“You do not dare to offend either side”: What social studies can learn from Chinese migrant youths’ practices of critical neutrality

Guided by transnational citizenship, this interpretative phenomenological study draws on 26 interviews with 12 youths who migrated from China to the United States to examine how they negotiated civic identities in their social studies education and amid the U.S.–China geopolitical tension. Participants explained that social studies education supported their historical knowledge and source analysis skills. However, they also critiqued social studies education by applying source analysis skills to interpret social media posts while drawing on transnational knowledge to question curricular narratives. Across these in-school and out-of-school contexts, these youths navigated competing nationalisms through “critical neutrality,” a situated form of strategic nonalignment through which they rejected demands to align uncritically with either nationalistic narrative while remaining attentive to the power, exclusions, distortions, and consequences associated with both. Some participants enacted critical neutrality through active civic engagement while others chose strategic disengagement. Participants also advanced people-centered narratives that challenged state-centered framings. This study argues that social studies educators and researchers should attend to competing nationalisms when interpreting migrant youths’ civic identities, create opportunities for students to interrogate competing nationalisms, and recognize critically informed nonalignment as a legitimate civic stance under conditions of geopolitical polarization.