The Time Inheritors

Reviews / Votes

"...Cora's book offers fresh insights and holds considerable promise for advancing research into the lived experiences of Chinese international students in New Zealand. However, its significance reaches beyond the national context. By introducing this eye-opening work, I invite scholars from across the globe-particularly those engaged in the sociology of education and migration studies-to join the dialogue and critically examine the dynamics of educational mobility through a temporal lens." - Le Cui, New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies

"...The Time Inheritors is a landmark contribution to education, sociology and contemporary Chinese studies. It offers a fresh conceptual vocabulary, a deeply humanistic methodology, and a framework that bridges micro-level narratives with macro-level structures. Xu challenges readers across the globe to reconsider what is truly inherited across generations, and what that means for equity in education." - British Journal of Educational Studies

"The Time Inheritors is a conceptually comprehensive book that uses education as an empirical point to explore how temporal inequality underpins broader patterns of social inequality ... Xu's framework sheds light on how advantage and disadvantage unfold across generations, offering insights into the complexities of inequality in both local and global contexts." - The China Quarterly

"The Time Inheritors is an ambitious book, which is of interest to those in many fields, given the multidisciplinary nature of the work. Crossing cultural studies, China studies, sociology of education, higher education, and educational mobilities within one volume is a challenging feat, but the author connects these different viewpoints and theoretical framings effectively. For those who are interested in understanding issues of inequality in higher education, and more specifically, the Chinese context, this is an essential read." - Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies

"This book offers not only a compelling theoretical contribution but also a deeply nuanced portrayal of how time shapes educational trajectories and life chances across generations and borders ... Grounded in rich empirical data and theoretical depth, the book invites Canadian readers to develop a comparative perspective on the structural forces that shape time-induced inequalities across generations. The Time Inheritors is also an essential resource for those working in Canadian higher education, especially in understanding the educational mobility of international and migrant students, including, but not limited to those from China." - Canadian Journal of Education

"Xu's conceptually sophisticated monograph reveals how intersectional inequalities are constructed, experienced, and transmitted temporally, with special reference to education. Through the vivid stories of students in mainland China and Hong Kong, and Chinese international students, Xu brings to life different individuals' 'time inheritances,' demonstrating the exciting possibilities time offers as a lens for innovative thinking about inequality. A must-read for sociologists and anthropologists of education, China, and time." - Rachel Murphy, author of The Children of China's Great Migration

"Innovative and ambitious, The Time Inheritors proposes a time-centric framework that brings together analyses of social structure, history, individual behavior, and affect. We often feel we are fighting for time. But, as Cora Xu argues in this important study of Chinese students, the scarcity of time is not a given or universal. Different experiences of time result in part from the varying amounts of time we inherit from the previous generation. Time inheritance is therefore critical to the reproduction of social inequality." - Biao Xiang, coauthor of Self as Method: Thinking through China and the World

"Cora Lingling Xu offers a groundbreaking analysis of educational inequality and social mobility in contemporary China. Xu centers the voices of marginalized students throughout, providing poignant insights into their lived experiences of rural poverty, urban precarity, and educational alienation. At the same time, Xu's comparative scope reveals how even seemingly privileged groups can be constrained by the temporal logics of social reproduction. The Time Inheritors is a must-read for scholars, educators, and policymakers concerned with educational equity and social justice. Xu's lucid prose and engaging case studies make the book accessible to a wide audience while her cutting-edge theoretical framework and methodological rigor set a new standard for research on education and inequality." - Chris R. Glass, coeditor of Critical Perspectives on Equity and Social Mobility in Study Abroad: Interrogating Issues of Unequal Access and Outcomes

"By centering the temporal dimension of who is advantaged or disadvantaged, how, why, and with what consequences, The Time Inheritors takes a unique and powerful approach. Not only does the book contribute theoretically and empirically to our understanding of class inequalities but it also resonates deeply. The inclusion of Chinese translations and characters will give Chinese readers a rich, nuanced cultural appreciation of her findings." - Dan Cui, author of Identity and Belonging among Chinese Canadian Youth: Racialized Habitus in School, Family, and Media

"An extremely well-written, theoretically informed, and compelling volume that represents a major contribution to the study of education, migration, and social inequality in China and beyond. The Time Inheritors proposes a bold and innovative framework-that of time inheritance-to open the black box of social inequality's temporal dimension. Whereas the relatively privileged classes inherit temporal wealth and strategies that enable them to bank and save time, facilitating their mobility, the time poor lack this inheritance, forcing them into a vicious cycle of wasting time and paying back temporal debts. Drawing from a rich palette of vivid and intimate longitudinal case studies, The Time Inheritors unpacks the complex intersections between familial, national, and global time inequalities." - Zachary M. Howlett, author of Meritocracy and Its Discontents: Anxiety and the National College Entrance Exam in China