The book grapples with social inequality, inclusivity, and diversity through the discussions of wellbeing, wellbecoming, and resilience of floating children and left-behind children. It invites families, schools, communities, social organisations, and governments to rethink and recognise the qualities of left-behind children and floating children. The book will be of interest to research students, sociologists of education, educational studies scholars, social workers, school professionals, and policy makers in and beyond China. The past two decades have seen exponential growth of urbanisation and migration in China. Emerging from this growth are a myriad population of floating children and left-behind children and the ever greater social-spatial interpenetration that places these children at risk of undesirable wellbeing. The living and schooling of these children are fraught with potholes and distractions in the context of migration and urbanisation. Extant work often treats floating children and left-behind children as two discrete populations and comes to grips with their wellbeing separately. The deficit model and the 'do-gooder' approach have prevailed for a long time, intending to fix the "problems" and correct the "abnormalities" associated with these children. This book differs, however, in its efforts to blur the dichotomy between floating children and left-behind children; in its transformative view and strength-based approach that recast vulnerabilities into opportunities; and in its focus on the nurture of enabling ecologies instead of the nature of individual inferiorities.

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Preface.- Acknowledgement.- List of Tables.- List of Figures.- Urbanisation and Migration: Histories, Patterns, and Challenges.- Background: China in a Snapshot.- A Penetrating Overview of Urbanisation in China.- Household Registration System in China and the Institutionalised Class Distinction.- A Synoptic Review of Migration.- Chapter Summary: Framing Floating and Left-Behind Children Together.- The Wellbeing of Floating Children and Left-Behind Children: Conceptual Foundation and Empirical Knowledge.- Revisiting the Notion of 'Rurality'.- Conceptualising Wellbeing.- The Wellbeing of Floating Children and Left-Behind Children.- Chapter Summary: Time to Shift from the Medical Deficit Model.- Coming into an Inheritance: Intergenerational Social Reproduction through Class-Based Pedagogies.- Different Roots and Routes.- Social Reproduction through the Classed Pedagogy at Home and in School.- Empirical Coda: Some Quantitative Evidence on Social Reproduction.- Chapter Summary: Challenging the Determinism Claim.- Rural Dispositions of Floating Children in Urban Fields: Accent, Deportment, and Bodily Hexis.- Research Sites and Research Participants.- Rural Accent and Deportment of Floating Children.- Bodily Hexis: A Set of Durable and Transposable Rural Dispositions.- The Modification of Rural Dispositions and the Counter-Training of Habitus.- Rural Habitus: Its Marginalisation and Misrecognition.- The Shifting of Field Structures and the Recognition of Rural Habitus.- Empirical Coda: What Do We See in the Larger Picture?.- Chapter Summary: Enabling the Nurture Instead of Reshaping the Nature.- Living with Kin Caregivers: Special Needs of Children Left Behind.- Rearing a Child: Traditions in Diversity.- Research Site and Participants.- Informal Alternative Care by Kin Caregivers: Why Did They Step in?.- The Needs Model of Children Left Behind in Rural China.- Children Left Behind: How are They Seen as Different?.- Multiple Figures: Their Roles in Addressing the Needs of Children Left Behind.- Chapter Summary: Restating the Needs of Children Left Behind.- Education and Personal Development of Children Left Behind.- Educational Needs of Children Left Behind.- Go beyond Education: Children's Personal Development.- Education and Personal Development: What Do They Mean for Rural Children Left Behind?.- Chapter Summary: Education as a Core Need.- Floating Children and Left-Behind Children as Resilient Agents: A Strength-Based Pathway to Wellbeing.- Revisiting the Notion of Resilience.- Disadvantaged Children, Tenacious Creatures.- Chapter Summary: An Ecological Approach to Resilience Building.- Conclusion: A Call for System-Level Change.- A Recapitulation of What We Have Learned so Far.- Implications for Policy and Practice.- Scholarly Contribution: Rethinking the Deficits through a Strength-Based Perspective.- Final Remarks.- Appendices.- References.- Index.