Cosmopolitan Dreams or Golden Parachutes? Reproduction Strategies in the Global Field of Education

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 20. Cosmopolitan migration

Abstract

As sociology begins to take seriously the interstitial social worlds which exist between those of conventional national environments, it is clear that much of our fundamental theories must be revised in order to fully understand this new realm. Bourdieusian theory and it’s core concepts of habitus, fields and capital implicate the state as the very core of his ‘system of reproduction’, but it is unclear how this theoretical vision can be adapted to understand the millions of students from the Global South obtaining an education in Global North countries. In broader culture, international students have been described in a variety of ways, ranging from worldly cosmopolitan elites to rich failures with the means to buy their way into foreign universities, both of which represent two very different strategies of reproduction with different implications for the global field of education. This study features interviews with 50 Chinese parents navigating the switch between the domestic and international education tracks, interrogating their social backgrounds as well as their motivations and strategies in this transition. I uncover two broad types of parents which I label ‘Proactively Global’ and ‘Reactively Global’; the former describing a highly-intentional and well-planned transition which is rooted in cosmopolitan ambitions and modern parenting styles while the latter describes a last-ditch attempt to avoid perceived downward mobility within the Chinese education system. In doing so, I describe two distinct reproduction strategies anchored in two different habitus and forms of capital, highlighting the distinct value of cosmopolitan forms of social/cultural/symbolic capital in the global field as well as the devaluation of state-centric forms of capital. This study is among the first to attempt to address the global field of education from the standpoint of social mobility, and has major implications for the role of globalization in social inequality and meritocracy.

Author

• Conor McCutcheon, New York University