ABSTRACT

In this paper the authors study 19 Global Middle Class (GMC) families currently residing in four global cities: Hong Kong; London; Buenos Aires; and Tel Aviv. Through qualitative in-depth interviews, they sought to gather insights about GMC parenting strategies, specifically drawing attention to the decision-making processes of school choice. To facilitate their analysis, they draw on Bourdieu’s theory on types of capital and Ben-Porath’s notion of bounded rationality. From the inductive analysis of their interview data with mobile GMC parents, they identified a subtype of cultural capital they called ‘cosmopolitan start-up capital’. The overall argument in the paper is that the accumulation of cosmopolitan start-up capital is a specific strategy guiding the GMC families’ school choice practices, set within a frame of mobilities. Given the growing number of mobile families who continuously enter and exit local education systems, focusing on this group is pertinent for policy makers and practitioners around the world.

摘要

在本文中，作者研究了目前居住在四个全球城市中的19个全球中产阶级（GMC）家庭。伦敦; 布宜诺斯艾利斯; 和特拉维夫。通过定性的深入访谈，他们寻求收集有关GMC育儿策略的见解，尤其是提请人们注意学校选择的决策过程。为了便于进行分析，他们借鉴了布尔迪厄关于资本类型的理论和本·波拉思关于有限理性的概念。通过对他们与流动GMC父母的访谈数据的归纳分析，他们确定了文化资本的一种亚型，他们称之为“国际初创资本”。本文的总体论点是，国际化的启动资金的积累是在机动性框架内制定的一种指导GMC家庭选择学校的特殊策略。