Social Class and Transnational Human Capital

Jürgen Gerhards is Professor of Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin.Silke Hans is Professor of Sociology at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.Sören Carlson is Research Associate at the Department of Sociology at the Europa-Universität Flensburg.

• 1. Prologue 1.1 Setting the Stage: Transnational Human Capital and Social Inequality1.2 Key Terms and Theoretical Framework1.3 The Current State of Research2. Changing Contexts: The Growing Demand for Transnational Human Capital and the Middle and Upper Class Quest for Distinction2.1 The Growing Relevance of Transnational Competences2.2 Transnational Human Capital as a Way of Gaining Distinction2.3 The Increasing Demand for Transnational Competences on the Labor Market3. Social Background Makes All the Difference: Types of Capital, Class Position and Chances for Acquiring Transnational Human Capital3.1 Why Some Students Get the Chance to go Abroad and Others do not3.2 Minor Educational Decisions, Major Consequences: Foreign Language Acquisition in Pre-School Daycare Centers3.3 Mobility Chances in Europe: How Country Characteristics Influence the Acquisition of Transnational Human Capital4. Strategic Investments: Families’ Class Position and Their Educational Practices in Everyday Life4.1 Step by Step: The School Year Abroad as the Result of a Multi-stage (Decision) Process4.2 Three Types of Families: The Transnationally Accomplished, the Excluded and the Ambitious5. The "Brokers": The Formation and Structure of a Social Field of Intermediaries of Transnational Human Capital5.1 Internationalization and the Commodification of Educational Services5.2 The Field of Intermediary Organizations for School Years Abroad6. Does Going Abroad Early on Pay Off? Returns to Transnational Human Capital6.1 Once Mobile, Always Mobile: The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Rise 6.2 The Transformation of Transnational Competences into Other Types of Capital6.3 How Societies Benefit from Transnational Human Capital7. Epilogue Appendix: Data and Methods of Analysis

This is a rigorous and empirically-rich study of the ways in which families go about accumulating transnational human capital – focussing, in particular, on the role of bilingual pre-school education and programmes that allow school children to spend up to a year abroad. It emphasises how access to such schemes is socially-patterned, and thus the important role they play in reproducing social inequalities across society. This is an important book for sociologists of education and others interested in the social impact of initiatives to ‘internationalise’ education.Rachel Brooks, Professor of Sociology, University of Surrey How does social reproduction change in an age of international mobility? Delving into a variety of original sources, Gerhards, Hans and Carlson’s book disentangles the strategies adopted by middle-upper class European families struggling to push their children into the ranks of the winners of globalization. An illuminating read.Ettore Recchi, Sciences Po ParisThis book provides a convincing theoretical and empirical perspective on the generation of inequality of transnational capital over the life course. Globalization has turned transnational human capital into an increasingly important individual resource. Those who speak foreign languages, possess intercultural skills or have acquired experiences abroad clearly have an edge on globalized labor markets today. Using a multimethod approach, the book offers a rich empirical analysis addressing the question of how transnational human capital depends on social class, as well as how this relationship is brought about within families and educational institutions. This is a must-read for everyone interested in emerging new forms of educational inequalities in modern societies.Hans-Peter Blossfeld, European University Institute, Florence Once again, the innovative empiricist, Jürgen Gerhards, leads a pathbreaking project beyond th