛米斯（Robert Miles Loomis）在芝加哥大学的詹妮弗·科尔（Jennifer Cole）博士的监督下，研究了一个越来越多的受过教育但不规则地利用居住在主要大都市边界上的农村毕业生的下层阶级的成员如何谈判渴望向上移动的愿望与贫困现实和恐惧的现实性和当前的现实。这项研究是在中国（Yi Zu;或“ Ant Tribe”）的专门研究，这是探索这个问题的理想场所，因为自从1970年代后期启动其“改革和开放”（Gaige Kaifang）的政策以来，它已经看到了迅速发展的中产阶级。现在，许多人口将教育视为摆脱贫困的道路。尤其是农村父母，经常花所有的积蓄，以确保他们的孩子在城市地区上大学和土地工作。 1999年政府决定从根本上扩展大学系统的决定本身鼓励了教育作为社会流动的一种手段，从而使高等教育通过市场化更加容易获得。然而，尽管基于学费的学位有更大的可用性，但中国经济并未产生足够的白领就业机会来吸收大量的毕业生涌入。然而，作为受过教育的年轻人，该小组的成员对他们进入中国“高质量”劳动力的能力仍然充满希望。通过对这个不断增长的人口进行深入的人种志研究，该项目将探讨边缘化的农村青年如何理解并根据他们在当代城市中国的社会参与条款以及他们可能在这样做的方式中再现或挑战价值和社会等级制度的本质。方法包括参与者的观察和北京及其周围四个不同地点的访谈。