Infracciones Tributarias

Socialization is particularly important for children. Socializing means “coming into contact with others and exchanging everyday small talk” (Enli & Thumim, 2012, p. 2). According to Qvortrup (cited in Adler & Adler, 1998), school is one of the main institutions in shaping childhood, where children socialize to society. Therefore, classmates in school are the main sources for children to socialize to society. In this section, I will discuss how migrant children socialize with others in school or after school under the cultural diversity.

7.2.1 Friends and friendships

Friends and friendships play a very important role in the life of children. Children learn to interact with friends in a healthy, positive and productive manner. Corsaro (1985) discussed that children improve their social skills by regular playing with their friends, while Gaskins (2006) argued that friendships are a culturally specific form of providing children with close daily social interaction with other children. For migrant children, peer relations are significant aspects of their social inclusion. My empirical data shows that most migrant children considered that friends are important in constructing their school experience in their new urban environment, as illustrated by these quotes, expressing their view on the importance of friends and friendships.

“I have four friends at school. We like to sit on that bench. [She uses her finger to point

the bench which is not far from us]. They are all my best friends. We play together all the

time…I feel alone if I do not have someone to play with.

(Si, migrant girl, age 9)

“I like all my friends very much. Last time, I lost the key to my home. One of my friends helped me find it at the playground”.

92 (Xiaoyu, migrant boy, age 10)

Some migrant children mentioned that having friends makes them happy and comfortable.

“Bo is my friend, and my best friend. She is from the same village I come from. My mum also knew her mum. At school, we often play together. It is sad that she did not come to school today. I hope she will come tomorrow [she shows a cheerful and happy face]”.

(Huizi, migrant girl, age 8)

The excerpts indicate that friends and friendship are important for the migrant children. After migrant children come to the urban city, everything is unfamiliar to them: new school, new classmates, new rules and even new socio-spatial environment. Friendships make them feel less lonely in the new environment since they have someone to play with and be with. They spend time together, share ideas and have fun with their friends. They also seek help or comfort from their friends. Thus, friendships make their lives more interesting and make them more comfortable in the new environment. They enjoy having friends and friendships have become part of their school lives. Therefore, friendships are the most important social relationships for them and they plays important role in the healthy development of migrant children in the new community.

7.2.2 The development of we-ness through activities

Many studies have shown that migrant children in urban China are discriminated by the people in the cities. For example, Feng argued (2007) that when living in an urban society with a rural identity, migrant people are at high risk of being set apart from urban people. Because of their rural lifestyles, rural accents and different kinds of values, migrant people often suffer various forms of discrimination from other groups in the cities. “It is not uncommon for migrants to experience unpleasant social encounters such as verbal disrespect, deliberate avoidance or being looked down upon by the urban residents” (Guo, cited in Wong et al., 2007). However, from interviews and participation observation, I did not find that my local participants were discriminating their migrant peers. Local children talked to migrant children in the same way that they talked to other local children. Moreover, they expressed the same feeling to migrant children that they had to local children. It might be that migrant children are less discriminated because of the positive changes in the Chinese government policies and schools’ attitudes

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towards educating migrant children. Probably of particular importance is it that migrant children are now integrated with local children in the same classes. When asked who they liked to play with, migrant children or local children, most of the children indicated that they liked to play with both. However, when asked who they often played with, most local children named other local children, as for instance in the case of Hui:

“I like playing with both of migrant children and local children, but I play badminton with Jun [local boy] a lot since we go to badminton training class every Wednesday together”.

(Hui, local boy, age 10)

From participation observation, I noticed that during break time most migrant boys played self- made paper cards. They spontaneously divided into a few groups and tried to defeat the opponents. When they found they could not win in their group, they changed to play with others. Almost all the migrant boys had many paper cards in their pockets. Some migrant girls joined them as well while others stood next to them watching. Local children did seldom participate, but rather participated in other activities. The older local children usually played basketball. Four of my local participates often played badminton together. Some played skipping rope. Some boys talked about an action movie that they had watched a couple of days before (China was showing the movie Transformers 4 at that time), and pretended to be the movie characters. Although the children stated that they had no preferences in regards to whom to play with, I noticed that migrant children and local children did not play with each other. While observing, I asked local children why they did not play paper cards, Yulin (local boy, age 9) responded:

“I do not like it. It is not an interesting game. I do not want to play it every day like them. I think it is boring to play it”.

When I asked migrant children why they did not join in the activities, such as basketball or rope skipping, Peng (migrant boy, age 13) told me that:

“They can do it very well [he turns around and watches the children playing basketball]… I tried it before but I do not know how to play, I mean I can play but I am not very good at that”.

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Friends play an important role in the successful integration of migrant children to a new environment. Based on my observation, local children and migrant children “naturally” separated at break time, having parallel play at school. Several factors influenced the choice of children of whom to play with. Personal skills are important, as seen in the case of Peng who felt that he did not master basketball very well. The children want to participate in activities they are familiar with and feel that they master. Thus the skills of playing different games help establish and maintain friendships. As already mentioned, all local children participated in various organized extra-curricular activities after school, such as Taekwondo, basketball, football, piano, flute and ballet dance. From my empirical data, more than half of the local participants joined in more than two after-school activities. However, as also mentioned above, migrant families could not afford such activities. Thus, their children did not have the chance to learn how to play piano or basketball as the urban children did. Except for one migrant girl who did traditional Chinese dance, none of migrant children participated in this kind of after-school programs. Therefore, migrant children did not have the skills to play with local children. Moreover, local children joined in different non-organized activities after school as well. For example, they watched movies or visited airplane museums while the school was organizing airplane model contest. Local children shared similar topics or ideas so that they had something to talk about. Migrant children did not participate in these activities. Gradually local children formed their own peer group based on interests. Lacking these skills and socio-cultural references, it became hard for migrant children to integrate and build relations with local children. Rather, they preferred socializing with other migrant children with whom they often shared skills and socio-cultural references.

In the context of this study, migrant children constantly constructed their social relationships at school in their own way. They did not have fixed friends to play with all the time and they changed based on different conditions. However, migrant children often spontaneously played hand-made paper card together which was cheap and required other skills to play, often achieved when they resided in the rural areas, which can be explained by the sameness discussed by Nilsen (2005), introducing the concept “we-ness”. Migrant children shared the similar knowledge, interests, family financial condition and backgrounds. It was easy for them to get along with each other and gradually they built up more fun and understanding. Some migrant

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children even showed a degree of a common understanding and solidarity among them. Thus, migrant children established social relationship by constructing a sense of we-ness.