The influence of the International Baccalaureate (IB) has grown impressively on a global scale. In Latin America, the IB has been mainly introduced in private schools that cater for the most affluent sectors of society and, consequently, has been mostly interpreted as contributing to processes of social reproduction and the widening of…

This paper is a response to a recently published article in this journal entitled 'Precarious privilege: personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers' by Rey, Bolay, and Gez (2020. "Precarious Privilege: Personal Debt, Lifestyle Aspirations and Mobility Among International School Teachers."…

In this paper, we consider educational populism on social media in England and Australia. In both contexts, academics are positioned as a key constituent of an unjust elite with previously voiceless teachers (UK) and students (Australia) framed as the 'just people'. While populism often speaks to nations and nationalism, as 'the people' against an…

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a market leader in international education however, research suggests that it predominantly serves elite populations (Bunnell, T., M. Donnelly, H. Lauder, and S. Whewall. 2020. "International Mindedness as a Platform for Class Solidarity." "Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International…

The study of international student mobilities (ISM) has increased substantially over the last two decades. Following trends in institutional and policy debates on the broader internationalisation of education, researchers have paid considerable attention to questions about why, where, how and under what circumstances people engage in educational…

This study is an attempt at better understanding the education choices of top-performing students in elite schooling. It applies a 'glonacal' framework (Maxwell 2018, "Changing Spaces -- The Reshaping of (Elite) Education Through Internationalisation." In "Elite Education and Internationalization: From the Early Years Into Higher…

This article takes a policy-as-discourse approach to understanding how Chinese policy texts construct international students. This is important given the growth of China as a study destination, and the fact that the majority of the studies on Chinese internationalisation policy are descriptive, and poorly integrated with literature focused on…

Intercultural competence (IC), a desired outcome in many international schools, comprises the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to effectively navigate intercultural situations. However, international schools are often elite institutions catering to affluent expatriates and host country nationals, thus aligning the development of IC to…

For a long time the historical/colonial relations between Brazil and Portugal guaranteed the mobility of Brazilian elite that wanted to obtain a degree mostly from the University of Coimbra. However, only in the twenty-first century the flow of Brazilian students to Portuguese higher education increased, turning it into the largest community of…

Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in the field of international schools, and a concurrent rise in the number of young Anglo-Saxon teachers overseas. Such mobile teaching careers have largely been presented in terms of emphasising exploration, travel and lifestyle-related migration. While acknowledging such factors, we also draw…

Both in academia and in everyday discourse, the belief in the (re)production of national ideology and related civil culture(s) within state schools has remained strong. This idea(l) has also become salient among a growing number of educational specialists, anti-colonial activists and policymakers on Sint Maarten, the Dutch or southern side of the…

Our paper reveals a significant under-reported emergent phenomenon: the graduates of the well-established 'Elite Traditional International Schools' worldwide are beginning to cluster in certain universities, in certain 'global cities'. As one might expect, New York and London are central to this clustering, alongside Boston, Toronto and Vancouver.…

This study explores views on social fragmentation amongst participants from public and private high-achieving high schools in Mexico City. Whilst issues relating to social fragmentation have recently received more attention in Mexico, there is a lack of research in relation to the existing divisions amongst both school types. The paper aims to…

Aaron Koh contributed to a collection of multi-site global ethnographic articles published here (2014, Vol. 12, No. 2) that present class reproduction as operationalised in elite education. While the collection adds to the current international critique of meritocracy, a close look at Koh's contribution reveals that critical ethnography can lose…

Academic labour markets around the world are increasingly globalised and tied to transnational circuits of neoliberal capital. Universities in New Zealand are closely aligned with these trends and an academic labour force has developed over time that reflects these economic flows and currents. This labour force is characterised by an exceptionally…