Failed Container or Container for Failures? The Stigmatization of Vocational School Students in China

This project examines how stigma surrounding vocational school students in China is produced, circulated, and experienced through everyday social interaction, and how these processes shape young people’s dignity, aspirations, and life chances. Following the 2021 Diversion Policy, half of middle school graduates are routed into vocational tracks widely perceived as markers of academic failure and social inferiority, with significant implications for social mobility and future opportunity. While existing research emphasizes structural marginalization, this study approaches stigma as a semiotic and relational process through which educational inequality becomes morally meaningful and experientially real. Drawing on linguistic anthropology, the research focuses on Clover Youth, a nonprofit organization in Guangdong that supports vocational students. Through participant observation and interviews, the study analyzes how stigma is invoked, reframed, and contested in mentoring sessions and everyday interactions, showing how these encounters shape young people’s sense of worth and capacity to participate meaningfully in social life.