CR&DALL Seminar Series: Place, Residential Mobility and School Choice in Glasgow and Guangzhou
Wed 8 May 2024 10:00 AM - 11:30 PM
Room 517a, St Andrew's Building, 11 Eldon Street, G3 6NH
Description
This hybrid seminar will combine two presentations connected by a focus on place, residential mobility and school choice in the contexts of Guangzhou, China, and Glasgow, UK.
Disentangling the intersectional field of education and housing in China: Genesis, strategies and discontents
This paper proposes a concept “intersectional field” to disentangle the complex interrelations between housing and education in China, where they mutually constitute and co-produce yet trouble and counteract with each other, whereby exerting simultaneous exclusion in cultural and economic (re)production. It also uses the Guangzhou case in China to delineate the genesis and evolvement of this intersectional field, as well as the middle class strategies in this intersectional field.
About the speaker:
Dr Qiong He is a post-doctoral fellow at University of Hong Kong since 2022, after her graduation from University of Amsterdam. Her interests lie in housing studies, geographies of education and urban inequality and segregation, and social spatial restructuring processes. Her work has been published in journals including Environment and Planning A: Economy & Space, Urban Geography, Housing Studies and Habitat International.
School choice 2.0: school and area choices in the Glasgow Region secondary school comprehensive system
This presentation looks at school choice in the Glasgow Region using qualitative data from the internet site Mumsnet. It is argued that there is a need to revisit the Scottish literature on school choice from the 1980s to early 90s, which focused on placement requests and choice of school. The development of the housing market that took place during that time and the increased mobility it now affords has not been studied in relation to school choice in Scotland; and the choice of catchment area and area more generally. Further, using a Bourdieusian framework, it argues that choice of school or area is more complex: producing a structured system of choices based on the interaction between the housing market, the school system and the economic and cultural capital of parental choosers. This results in a hierarchy of public and state secondary schools in the Glasgow Region (Glasgow City, East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire) similar to Ball at al.’s ‘Circuits of Schooling’ (1996) but with the critical addition of the housing market. That this additional spatial aspect is absent from the Scottish Government’s educational policies on the attainment gap is noted.
About the speaker:
Dr Colin Mack has been a tutor at the University of Glasgow since 2022, after graduating from the same institution and is currently based in Urban Studies. His interests lie in educational inequalities, the sociology of education and class, social theory and the geographies of education and urban inequality.
Location
Room 517a, St Andrew's Building, 11 Eldon Street, G3 6NH