The Discursive Construction Of Migrant Children’s Identity In Cities

With the fast development of urbanization in China, more and more rural workers comeinto cities. An immediate consequence of this trend is the sharp increase number of migrantchildren. Therefore, the issues of migrant children have become a rich potential in academia.Previous academic studies examine migrant children’s issues from the perspectives ofeducation, psychology and sociology and other subjects. However, there has been limitedresearch focused on the field of linguistics. The present study is therefore a contribution tofilling this gap through a close look at the discursive construction of migrant children’sidentity. This fieldwork study is carried out in a migrant children’s school in Guangzhou.Based on Bhatia’s multi-perspective model, we study children’s compositions and interviewsto answer the following questions: What are the self-identifications of migrant children? Howare migrant children’s identities discursively constructed? What are the possible solutions forthe possible identity crisis?The procedures of this study can be demonstrated as follows. Firstly, a composition,“Yesterday, Present and Future”, will be assigned to students. In the writings, students arerequired to talk about their feelings to country life, to city life and the expectations to futurelife. Through applying Appraisal theory and Deixis theory, we analyze students’ compositionsto indicate the self-identifications of migrant children. Secondly, personal interviews withstudents are conducted to prove our assumptions of migrant children’s identity in thecompositions and the linguistic strategies are investigated.Among the90participants,21.6%of migrant children think they are “rural people”,13.6%claim that they are “city people”, while38.6%of them regard themselves as “both citypeople and rural people”. Students who are confused about their own identity account for21.6%. Through the analysis of the attitudinal resources and deixis resources in thecompositions, migrant children’s self-identifications have been proved. The present studyshows that migrant children’s self-identifications are various because of their life experienceand some other factors. There also exists a phenomenon of “identity crisis”. In order to solvethis problem, reforms in school education and changes in social policies have to be done,which could help migrant children acquire the access of public schools. It is hoped that the findings of the present study would shed light on our understandingof migrant children’s identity in China.