This chapter draws on Bourdieu’s relational thinking, the concept of space in particular, to examine the positions and dispositions of floating childrenFloating children in the urban space. Analysing a one-mode networkOne-mode network consisting of 45 floating childrenFloating children and urban children in a community school in China, the chapter tests the homophilyHomophily hypothesis that socially similar agents are physically proximate. The results reject the homophilyHomophily hypothesis, revealing that floating childrenFloating children and urban children do not necessarily form within-group friendship. There is no statistical evidence on children grouping with those with the same hukouHukou (household registration) status or similar family affluence; neither do their senses of subjective wellbeing, depression, and physical activeness matter for their groupings; in addition, year of registration in the community school does not have an effect either. Put simply, children in the community school tend to group “randomly” irrespective of their (dis)similar social positions (capitalCapital) and dispositions (habitusHabitus). The chapter calls for collective activism for small-scale but sociologically meaningful change to disrupt the correspondence between the physical and social distance established through what Bourdieu would call the “site effectsSite effect” of the hukouHukou system in China.

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Groupings Between Floating Children and Urban Children: A Bourdieusian Social Network Analysis of Physical and Social Distance in Space

  • Guanglun Michael Mu

摘要

This chapter draws on Bourdieu’s relational thinking, the concept of space in particular, to examine the positions and dispositions of floating childrenFloating children in the urban space. Analysing a one-mode networkOne-mode network consisting of 45 floating childrenFloating children and urban children in a community school in China, the chapter tests the homophilyHomophily hypothesis that socially similar agents are physically proximate. The results reject the homophilyHomophily hypothesis, revealing that floating childrenFloating children and urban children do not necessarily form within-group friendship. There is no statistical evidence on children grouping with those with the same hukouHukou (household registration) status or similar family affluence; neither do their senses of subjective wellbeing, depression, and physical activeness matter for their groupings; in addition, year of registration in the community school does not have an effect either. Put simply, children in the community school tend to group “randomly” irrespective of their (dis)similar social positions (capitalCapital) and dispositions (habitusHabitus). The chapter calls for collective activism for small-scale but sociologically meaningful change to disrupt the correspondence between the physical and social distance established through what Bourdieu would call the “site effectsSite effect” of the hukouHukou system in China.