Family language policy of internal migrating middle-class families in China

In this paper, existing Boudieusian theorisations are extended by adding the under-researched dimensions of migration status and the middle-classness of families in China to understandings of family language policy (hereafter, FLP). FLP refers to families’ thinking and explicit and implicit decisions about language and literacy and how they implement and manage those beliefs in practice. The paper focuses on internal migrant middle-class families who moved as ‘réncái’ (talented human resources) within China. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Guangdong, China, with both husbands and wives in the focal family, and analysed qualitatively.
The paper seeks to examine the shaping of the parents’ habitus and their deployment of capital in enacting FLPs in three families. Habitus is understood in a Bourdieusian sense as a set of dispositions that is constantly formed by agents’ experience and therefore constantly affected their social practices in a way that reinforces the structures within which it is located (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). The analyses first identify the FLP patterns in the three families with respect to parental beliefs, as well as the sense of responsibility and planning parents felt concerning their child’s development. Further, they then explore the practices and strategies through which the parents engaged in FLP.
The findings show that the parents’ habituses are shaped by the intersection of four aspects. One, resulting from their well-educated background, leads them a proactive role in their children’s education. A second, arising from their workplace expertise, sees them bring part of their working habitus to parental habitus in terms of FLP. A third, stemming from middle-class status, relates to the high diversity of FLP patterns that count as ‘competent’ parenting for the participants. A fourth concerns the lack of influence of migration status on FLP of this group of réncái parents.