Panel 59: Natalism and Education in Contemporary China and the Philippines

Chair: Susan Blum, University of Notre Dame

Panelists

Arienne Louise Calingo, University of Notre Dame, “The State of Religious Freedom in Philippine Schools: Assessing Religious Freedom Challenges and Opportunities in the Philippine Education System”

The Philippines is a predominantly Christian country where more than 86 percent of the population is Roman Catholic. While the Philippine Constitution provides for the free exercise of religion and prohibits the establishment of a state religion, various systems of power in the Philippines are still entrenched in Catholic teachings, including education. This paper aims to explore how young Filipino students develop an understanding of religion — particularly knowledge and respect for religious diversity — in a predominantly Catholic Philippines. This paper asserts that both private and public “secular” schools in the country teach through the prism of Christianity, and underscores the need for a “critical analysis of religion” that would encourage young Filipino students to critically examine different beliefs. The paper first addresses why the current education system is attached to Philippine Christian traditions by providing historical context on how the birth of the Philippine Republic and the religious formation attached to Spanish colonial tradition minimized the roles of Islamic and Indigenous education. In addition, this paper calls attention to some strengths and flaws in current policies from the Philippine Department of Education, with a particular focus on the Values Education Program and the Arabic Language and Islamic Values Education Program.

Jingxue Zhang, University of Kentucky, “Strategic Maternities: Reconfiguring the Role of ‘Peidu Mama’ in Transnational Migration”

This article critically examines the experiences of Chinese “peidu mama”—mothers who accompany their children abroad for education—in Thailand and the United States. Through in-depth interviews with 55 women who have relocated with their school-aged children, this study challenges the reductionist narrative that attributes such decisions to maternal duty or as a sacrificial retreat from professional life. Instead, it highlights how pre-migration employment conditions, characterized by greater flexibility in women’s work compared to their male partners, facilitate this gender-specific division of labor. The research argues that this arrangement is both a manifestation and a perpetuation of gendered exploitation within the neoliberal economic framework. Employing feminist political economy theories, the article explores how these flexible working arrangements, though ostensibly beneficial, disproportionately burden women in heterosexual nuclear families, reinforcing traditional gender roles and expectations.

Moreover, this study refutes the simplistic portrayal of these women as mere victims of a gendered exploitation system that both individualizes and professionalizes motherhood. The analysis reveals that “peidu mama” frequently act as the primary architects of their families’ migration strategies, skillfully navigating the intersections of economic opportunity, educational advancement for their children, and family dynamics. This active role challenges traditional perceptions of passivity and highlights their capacity to influence significant life decisions within the constraints imposed by broader socio-economic structures. By orchestrating the migration, these women leverage their familial roles to secure better educational outcomes for their offspring while negotiating their identities and aspirations within and beyond the domestic sphere. Their initiatives often transform these migratory experiences into opportunities for personal growth and social networking, thereby reshaping the narrative around maternal roles in transnational contexts.

Ruonan Wang, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, “From Population Science to Eugenics Knowledge: A Biopolitical Analysis of the One-Child Policy in China”

Initially established in 1979, the One-Child Policy was the most long-lasting and influential population policy in post-socialist China. This paper argues that the One-child Policy was established and enforced by a twofold knowledge system, building on which biopolitical governance of the population was carried out in post-socialist China. On the one hand, was the system of population science, which served for the political legitimacy of birth control. On the other hand, was the system of eugenics knowledge, which served as the scientific rationale for birth control. These two systems worked hand in hand, connecting the reproduction decision made by individual families to the welfare of the whole population and the development of the state, both in the realm of public health and economics. The cooperation of these two systems materialized in the birth control- related certificates because firstly, the knowledge from both systems was disseminated through the certificate-earning procedure; secondly, by earning these birth control-related certificates, individuals actively submitted their reproduction activities to the state’s surveillance and the state were able to adjust its population governance according to such surveillance. This paper will first introduce the reinvention of population science in post-socialist China to illustrate the biopolitical characteristics of its political origins. Then, this paper turns to the application of eugenics knowledge in certificate-earning procedures to show the biopolitical characteristics of its administrative design. Lastly, this paper addresses various issues of the One-Child Policy in local implementations, adding nuances to the biopolitical governance over China’s population.