Browsing by Subject "Confucianism"

This thesis examines the current situation of highly educated Chinese people moving to the UK between 2019 and 2023 and analyses the motivations and factors that influence their migration. Using qualitative research methods, the study examines the motivations of Chinese highly educated individuals with a propensity to migrate through interviews. Through the interviews, the paper analyses several factors that influence migration, including migrants' perceptions of themselves, the Chinese social climate, the traditional Chinese family climate, the influence of Covid and factors such as visas and racial discrimination, to obtain their own perceptions of migration. By answering these questions relevant to their settlement, overseas studies and social integration, this thesis will provide a better understanding of some of the key trends in the current immigration flows, especially the growing trend of highly educated Chinese immigrants to the UK.

Confucianism can be considered as the most important ideology in China, because it was China’s official ideology for more than 2000 years. During this period of time it intertwined with China’s culture, and formed its own discourse to the Chinese society. Confucianism is described as a moral and as a society philosophy, which concentrates on a specific type of education and behaviour. Given this, I will analyse from this point of view how Confucian discourse is expressed in Chinese teachers’ discussion on education and their values. Furthermore, I will survey how they see that Confucianism has affected their values. My material consists of four semi structured interviews, all three of them composed of three bigger themes. Every interviewee is a Chinese teacher, who teaches Mandarin Chinese in Finland. My method of analysis is a discourse analysis, which I see appropriate because I am studying how Confucian discourse occurs in the speech of the interviewees. In my conclusions, I will introduce the three most visible main themes of Confucian discourse. The main themes are communality, seeking for harmony, and respecting the elderly because these themes can be pointed out distinctly from the discourse of the interviewees. The way that interviewees tend to use a passive structure or ‘we’ pronoun, indicates how the communality is a major part of their lifestyle. The respect for elder people and the aim to harmony is visible in concrete examples, like how they try to act obediently, and suppress their negative feelings in the conflict situations. Chinese teachers also openly agreed that Confucianism has affected their value system, since the Confucian values are taught at home subconsciously. Moreover, the values are taught at school consciously, for example by reading Confucian texts. All in all, it would be very interesting to do more research on how Confucian values can be detected in China’s education system.