Rachel Murphy publishes two new papers on children's lives in the summer holidays in Shanghai

Supported by a small grant from the British Academy for co-operation between UK scholars and the Shanghai Academy of Social Science, Rachel Murphy and collaborator Leiping Bao have recently published two co-authored papers from their project on Children’s Lives During the Summer Holidays in Shanghai China:

Murphy, R., & Bao, L. (2026). Spatialized time-marking – children’s travel and outings during the school summer holidays by parents’ class and citizenship status in Shanghai, China. Children’s Geographies

Bao, L., & Murphy, R. (2026). Graduated Involution Under Compressed Modernity: Differences in the Summer Holidays as a Phase in the Public Life‐Course in Shanghai, China. The British Journal of Sociology, 

Using child-centred methodologies, these papers cast new light on how imperatives for productivity and academic performance colonize children’s time-use and their experiences of the summer holidays. The research especially considers the different implications of productivity-oriented time use by the children’s families’ class and internal migration citizenship backgrounds.