Dr. Siqi Tu, 2020-2021

Siqi Tu was a postdoctoral fellow at the MPI MMG and is now at the New York University Shanghai. Her dissertation, “Destination Diploma: How Chinese Upper-Middle Class Families ‘Outsource’ Secondary Education to the United States,” investigates why and how Chinese upper-middle-class families made educational decisions to send their children as young as fourteen to the United States for private high schools. It also documents and analyzes the actual lived experiences of the students who come alone to the United States. It is part of her broader research agenda on how individuals’ identity form and shift and its relevance to global citizenship. At MPI-MMG, she worked on a follow-up project titled "Shifting Ethno-racial Identities Across Borders: A Case of Chinese ‘Parachute Students'” to further examine the shifting ethno-racial identity through the case of Chinese “parachute students” under the increasing tension between China and the United States, and the surge of populist anti-immigrant and anti-globalization sentiments.