This article applies positional conflict theory to investigate how the proliferation of international schools can create a new layer of educational stratification and deepen inequality of opportunity. Data from five international schools in metropolitan centres across southern China were collected through interviews, school visits, and a survey.…

This paper investigates the experiences of Western teacher expatriates in a Shanghai international schooling organization. We explore the risks and benefits associated with transnational mobility and how teacher expatriates, as part of the global middle-class (GMC), maintain and reaffirm their middle-class status. Focusing on adaptation and…

In this paper, I develop the idea of cosmopolitan stances -- one 'intellectual' and the other 'aesthetic' -- to examine conceptions of cosmopolitanism within a range of university strategies. Recent research into cosmopolitanism has adopted a Bourdieusian lens, understanding it as cultural capital, which acts as a locus of stratification in the…

As global neoliberalism continues to take root, States aim to produce linguistically-skilled human capital to gain an advantage within highly-competitive market conditions. With this relationship in view, English language proficiency constitutes a 'rational' educational pathway for national and personal-level success within an outwardly…

This study adds to the emerging body of literature on parental practices and trajectories of globally mobile middle-class families, by focusing on families belonging to diverse religious Jewish communities. Through an interview-based, in-depth analysis of three internationally mobile families representing various Jewish religious factions, we…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of college-age mentors in a school-based mentoring (SBM) program with the aim of understanding mentor perceptions of "power." Design/methodology/approach: Seventeen mentors, comprising both undergraduate (9) and graduate (8) students, participated in this exploratory…

This article examines the educational strategies of Shanghai Chinese middle-class parents who intend to raise their children to be cosmopolitans. It is based on a 2-year interview study of a group of Chinese parents who send their children to accredited international bilingual schools in Shanghai. Drawing on the concept of ordinary…

This paper offers an ethnographic account of how Golden Harvest International School in Bengaluru branded itself as both 'International' and 'Indian', by elaborating discursive practices within the school. Drawing upon scholarship that has sought to delineate the ways in which globally hyper-mobile Indians construct a distinctive cultural…

This article traces the state takeover and neoliberal reconstruction of a mid-size urban school district in the California Bay Area. Aligning with research on social networks in school reform, it identifies three organizational nodes of power operating within the takeover and post-takeover landscape: venture-philanthropic capital, the Teach for…

This study employs the notion of 'flexible citizenship,' to examine how national and transnational forces and discursive logics mediate Chinese international secondary school students' educational routes and life trajectories. It draws upon a larger ethnographic research programme that followed 11 Chinese students in a Canadian international…

This article examines the inter-relationships among citizenship, class and disability through the methodological juxtaposition of critical policy analysis of constructions of disability and an autobiographical sociology of global middle-class parental strategies in school admissions processes in the Middle East. The author advances the theoretical…