Follow up: Understanding the Migrant Parents' Participation in Home-School Collaboration

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at S Primary School in Y County—one of Z Province's top 100 industrial counties—this study examines the practical logic through which migrant parents engage in home–school collaboration (HSC hereafter). Findings show three distinct stages of interaction. In the pre-interaction stage, parents' rural upbringing, migrant work trajectories, and everyday childrearing practices foster a strong orientation of trust toward public schools and teachers. In the stage of institutional interaction, parents tend to comply with school rules rather than challenge them. They seek to embed themselves in school life through strategies such as physical presence and meaning-oriented engagement. In informal interactions, parents' sincerity and willingness to share personal experiences elicit teachers' empathy and reinforce their sense of professional duty. These dynamics jointly contribute to the formation of high-quality home–school relationships. The study advances the interpretive concept of "follow up" to illuminate how socioeconomically disadvantaged families, despite limited resources, actively align themselves with school expectations. This concept underscores both parents' proactive agency and the generative mechanisms of educational power that emerge from the lower end of the social hierarchy." The study concludes by calling for greater recognition of migrant parents' participatory potentials and for strengthening home–school collaboration as a mechanism of empowerment for migrant families.