Bringing a “schooling course” to the geographies of education: a rhythmanalysis of residential (im)mobility during children’s schooling in China

Parents are commonly incentivized to move to access better schools, but these moves are typically taken as one-time events. This study theorizes such education-led residential (im)mobilities as a long-term “course”—a continuous and rhythmic trajectory spanning the schooling period and beyond. Drawing on the literature on geographies of education, mobilities, and rhythmanalysis, we investigate how middle-class social reproduction is implicated in the rhythmic residential mobility and immobility trajectory spanning the schooling period, or schooling course, and how such trajectories intersect with linked lives, gendered/classed power geometries and urban (re)development. Based on forty-five in-depth interviews with varying stakeholders in Guangzhou, China, we show that successful cultural reproduction is achieved through a specific rhythmic residential pattern: moving to housing in a good school district before primary school and maintaining undisrupted residential immobility until junior high school ends. Residential immobility ensures stable learning environments and is strategically and proactively maintained. Women tend to sacrifice their careers to synchronize the everyday polyrhythmia within the household. Local people, often homeowners with rich local knowledge, are at ease and flexible in assembling the schooling course. The new locals and nonlocals, as “rhythmic aliens,” strategize housing-cum-schooling choices intensively but are susceptible to disruptions and inconsistencies. Educational restructuring renders the suburbs ideal for creating such school-driven residential eurhythm and balancing the manifold polyrhythms. Such education-led im/mobilities are essentially state-orchestrated to leverage suburban development. This study enriches the geographies of education by unpacking the rhythmic intricacies of residential im/mobilities throughout the schooling course and education’s roles in urban (re)development through rhythm (re)setting.