Based on the wide-ranging liberal reforms introduced in the early 1990s, Sweden has become one of the most prominent realizations of Milton Friedman's proposal for market-based schooling. From 1991 to 2012, the percentage of Swedish ninth-grade students attending independent, voucher-financed, private schools increased from 2.8% to 14.2%. A recent…

This paper aims to explore educational markets literarily -- in situ -- at quite unique 'real' market places, where buyers and sellers of educational commodities meet and negotiate values and preferences. Thus, the place we chose for this study was some of the 'school fairs' held in huge exhibition halls all over Sweden every year. At these fairs…

An exploration is presented of how urban spaces, polarized by class and ethnicity, structure the basic conditions of emerging local school markets. The authors investigate how the distribution of symbolic capital, or "hot knowledge" of the market, affects schools, the market, and the urban spaces themselves. The study is guided by…