Transnational Investments in Informational Capital
- 1 March 2009
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Acta Sociologica
- Vol. 52 (1), 5-23
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0001699308100631
Abstract
In this article, I analyse the acquisition of informational capital, i.e. academic capital, measured as student mobility and understood as transnational investments in prestigious foreign educational institutions. In the 1990s, educational `zones of prestige' were the United States, the United Kingdom and, to some extent, Germany and France. Official statistics from Sweden, Denmark and France regarding the outflow of students reflect increasing student mobility. In particular, the study reveals that students from the upper and upper-middle social classes (measured by parental occupation) are more likely than students from other social classes to pursue transnational investments, even though students from the middle and working classes have now entered the arena. This has also been found in a recent analysis of Danish academic emigrants. All in all, studies confirm the hypothesis that students from the upper classes are more likely than others to invest in specific informational capital in the field of education, in national environments and in international settings.Keywords
This publication has 32 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges. By Joseph A. Soares. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007. Pp. xii+238. $19.95 (paper).American Journal of Sociology, 2008
- Cosmopolitan and Established Resources of Power in the Education ArenaInternational Sociology, 2007
- Games without Frontiers? Questioning the Transnational Social Power of Migrants in EuropeEuropean Journal of Sociology, 2003
- Norwegian Students Abroad: Experiences of students from a linguistically and geographically peripheral European countryStudies in Higher Education, 2003
- Emigration from the Scandinavian welfare statesPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,2003
- Who Goes to Graduate School? Social and Academic Correlates of Educational Continuation after CollegeSociology of Education, 2003
- Civilizations as Zones of Prestige and Social ContactInternational Sociology, 2001
- Class-Specific Habitus and the Social Reproduction of the Business Elite in Germany and FranceSociological Review, 2000
- Life Cycle Schooling and Dynamic Selection Bias: Models and Evidence for Five Cohorts of American MalesJournal of Political Economy, 1998
- Educational Credentials and Promotion Chances in Japanese and American OrganizationsAmerican Sociological Review, 1997