This essay examines the evolution of policies and the burgeoning literature on the education of children from rural migrant families in urban China in the post-reform era since the 1980s. It is found that at the policy level, there has been a shift towards expanding migrant children’s access to public education (particularly during the Compulsory Education stage) by the central government, which has been implemented to varying degrees by local governments. In practice, empirical evidence suggests that school segregation remains but evolves into new and more nuanced forms, which has profound implications for migrant children’s educational experiences and trajectories. A growing body of research challenges the prevailing discourse of migrant children’s underachievement, bringing the children’s own agency and subjectivities and their families’ resilience into the picture. The essay concludes by situating the education of China’s migrant children within broader debates on segregation, exclusion, and social inequality, and briefly discusses the policy implications derived from this analysis.