Cultivating intrinsic eliteness: Why do Chinese parents send their children to Swiss international boarding schools?

• In Event: Transitional and Mobility of Students

Proposal

China is the largest sending country of international students worldwide, but most literature addresses the mainstream practice of pursuing higher education in English-speaking countries (Kang and Abelmann 2011; New Oriental and Kantar 2020) and labels this phenomenon as “middle-class” (Liu 2021; X. Wang 2020; X. Zhou, Li, and Jordan 2019). This study focuses on a rather nascent Early Study Abroad (ESA) practice of Chinese parents sending their children to Swiss international boarding schools. The practice sets itself apart mainly with two aspects: First, Swiss international boarding schools offer pre-college education, which means students who embark on such study abroad journeys are minors. Second, the tuition of these schools stands as high as over 100,000 CHF each year, which means the parents who can afford it are among the economic elites in China (Bertron 2016).

The goal of the study is to understand how elite Chinese parents make sense of their decisions to send their young children to Swiss international boarding schools. To achieve this goal, I interviewed seven Chinese parents whose children are currently studying or have studied in Swiss international boarding schools. I then analyzed the interview data using the push-pull model – which is widely used to understand study abroad motivations primarily from students’ perspectives (Chen 2017; Cheung et al. 2019; S. W. Lee 2017; Li and Bray 2007; Wong, Cheung, and Yuen 2019) – and the Bourdieusian framework of habitus (1977; 1986), social reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990), and distinction (1984).

The study finds that these elite parents are pushed to send their children away by their dissatisfaction with the Chinese education environment and their own inabilities to inculcate a desirable education habitus in their children. They are pulled towards Swiss international boarding schools by a few unique habitus that they believe the “holistic education” of these schools can cultivate in their children. I categorize them as a mode of learning, a way of life, morality, sport-related dispositions (Bourdieu 1984; Shilling 1991; 1992), and cosmopolitanism (Igarashi and Saito 2014; Delval and Bühlmann 2020).

The study then mobilizes the Bourdieusian framework to interpret how the parents distinguish between their choice of Swiss international boarding schools and the mainstream “middle-class” study abroad practice. In doing so, the parents emphasize the time-consuming, costly, and first-hand nature of accumulating the aforementioned habitus in their children. They believe this perceived distinction happens on two levels. On the social level, the parents see their children’s education at Swiss international boarding schools as a competitive advantage in overseas college admissions. On the bodily level, the parents believe Swiss international boarding schools have inculcated in their children embodied schemes of perception and feeling that further differentiate them mentally from their peers studying abroad elsewhere.

The last chapter of the study captures some of the parents’ struggles and concerns as they situate between the Chinese and Swiss education fields with two very different sets of valued habitus. For example, a few of the parents demonstrate quite conflicted attitudes towards academic competition, which they initially identify as an undesirable feature of the Chinese education environment. It seems like despite their dissatisfaction, most parents still care dearly about their children’s academic performance and its institutionalization. Therefore, they struggle with the unquantifiable nature of holistic education at Swiss international boarding schools, while trying to maintain the institutionalized cultural capital highly valued in the Chinese education field.

In conclusion, by spotlighting an elite study abroad practice in Switzerland, this exploratory research demonstrates how the mobilization of international education as a path of social reproduction in China is changing and diversifying. I hope this study will, first of all, add to the scant literature on China’s emerging Early Study Abroad phenomenon. In addition, I hope it can contribute to elite studies in China by better understanding their distinction and social reproduction strategies through their children’s education.

Author

• Mianmian Fei, The Ohio State University-Columbus - Columbus, OH