“Bright Futures” aims to investigate how students and their families make decisions about migrating for education within China and overseas. We explore two related aspects of this phenomenon: the migration of students from the People's Republic of China to the UK and Germany for higher education, and internal migration for university study within China. The project analyzes why students and their
parents choose certain options for higher education, how their expectations about these choices are formed, and how educational migration shapes their broader life course aspirations and orientations. As well as producing large-scale survey data on Chinese student migrants, we hope our research will be helpful for future students and their parents in understanding more about the context for decision-making on migration for education and provide information that will be useful to institutions in improving the experience of Chinese international students.
“Bright Futures” is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), German Research Foundation (Germany), and the National Natural Science Foundation (China). Our researchers are from the University of Essex (UK), the University of Edinburgh (UK), the National Distance Education University (Spain), Bielefeld University (Germany), and Tsinghua University (China).
