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-- CALL FOR PAPERS --
American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting
New Orleans, Louisiana, April 10-14, 2018


EDUCATION-LED GENTRIFICATION IN GLOBAL CONTEXT

https://aag.secure-abstracts.com/AAG%20Annual%20Meeting%
202018/sessions-gallery/318

The links between systems of education acting as a trigger for sociospatial
change and displacement have a rich heritage in urban gentrification
scholarship (e.g. DeSena, 2006; Gulson, 2009; Lipman, 2012). Ley’s (1996)
landmark studies, for example, expose the influence of increasing
participation in higher education of the baby boom generation, and their
expressions of cultural capital in the pioneering phases of gentrification.
Likewise, Butler and Hamnett (1994) argue in their gender and social class
reading of gentrification that the processes of change are propelled by
increasing levels of well-educated, young professional females in the
labour market, giving rise to distinct city housing predilections and the
postponement of marriage and family forming.

As a gamut of education systems, at different levels of delivery from
nursery/creche to university, have been transformed by neoliberal
tendencies across the globe (Shore, 2010), it can be argued that the
linkages between education and gentrification have deepened. Exemplars here
include processes of jiaoyufication in the Chinese context (see Wu et al.,
2016a), fuelled by middle class strategies to claim educational advantages
for their offspring. This hinges on the acquisition of properties within
urban catchment areas of prestigious primary and secondary schools, and
enlarges the educational stratification in marketed process of education in
post-reform era. When jiaoyufiers move into these inner city areas, they
not only displace the lower class, but also narrow or block the
displacement’s opportunity of culture capital accumulation for upward
intergeneration social mobility (see also Butler and Robson, 2003; Smith
and Jons, 2015).

Similar effects of displacement, social class power in the housing market,
and neighbourhood transformation are manifest in university towns and
cities across the globe, where the high demand from university students to
cluster within areas in relative close proximity to campuses has given rise
to studentification (Smith, 2001). Both Hubbard (2009) and Chatterton
(2009) contend that students in these contexts act as a form of gentrifier,
and Smith and Holt (2007) describe students as ‘apprentice gentrifiers’ in
their consumption of housing in multiple occupation. These processes are
not specific to the UK, and are evidenced in diverse contexts across the
globe such as China (He, 2015) and Israel (Baron and Diamant, 2016).

Similarly, parts of some global cities are being reshaped by affluent
immigrants into universities, middle school, or even in kindergarten
(Liu-Farrer, 2016). For instance, some education-led migrant households
from eastern Asia have moved into reputed school catchments, and a large
number of international students have crowded into university towns in
European and North America cities. These migrant groups have replaced the
local pro-family life middle class neighborhoods creating internationalized
jiaoyufication or international student communities. Certainly, these
immigrant-led processes of jiaoyufication and studentification not only
cause the educational stratification between local citizens of domestic
society and the new “global” class, but also have disrupted local real
estate markets, and even led to racial conflicts and social tensions where
they move in (Kinton et al.,2016). More recently, education-led gated
communities (edu-led GCs), which bundles high quality education resources
with high-end housing as a marketing strategy, has emerged in China and
attracted a large volume of middle class households. One distinct feature
of edu-led GCs lies in the strategy of purposively turning education into a
semi-club good packaged with other tailor-made services and high-quality
housing, which enable China’s nouveau riche constructing and reproducing
their middle-class identity. Encapsulating a number of important urban and
social issues such as the privatization of basic public goods, middle class
social reproduction and social exclusion, this unique form of enclosed
residential development has reshaped the residential and education
landscapes in Chinese cities and poses a series of new questions to the
international debates on gated communities and education-led gentrification
(He et al., 2017).

This call for paper at AAG and proposal of Special Issue will shed light on
the interactive relationships between educational stratification,
immigrant, jiaoyufication and studentification in a global context. One aim
of the call for paper is to provide a fuller understanding of the impact of
educational immigrants on conventional gentrification, and its extension in
jiaoyufication and studentification (Sage et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2016a;
He, 2015). We welcome submissions that explore the determinants and
consequences of educational immigrants on local communities of these global
cities and the comparison of education-led gentrification between local and
global, e.g. the studentification of provincial cities and global
metropolis. We especially welcome contributions that have access to
examples of social displacement and housing affordability issues through
perspectives of place (re)production and class (re)make (Wu et al., in
press). We are particularly interested in empirical research, but would
also welcome rigorous theoretical and conceptual contributions to both
shifts in local communities and real estate market in global North (e.g
European, North America, Australia and New Zealand etc.) and global South.
Finally, while most research tends to focus on contemporary issues, we are
open to historical analyses, especially if they shed light on contemporary
discussions and debates.

Chair and Organizers:

Prof.Dr.Qiyan Wu
Public Policy and Administration School,
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
Urban Studies Program,
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Email: [log in to unmask]

Prof.Dr.Darren Smith
Geography School,
Loughborough University, UK
Email: [log in to unmask]

Prof.Dr.Shenjing He
Department of Urban Planning and Design,
The University of Hong Kong.
Email: [log in to unmask]

References:
He, S. (2015). Consuming urban living in ‘villages in the city’:
Studentification in Guangzhou, China. Urban Studies, 52(15), 2849-2873.
He S. Webster, C. Z. Zhan, 2017, Education-led Gated Communities in Chinese
Cities: Capitalization of Education, Middle-class Social Reproduction and
Socio-spatial Segregation, research proposal submitted to RGC, Hong Kong.
Kinton, C., Smith, D. P., & Harrison, J. (2016). De-studentification:
emptying housing and neighbourhoods of student populations. Environment and
Planning A, 48(8), 1617-1635.
Liu-Farrer, G. (2016). Migration as Class-based Consumption: The Emigration
of the Rich in Contemporary China. The China Quarterly, 226, 499-518;
Sage, J., Smith, D., & Hubbard, P. (2012). The diverse geographies of
studentification: living alongside people not like us. Housing Studies,
27(8), 1057-1078;
Wu, Q., Edensor, T., and Cheng J.(forthcoming) Beyond of Space: Space
(Re)production and Middle Class Remaking Driven by Jiaoyufication in
Nanjing, China. International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies;
Wu, Q., Zhang, X., and Waley, P.(2016a)Jiaoyufication: When gentrification
goes to school in the Chinese inner city. Urban Studies 53(12): 3510-3526;
Wu, Q., Zhang, X., and Waley, P.(2016b)When Neil Smith Met Pierre Bourdieu
in Nanjing, China: Bringing Cultural Capital into Rent Gap Theory. Housing
Studies, 32, 659-677.


Interested applicants should send abstracts (max. 250 words) to Qiyan Wu (
[log in to unmask]), Darren Smith([log in to unmask])  or
Shenjing He([log in to unmask]) by  Nov 10th. Please send your registration PIN
along or make sure you can get it within a few days after the deadline.