This article examines the relevance of different institutional levels in higher education for the educational strategies of upper milieu students in a case study conducted in Germany. Based on our analysis of 95 qualitative interviews with Masters students from different social backgrounds, we show how upper milieu students take advantage of the…

The goal of this paper is to extend research on parental involvement in education and its relationship to social class and inequalities. We do so by developing a new theoretical framework that helps us to better understand and explain cross-national and cross-cultural differences in how parental involvement in education differs across…

A diverse education market has formed in Kazakhstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Previous studies of educational choice in Central Asia have laid a general foundation, but greater insight into class differences has not been studied in Central Asia. We utilize data collected in 2015 from over 300 households in six cities in Kazakhstan to…

In this paper, I argue a new politics of ordinal differentiation and its instruments for governing education aims to make invisible a 'low intensity civil war' against the labouring classes. It does this through the elevation and ubiquity of actuarial and quantitative measures aimed at producing a new form of differentiated belonging: that of…

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…

Scholars explain low levels of social engagement of disadvantaged students as self-isolation because they are endowed with lower levels of cultural and social capital. It renders a hopeless class reproduction conclusion, and it also reflects an implicit assumption that students engage academically and socially in parallel. To contribute both…

This paper examines whether the implementation of the Bologna bachelor's + master's structure has been followed by an increase of university students from under-represented groups, and whether the Bologna structure has been accompanied by new forms of student mobility between Danish university institutions. Looking at student movements from…

Academisation of schooling in England is a significant development with consequences for the disavowal of the role of community and democracy in education at the local level and wider resonance for geo-policy jurisdictions where neoliberal education reforms play out. This study analyses the operation of power and control of Multi Academy Trust…

This article investigates how social inequality is reproduced through the recontextualization of mathematics pedagogy, using Dowling's social activity method as an analytical framework. The study identifies the selection and transmission of pedagogic messages as a potential pathway. Findings indicate that teachers in upper-stream schools favour…

One of the specificities of French higher education is that there is no single higher education system but two compartmentalised and hierarchical higher education systems comprising (1) universities and (2) "grande école" higher education institutions. Competing for a place in the latter requires that students have succeeded in…

An illuminating look at the emotional costs of mobility faced by first-generation and low-income college students. While college initiates a major transition in all students' lives, low-income and first-generation students attending elite schools are often entering entirely new worlds. Amid the financial and academic challenges of adapting to…

The concerns over school segregation have gained salience in Finland in the last two decades, paralleling the discussions elsewhere in Europe. This article examines from the pupil perspective, how school segregation and school selection are 'lived' in a lower secondary school in the metropolitan area of Helsinki. Using the concept of borderwork, I…

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's analysis of the competition for economic, social and cultural capitals within educational fields, this article reports empirical research from 49 in-depth interviews with graduate students at four elite universities in the USA and the UK. It argues the brands of elite global universities work to reproduce social and…

The term "neijuan" (in English 'involution') has captured feelings of perpetual competition and anxiety among university students in China preparing for their post-graduation careers. In this article, we develop a neo-Weberian reading of "neijuan" to construct a framework using positional conflict theory and the concept of…

Conceptualizing branding as ongoing strategic efforts formulated by transnational English medium instruction EMI)-oriented universities in today's competitive Higher Education (HE) market in order to create uniqueness for their academic programs as branded commodities, this paper (a) examines the forms of branding crafted by universities in the…