Z Erziehungswiss (2014) (Suppl) 17:81–93

DOI 10.1007/s11618-014-0523-4

The global middle class and school choice:

a cosmopolitan sociology

Stephen J. Ball · Dimitra Pavlina Nikita

Abstract: In this paper we suggest the need for research which addresses school choice as a
global phenomenon. That is, a form of choice which extends beyond local politics and policy-
making. We consider here the educational choices and choice making contexts of a burgeoning,
mobile, post-national middle class who operate on a global scale. We also sketch the educational
market within which these choices are considered and realised but the main focus is on demand
side issues. The paper seeks to open a space for further research, in which to ask some old and
some new questions about social class and social reproduction through schooling, and to make
the case for choice researchers to attend more carefully to choice in a framework of mobility,
globalisation and related new kinds of social class identities and interests.

Keywords: Social class · Globalisation · School choice · International schools

Die globale Mittelschicht und Schulwahl: eine kosmopolitische Soziologie

Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel zeigt die Notwendigkeit auf, die Schulwahl als globales Phä-
nomen zu erforschen. Hierbei handelt es sich um eine Wahlmöglichkeit jenseits von Lokalpolitik
und lokalen Entscheidungsprozessen. Betrachtet werden somit die Bildungsentscheidungen und
Entscheidungskontexte einer aufkeimenden mobilen, postnationalen Mittelschicht, welche anhand
von globalen Maßstäben handelt. Weiterhin wird der Bildungsmarkt, auf welchem diese Entschei-
dungen erwogen und getroffen werden, skizziert, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf der Nachfrageseite
liegt. Ein Anliegen des Artikels ist es, Raum für weitere Forschungen zu eröffnen, wobei einige
alte und auch neue Fragen zur sozialen Schichtung und zur sozialen Reproduktion durch Schulbil-
dung zu stellen wären. Zudem sollen Wissenschaftler, die sich mit Schulwahl beschäftigen, dazu
angeregt werden, sich mit dieser noch mehr in einem Bezugssystem von Mobilität, Globalisierung
und den zugehörigen neuen Arten von sozialen Gruppenidentitäten und interessen zu befassen.

Schlüsselwörter: Soziale Schichten · Globalisierung · Schulwahl · Internationale Schulen

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2014

Prof. Dr. S. J. Ball () · D. P. Nikita
Humanities and Social Science, Institute of Education, University of London,
20 Bedford Way,
London WC1H 0AL, UK
e-mail: S.Ball@ioe.ac.uk
82 S. J. Ball and D. P. Nikita

1 Introduction

School choice is now a global phenomenon. Countries around the world with diverse
cultural and political histories, with encouragement from policy entrepreneurs and mul-
tilateral agencies, are introducing the possibilities of choice, in different forms, into their
school systems. Choice as an organising principle for school access and a parental ‘right’
is difficult to oppose and difficult unpick once in place. Even national systems which do
not formally offer choice to parents have flourishing grey markets within which the inter-
ests of aspiring choosers converge with those of certain sorts of providers—old and new
(cf. e.g. Van Zanten 2003). Indeed, as regards the US, Orfield and Frankenberg (2013,
p. 37) suggest that: ‘School choice has become so important in American educational
policy discussions because it resonates with the basic beliefs of many Americans and
with important aspects of American social and political ideology’. However, as Orfield
and Frankenberg (2013, p. 255) go on to say ‘Choice sounds good but can mean a myriad
of different things’, they contrast a form of choice based on ‘integration theory’, which
was intended to reduce social segregation, with what they suggest is now the dominant
form, based on ‘market theory’, which as a large body of research demonstrates, increases
social segregation. They go on to argue that the challenge for policy makers is ‘to create
conditions under which wise choices can be made, and to provide educational opportuni-
ties that are truly worth choosing’ (ebd., p. 255). The question is whether those two goals
are in practice compatible.
In this paper we suggest the need for research which addresses school choice as a
global phenomenon in a different sense. That is, a form of choice which extends beyond
the niceties of local politics and policymaking. We begin to consider here the educa-
tional choices and choice making contexts of a burgeoning, mobile, post-national middle
class who operate on a global scale, or perhaps more precisely, who act locally and think
globally. We also sketch, very superficially, the educational market within which these
choices are considered and realised but the main focus is on demand side issues. The
paper seeks to open a space for further research, in which to ask some old and some new
questions about social class and social reproduction through schooling, and to make the
case for choice researchers to attend more carefully to choice in a framework of mobility,
globalisation and related new kinds of social class identities and interests. This is clearly
set within a western tradition of class research and the paper self-consciously extends
that tradition into the global. Nonetheless, we recognise the need to think at some point
about the relation between the Western and other versions of being middle class that come
together in various globalising spaces.

2 Globalisation and neoliberalism: education as a market place?

In many settings around the world the processes of globalisation and neoliberalism have
already transformed education into a market form that follows, more or less roughly, the
rules of ‘supply and demand’, and ascribes new identities to the engaged subjects. On
the supply side this means schools acting like businesses and being business-like. On the
The global middle class and school choice: a cosmopolitan sociology 83

demand side it means parents and students acting as consumers optimizing their social
and labour market opportunities. As Bernstein puts it (2000, p. 87):
The principles of the market and its managers are more and more the managers of
the policy and practices of education. Market relevance is becoming the key ori-
entating criterion for the selection of discourses, their relation to each other, their
forms and their research. This movement has profound implications from the pri-
mary school to the university.
In this nexus of competition and choice education is increasingly commodified and posi-
tioned as a private good directly related to social and economic advantage, and disad-
vantage. Furthermore, in choice systems advantage-seeking parents are able to use their
relevant capitals to negotiate diverse forms of provision and fuzzy rules of access. In this
sense school choice may be considered as a class strategy, a mechanism for reproducing
social advantage, a means of ‘doing’ class (cf. Ball 2003) in a very practical way. As Con-
nell (1983, p. 148) puts it ‘real world classes are constantly being constructed around us
…’ and school choice is one contributor to this process of construction. However, cultural
and social reproduction strategies and the construction of social classes are no longer lim-
ited to action within nation states but for some families are now operating across national
borders in new globalizing microspaces (cf. Wagner 2007), that is ‘social inequality also
reaches beyond the boundaries of nation states’ (cf. Kreckel 2006, p. 6).
Arguably, we know more about school choice from educational research than almost
any other contemporary topic. There are now many thousands of school choice stud-
ies. Google Scholar has 3,110,000 results for “school choice”, ERIC has 17,558 papers
available on “school choice”. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of these research
studies are local or single country focused—they suffer from what Beck (2007) calls
‘Methodological nationalism’. The locality or the nation state is taken to be the only
appropriate frame of analysis within which to explore educational choice-making. While
we do not want to deny the primary importance of the “national” as a site of choice and
agree with Sassen (2009, p. 116) that ‘it’s really about digging inside the national, inside
the local, in order to add to our understanding of globalization’, our main interest in this
paper is to lay out the basis for a different frame for the analysis of school choice—one
that is international and global. Specifically, we discuss school choice from the perspec-
tive of one very particular social class group, the global middle class. Furthermore, we
consider their choice making within and in relation to a concomitant and more general
process of the internationalisation of education.
There is a set of existing studies of education choice on a global scale, but these have
been directed to choice and student movement at the level of Higher Education (HE). It
is worth giving some attention to this. For a small but significant and rapidly increasing
number of HE students choice of institution is now set within a context of cross national
comparisons between universities and in relation to the opportunity of study abroad. In
2010, the international student population reached nearly 3.6 million worldwide, accord-
ing to UNESCO data released in 2012, soaring by almost 50 % over the past six years
(2.5 million in 2004). Thus, the number of students enrolled in tertiary education outside
their country of citizenship has increased more than threefold, from 1.3 million in 1990
to nearly 4.3 million in 2011, representing an average annual growth rate of almost 6 %.
84 S. J. Ball and D. P. Nikita

The largest numbers of international students are from China, India and Korea. Asian
students account for 53 % of all students studying abroad worldwide. The Asian group
is followed by Europeans (23 %), particularly citizens from European Union (EU), stu-
dents from Africa account for 12 % of all international students, while those from the rest
of the world account for only 12 %. Competition between institutions and countries for
international students is becoming more intense and complex, as reflected by the dimin-
ishing global market share of the four key players—the U.S., the United Kingdom (UK),
Australia, and Canada. In the UK, home students make up less than half those following
postgraduate degrees in science subjects. We have no comparable data related to school
choice, and clearly the numbers of school students educated outside their home country is
much smaller than those in HE, but perhaps as many as 3–4 million. However, it is also
clear that the numbers are growing and that a highly diversified market in international
school education is developing rapidly—we return to this below.
These mobilities most directly in HE and indirectly in school education are, in part
at least, related to changes in the structure of the international labour markets and com-
petition for access to these markets. Nationally and globally, “as university attendance
increases, ambitious parents worry obsessively about whether their children are getting
into the right university” (Wolf 2002, p. 203). Indeed, schools and universities are linked
together in increasingly complex calculations intended to deliver “global” advantage to
those able to choose outside of their country of residence, as well as those who seek
access to the global labour market from within their own country. That is, ‘social differ-
ences in the school system privileges access to world-class universities, while educational
difference in a globalising HE system seems to influence the probability of an individual
accessing favoured positions in the global labour market’ (cf. Findlay et al. 2012, p. 122).
This linking creates what Brooks and Waters (2009, p. 1,098) refer to as ‘networks of
privilege’ within which ‘middle-class students and their families have to find new ways to
reproduce their social advantage’ (Brooks and Waters 2009, p. 1,087). The cultural capital
that is produced via international mobility itself contributes to the reproduction of the
social classes (cf. Findlay et al. 2012, p. 126). A study looking at the case of UK students
spending some time working or studying abroad participating in programmes such as the
Socrates and the Erasmus, concluded that student mobility ‘is increasingly becoming a
property of the more well-off students attending the more prestigious universities, leaving
the majority socially, financially and linguistically excluded’ (Findlay et al. 2006, p. 313).
In an attempt to make sense of the affiliation between HE and the labour market Kupfer
(2011, p. 195) mentions that ‘at the institutional level, rigging and ranking, through the
notion of reputation or renown, may give graduates of renowned institutions a head start
in the recruitment process, while those with top grades from the same institutions may
also have a head start in the form of higher ranking by recruiters’. School choice self evi-
dently plays a part in this struggle over reputation and ranking. Looking at international
students from India and China going to study in Australia, Rizvi (2005, p. 5) states that
they have already developed a ‘global cosmopolitan imaginary’ upon their arrival. The
majority of the Indian students had previously attended Church-run elite private schools,
the Chinese students ‘had graduated from elite schools, as well. Coming from such a
background, these students had enjoyed considerable class privileges, with their experi-
The global middle class and school choice: a cosmopolitan sociology 85

ences of class increasingly articulated according to the degree of their engagement with
global economy and culture’ (p. 5). We return to cosmopolitanism below.

3 The global middle class (GMC), global cities and mobile lives

Against the background outlined above the present paper aims to set the issue of paren-
tal choice of school in a global framework, addressing specifically the formation of the
educational preferences and strategies of the emergent global middle class (GMC) (cf.
Ball 2009) i.e. managers and professionals and their families who move around the globe
in the employ of multi-national corporations (MNCs) or as free-lance experts. However,
this is not the only global class. There is a key distinction to be drawn between the GMC
and what Sklair (2001) calls the ‘transnational capitalist class’ and what Cox (1981) calls
the ‘transnational managerial class’ and they also stand in contrast to what Tollefsen and
Lindgren (2006) call a ‘transnational semi-proletariat’ and those Cohen (2011) calls ‘bra-
ceros’—‘migrant citizens and transnational labour’. Embong (2000), in a very useful
review of such categories, argues that the ‘transnational class’ concept is ‘overworked’
and quite rightly warns that ‘constructing a class map is problematic not only for national
classes but even more so when analyzing transnational class relations’ (p. 992).
The GMC then are neither owners nor controllers of global capital, they are, to use
Goldthorpe’s (1995) term, a global ‘service class’. These global mobile professional
and managerial workers have responsibility for the day-to-day activity of transnational
business rather than strategy. Accordingly, they and in some cases their families, move
between and make and live their lives in global cities as employees of or contracted by
MNCs. The global city is a primary site for their choice-making. It is ‘a node in a grid of
cross-boundary processes … It is one of the spaces of the global, and it engages the global
directly, often by-passing the national’ (cf. Sassen 2000, p. 146). Practically, the global
city “concentrate[s] control over vast resources, while finance and specialized service
industries have structured the urban social and economic order” (cf. Sassen 2001, p. 4).
Schools are one such service. In what Sassen calls ‘a new transnational political geogra-
phy’ the city is a point at which ‘criss-crossing transnational circuits of communication
and … social practices … come together’ (ibd., p. 151 ff.). Schools are increasingly one
part of these criss-crossing circuits. The global city is the habitat of the GMC, a site of
identity-making, life-style, familial decision-making and social reproduction, in all of
which education has a role to play. In relation to this, we take up the point made by Rob-
son and Butler (2001, p. 71) that:
In analysing middle-class formation it is important to avoid simply reading dif-
ferent groups off from their ‘objective’ class/occupational positions. Processes of
formation are, rather, better understood as emerging out of the dialectical interplay
of varying forms of social, economic and cultural capital and habitus on the one
hand, and the distinctive opportunities of—across a range of fields—offered by
metropolitan marketplaces on the other.
The question is then how can we begin to make sense of educational choices in relation
to the habitus and capitals of the GMC within the context of international mobility and
86 S. J. Ball and D. P. Nikita

emerging global labour markets and the ways in which these contribute to class reproduc-
tion? And how is this different from what has existed before and from “local” choosing?
As suggested already, professional and managerial employees are increasingly on the
move for work (cf. Ley 2004, p. 151; Yeoh and Willis 2005, p. 269). Scott argues that
‘skilled international migration, although still practiced by a relatively small group of
people, has nonetheless become a “normal” middle class activity rather than something
exclusively confined to an economic elite’ (2006, p. 1,105). However, there is relatively
little research on the labour market experiences or social perspectives or everyday lives
and practices (cf. Conradson and Latham 2005) of this group. Such mobile profession-
als are sometimes portrayed as ‘rootless’ (cf. Yeoh and Willis 2005, p. 270), living a
‘liquid’ (cf. Bauman 2000), fluid lifestyle—social relations, accompanying partners and
children and the practical arrangements of social and family life are rendered marginal
in such accounts. In fact, there are two distinct literatures on middle class global mobil-
ity; on the one hand, there is the more abstract work, emphasising global flows and
social liquidities (cf. e.g. Bauman 2000 etc. and Castells 2000); on the other, a body
of research focused on the emplaced, quotidian energy, resources and organisation that
make transnational living possible and the texture of daily existence of transnationals
and their families.
The first emphasis stresses the loose and transient global networks and local isolation
of the GMC. Bauman (2000) identifies the transnational practices of mobile profession-
als as building isolated and exclusionary private spaces when abroad. Elliott and Lemert
(2006, p. 3) write about ‘global spaces, individualist lives’ and a ‘new age of individual-
ism’ within which ‘people desperately search for self-fulfillment and try to minimise as
much as possible inter-personal obstacles to the attainment of their egocentric designs’ in
the ‘polished cities of the west’. These are people ‘for whom nation is replaced by trans-
national ties and … such ties may entail a kind and a degree of tuning out, a weakening
personal involvement with the nation and the national culture’ (cf. Hannerz 1996). More
positively, Beck (2004, p. 153) suggests that individuals develops a cosmopolitan sensi-
bility and competence out of the mix of cultures within their lives.
The second emphasis is on emplacement and embodiment. As Conradson and Latham
(2005) argue, globals continue to engage in everyday mundane practices, and we need to
begin to understand educational strategies in these terms and how ‘inevitably emplaced
forms of sociality—such as kinship, friendship and national identity—are being reworked
and reimagined through mobility and movement’ (2005, p. 228). This kind of work points
to the continued and key role of local and international social networks (cf. Colic-Peisker
2010) and what Smith (2005) calls ‘translocalities’: that is the intersection of household,
firm and community within the city involving both mobility and emplacement. This is
not a frictionless world. Thrift argues that relationships are key to the work of the GMC
and have to be worked-at and are articulated in specific ‘meeting places’ (cf. Amin and
Thrift 1992)—pubs, wine bars, restaurants, houses, gyms, clubs, conference centres,
hotels, government offices (cf. also Beaverstock 2005, 2011). Furthermore, both Ken-
nedy (2004) and Colic-Peisker (2010) in their empirical studies of mobile professionals
evidence an adherence to professional networks as both a source of sociality and identity,
an adherence that operates over and above national affiliations. Links are made with other
mobile professionals, and also local elites employed in the same occupation (cf. Beaver-
The global middle class and school choice: a cosmopolitan sociology 87

stock 2005; Waters 2007). Beaverstock notes that ‘though professionals appear to lack the
clear sense of collective unity … these networks nevertheless demonstrate a high degree
of sociality and affectivity and a capacity to generate further transnational relationships’
(p. 157). Urry (1999) argues that community is sometimes, but less and less often a matter
of propinquity, ascription and status. Beaverstock adds that it is these social networks—
embodied resources—are of value to employers, especially in the financial field. Scott
(2006) suggests that mobile professionals differ in terms of their ‘mobility capital’—that
is the accrual of economic, social and/or cultural capital through mobility.
Within these different mobilities there is a need to identify the costs of transnation-
alism and the bearers of these. Dealing with what Ley calls ‘the tyranny of distance
and the particularity of place’ (2004, p. 152) is a process which entails costs which may
fall more or less heavily on different family members. In relation to this, research must
examine the ‘inner logic’ (cf. Bryceson and Vuorela 2002, p. 3 in Giralt and Bailey 2010)
of transnational families, and how that logic and the practices it gives rise to have been
shaped by experiences of mobility. Mobile parents must cope with resettling dependent
children as well as the effects and affects of leaving family and friends behind, and mak-
ing new social contacts (cf. Scott 2006; Colic-Peisker 2010; Beaverstock 2005, 2011).
Beaverstock in his study of British global middle class families in New York, found that
those with children were more ‘family-focused’ and more linked into social networks
with other British families (cf. also Scott 2006). What we are suggesting then, following
Yeoh (2005, p. 411) is for parental choice research to extend its focus to the ‘transnational
family’ and the global middle class.

4 The global education market

We have already given some indication of the global growth in demand for Higher Educa-
tion, but as noted already, there is very little research on the ‘demand side’ of the interna-
tional education market at school level, or the concomitant educational choices of GMC
parents or the priorities and perspectives guiding these choices. Nonetheless, there is
some research on the ‘supply side’, that is on the role of and recent proliferation of Inter-
national Schools. However, there is a lack of clarity and precision even in relation to what
counts as an International school. According to Hayden (2006, p. 10) ‘schools describe
themselves as international schools for a variety of reasons including the nature of the
student population and of the curriculum offered, marketing and competition with other
schools in the area, and the school’s overall ethos and mission’. As for their target group,
Murphy (1991, p. 1) suggests that:
International schools serve the children of those international organizations and
multinational companies whose parents are called upon to work in many differ-
ent countries and to change their assignment at frequent intervals; the schools also
educate the children of the diplomatic corps, and offer educational opportunities to
children of host country nationals who want their children to learn English or who
prefer the greater flexibility which an international schools offers over the national
system.
88 S. J. Ball and D. P. Nikita

There is a further hiatus in the research in this context as regards the absence of con-
sideration of the competitive relations between international schools and between these
schools and other local state and private providers. Some private schools now offer inter-
nal choices to their clients of different curriculum lines with international and national
orientations. An ongoing study by Kenway (2013) and colleagues on elite international
schools indicates that the number of such schools has increased markedly in the last
decade, and they now comprise a very diverse group, serving both expatriates and local
elites, often in search of an English medium education (cf. Mackenzie et al. 2003). More
precisely, according to the site of ICS research, in August 2013 the total number of Eng-
lish-medium International Schools was 6,710, while the total number of their students is
estimated at 3,381,352 at that time.
According to Fail (2011, p. 101) ‘there have been a number of different typologies
over the years that have attempted to facilitate an understanding of the very different
international schools around the world’ using a variety of criteria, such as curriculum,
student population, purpose, faculty, history. Here we only intend to note the diversity of
such provision rather than (at this stage) offer or replicate a formal typology. Clearly, for
instance, as is the case in the global HE marketplace, there are a small number of elite
‘international’ schools which have always attracted overseas recruits (Eton, Winchester
etc). In addition there are International Schools that follow the curriculum of one specific
country, such as The American School in London that teaches the American curriculum
and mainly recruits US ex-pats. There are also an increasing number of ‘local’ schools
that follow the IB (International Baccalaureate) curriculum. Such schools recruit students
locally and internationally. The IB offers a form of continuity across sites of schooling
for mobile families. Alongside these there are schools that combine national curricula
with an IB education. There are currently 3,665 schools in 146 countries which teach
IB programmes. Increasingly government run, public schools also aim to recruit fee-
paying international students. In Australia, the NSW Government Schools, for instance,
‘offer international students academic excellence in a safe, welcoming environment’ in
their International Student Programme (NSW Government Schools—DEC International,
2013). In a recent ‘leaked’ letter (cf. Silverman 2013) the British Prime Minister asked
David Willetts, the Universities Minister, to work with the Department for Education on
plans ‘allowing international students to access places at academies’.
As yet we know little or nothing about who attends these different sorts of schools or
how choosers made their decisions, or what considerations are in play or the relations
between qualifications, acquired cultural and social capital and job market opportuni-
ties when deciding between different kinds of school. There is however a small body of
research which suggests that these schools might be important in forging new sorts of
sensibilities and identities for their graduates.

5 New mobilities—new identities

Global cities and international schools are social sites in which new kinds of class iden-
tity are formed and reproduced (cf. Featherstone 1995). Identity is a subjective sense of
continuity and sameness that renders one’s being in the world meaningful and is anchored
The global middle class and school choice: a cosmopolitan sociology 89

around a set of moral propositions that regulate values and behavior. Identity also creates
the potential for agency. It does this by generating a sense of security. In relation to glo-
balisation and mobility all of this takes on a particular significance and again raises new
questions for research. One key question then is whether the children of the global middle
class are acquiring a new kind of post-national class identity, and cosmopolitan sensibili-
ties, through their education, and whether, together identity and sensibility are fostering a
new kind of international surety and entitlement (cf. Maxwell 2013).
School choice has a twofold contribution to make to social class identity formation, as
we know from previous research (cf. Ball 2003): on the one hand, it reflects the identity of
the parents, where they are coming from and their aspirations (and anxieties), and on the
other hand, it forms the identity of the children, in relation to known or uncertain futures.
Generally, Ray (2007) suggests that globalisation creates increased hybridism and dif-
ferentiation, and that living in a globalised world creates a creative and eclectic mix
of identities. And Singh et al. (2007, p. 196) argue that ‘international students imagine,
conceive and experience being insiders and outsiders in both their places of origin and
destinations’ which leads to ‘the production of a distinctive cosmopolitan space mediated
and mitigated by the cultural turbulence of globalizing forces, connections, and desires’
allowing for a ‘shift in their growing sense of cosmopolitanism’. The existing literature
on the GMC suggests that cultural knowledge, the development of ‘cosmopolitan social
norms’ (cf. Waters 2007, p. 483), and social networks are important (cf. Kennedy 2004;
Beaverstock 2005; Carroll 2009). For example, Hayden et al. (2000)’s research in Inter-
national schools, suggests that ‘being international’—a certain open and tolerant attitude
of mind—was valued by parents. We might further explore the extent to which cosmo-
politanism is related to and rooted in what Ong (2006, p. 501) calls ‘flexible citizenship’
which ‘describes manoeuvres of mobile subjects who respond fluidly and opportunisti-
cally to dynamic borderless market conditions’.
Nonetheless, this orientation towards cosmopolitan values and identity also needs to
be located back into economic capital, everyday experience and shared frames of refer-
ence and indeed the fundamental questions as to whether the GMC is a ‘well formed
class’ in the structural, cultural and relational senses used by Lockwood (1995). Research
on internationally mobile students and families ‘cannot escape the considerations of the
economic aspects of their education, as they articulate with their experiences of transna-
tionality and global consumer culture’ (Rizvi 2005, p. 9). In other words there is much
to do.

6 Moving on: globalisation, neoliberalism and the new conditions for the school
choice: a cosmopolitan research agenda

The basic task here is general sociological one of class analysis and we have sought to
sketch out a set of questions for further research. More specifically research on the edu-
cational choice-making of the GMC needs to be set in relation to more general questions
related to class identity, social relations and social practices. We suggest an agenda for
further research which would be driven by the following questions and issues.
90 S. J. Ball and D. P. Nikita

1. To what the extent does mobility leads to a ‘transnational consciousness’ (cf. Embong
2000) or what is sometimes called ‘cosmopolitanism’? Does the GMC retain an af-
filiation and a sense of belonging to their country of origin? What other affiliations
do respondents hold (e.g. to professional networks)? How are their social networks
constituted and who figures in these networks? To what extent do the GMC interact
with the people, facilities and structures in the localities in which they are currently
living? What practices of spatiality do they engage in these localities?
2. How do the GMC manage the loss of structure and stability potentially present in
mobility? Can we identify the benefits and costs of mobility for the family, including
dependent children, with regard to family cohesiveness, economic stability, social
networks and personal development? Do mobile parents accrue ‘mobility capital’ by
living and working abroad—for themselves and their children?
3. What choices do the GMC make about the education of their children? What are
their priorities regarding schooling and the knowledge, skills, abilities and sensibili-
ties which they would like their children to develop? How are these priorities realised
in relation to local educational opportunities? Do GMC parents make use of Interna-
tional Schools (if so what kind), or state schools, or more traditional private schools.
How do they engage with local education markets? Do they seek out schools in which
there are other children ‘like ours’?
What we are suggesting then is the need to bring what Beck (2007) calls a ‘cosmopolitan
sociology’, to bear upon the issue of school choice. This is, he says, a necessary condi-
tion for grasping the dynamics of an increasingly cosmopolitan reality. Over and against
this, he argues that ‘national sociology’ is beset by ‘a failure to recognize—let alone
research—the extent to which existing transnational modes of living, transmigrants,
global elites, supranational organizations and dynamics determine the relations within
and between nation-state repositories of power’ (Beck 2004, p. 23). ‘National sociol-
ogy’ is beset by the fallacy of what he calls ‘Methodological nationalism’, that is ‘the
standpoint of social scientific observers who implicitly or explicitly undertake research
using concepts and categories associated with the nation’. He goes on to argue: that this
produces ‘the zombie science’ of the national that thinks and researches in the categories
of international trade, international dialogue, national sovereignty, national communi-
ties, the ‘nation-state’ and so forth, is a ‘science of the unreal’. According to Beck (2007)
‘a cosmopolitan sociology must develop conceptual and methodological resources for
understanding the world that is undergoing a cosmopolitan transformation’. Research
on the school choices of the GMC would have a substantive contribution to make to our
understanding of the relationships between choice and social advantage but it would also
contribute to the development of the conceptual and methodological resources for which
Beck (2007) calls.

References

Amin, A., & Thrift, N. (1992). Neo-marshallian nodes in global networks. International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research, 16, 571–587.
Ball, S. J. (2003). Class strategies and the education market. London: Routledge.
The global middle class and school choice: a cosmopolitan sociology 91

Ball, S. J. (2009). Is there a global middle class? The beginnings of a cosmopolitan sociology of
education: A review. Journal of Comparative Education, 69, 135–159.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Oxford: Polity.
Beaverstock, J. V. (2005). Transnational elites in the city: British highly-skilled inter-company
transferees in New York city’s financial district. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31,
245–268.
Beaverstock, J. (2011). Servicing British expatriate ‘talent’ in Singapore: Exploring ordinary trans-
nationalism and the role of the ‘expatriate’ club. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,
37(5), 709–728.
Beck, U. (2004). Cosmopolitan realism: On the distinction between cosmopolitanism in philosophy
and the social sciences. Global Networks, 4, 131–156.
Beck, U. (2007). The cosmopolitan condition: Why methodological nationalism fails. Theory, Cul-
ture & Society, 24(7–8), 286–290.
Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique (Revised
edition). Langham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2009). A second chance at ‘Success’: UK students and global circuits of
higher education. Sociology, 43(6), 1085–1102.
Bryceson, D. F., & Vuorela, U. (2002). The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and
Global Networks: Bloomsbury Academic.
Carroll, W. (2009). Transnationalist and national networkers in the global corporate elite’. Global
Networks, 9(3), 289–314.
Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society. The information age: Economy, society and
culture (Vol. 1). Malden: Blackwell.
Cohen, D. (2011). Braceros: Migrant citizens and transnational subjects in the Postwar United
States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Colic-Peisker, V. (2010). Free floating in the compolis? Exploring the identity-belonging of trans-
national knowledge workers. Global Networks, 10(4), 467–488.
Connell, R. W. (1983). Which way is up? Essays on Class, sex and culture. Sydney: George Allen
and Unwin.
Conradson, D., & Latham, A. (2005). Transnational urbanism: Attending to everyday tractices and
mobilities. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31, 227–233.
Cox, R. W. (1981). Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond international relations theory.
Millennium-Journal of International Studies, 10(2), 126–155.
Elliott, A., & Lemert, C. (2006). The new individualism: The emotional costs of globalisation.
Abingdon: Routledge.
Embong, A. R. (2000). Globalization and transnational class relations: Some problems of concep-
tualisation. Third World Quarterly, 21(6), 989–2000.
Fail, H. (2011). Teaching and learning in international schools: A consideration of the stakeholders
and their expectations. In R. Bates (Ed.), Schooling internationally: Globalisation, interna-
tionalisation and the future for international schools (pp. 101–120). London: Routledge.
Featherstone, M. (1995). Undoing culture, globalisation, postmodernism and identity. London:
Sage.
Findlay, A. M., King, R., Stam, A., & Ruiz-Gelices, E. (2006). Ever reluctant Europeans. The
changing Geographies of UK students studying and working abroad. European Urban and
Regional Studies, 13(4), 291–318.
Findlay, A. M., King, R., Smith, F. M., Geddes, A., & Skeldon, R. (2012). World class? An investi-
gation of globalisation, difference and international student mobility. Transactions of the Insti-
tute of British Geographers, 37(1), 118–131.
Giralt, R., & Bailey, A. (2010). Transnational familyhood and the liquid life paths of South Ameri-
cans in the UK. Global Networks, 10(3), 383–400.
92 S. J. Ball and D. P. Nikita

Goldthorpe, J. (1995). The service class revisited. In T. Butler & M. Savage (Eds.), Social change
and the middle classes (pp. 313–329). London: UCL.
Hannerz, U. (1996). Transnational connections. London: Routledge.
Hayden, M. (2006). Introduction to international education. London: Sage.
Hayden, M., Rancic, B., & Thompson, J. (2000). Being international: Student and teacher percep-
tions from international schools. Oxford Review of Education, 26(1), 107–123.
Kennedy, P. (2004). Making global society: Friendship networks among transnational professionals
in the building design industry. Global Networks, 4, 157–179.
Kenway, J. (2013). http://education.monash.edu.au/research/projects/elite-schools/index.html.
Accessed 01 Aug 2013.
Kreckel, R. (2006). On national and global “middle classes” (Paper prepared for the Indian-German
Workshop, University of Munich, 7–8 September 2006). http://www2.soziologie.uni-halle.de/
emeriti/kreckel/docs/middleclass04.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2014.
Kupfer, A. (2011). Towards a theoretical framework for the comparative understanding of globali-
sation, higher education, the labour market and inequality. Journal of Education and Work,
24(1–2), 185–208.
Ley, D. (2004). Transnational spaces and everyday lives. Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, 29, 151–164.
Lockwood, D. (1995). Marking out the middle class(es). In T. Butler & M. Savage (Eds.), Social
change and the middle classes (pp. 1–12). London: UCL.
MacKenzie, P., Hayden, M., & Thompson, J. (2003). Parental priorities in the selection of interna-
tional schools. Oxford Review of Education, 29(3), 299–314.
Maxwell, C. (2013). Becoming accomplished: Concerted cultivation among privately educated
young women. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 21(1), 75–93.
Murphy, E. (1991). ESL: A handbook for teachers and administrators in international schools.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
NSW Government Schools—DEC International. (2013). http://www.decinternational.nsw.edu.au/
study/schools/about-nsw-schools. Accessed 08 Aug 2013.
Ong, A. (2006). Mutations in citizenship. Theory, Culture and Society, 23(2–3), 499–505.
Orfield, G., Frankenberg, E., et al. (2013). Educational Delusions? Why Choice can deepen inequal-
ity and how to make schools fair. Berkley: University of California Press.
Ray, L. (2007). Globalisation and everyday life. Abingdon: Routledge.
Rizvi, F. (2005). International education and the production of cosmopolitan identities (pp. 1–11).
Transnational Seminar Series at the Univeristy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Robson, G., & Butler, T. (2001). Coming to terms with London: Middle-class communities in a
global city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(1), 70–86.
Sassen, S. (2000). New frontiers facing urban sociology at the Millennium. The British Journal of
Sociology, 51, 143–159.
Sassen, S. (2001). The global city. New York: Princeton University Press.
Sassen, S. (2009). Digging in the shadows. In J. Kenway & J. Fahey (Eds.), Globalizing the research
imagination (pp. 115–133). London: Routledge.
Scott, S. (2006). The social morphology of skilled migration: The case of the british middle class in
paris. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32, 1105–1129.
Silverman, R. (04 July 2013). Foreign pupils should attend British schools, says David Cameron.
The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10158984/Foreign-
pupils-should-attend-British-schools-says-David-Cameron.html. Accessed 28 Jan 2014.
Singh, M., Rizvi, F., & Shrestha, M. (2007). Student mobility and the spatial production of cosmo-
politan identities. In K. Gulson & C. Symes (Eds.), Spatial theories of education: Policy and
geography matters (pp. 195–214). London: Routledge.
Sklair, L. (2001). The transnational capitalist class. Oxford: Blackwell.
The global middle class and school choice: a cosmopolitan sociology 93

Smith, M. P. (2005). Transnational urbanism revisited. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,
31, 235–244.
Tollefsen, A., & Lindgren, U. (2006). Transnational citizens or circulating semi-proletarians? A
study of migration circulation between Sweden and Asia, Latin America and Africa between
1968 and 2000. Population, Space and Place, 12(6), 517–527.
Urry, J. (1999). Sociology beyond societies. London: Routledge.
van Zanten, A. (2003). Middle class parents and social mix in French urban schools: Reproduction
and transformation of class relations. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 13(2),
107–124.
Wagner, C. (2007). Les classes sociales dans la mondialisation. Paris: La Découverte.
Waters, J. L. (2007). ‘Roundabout routes and sanctuary schools’: The role of situated educational
practices and habitus in the creation of transnational professionals. Global Networks, 7(4),
477–497.
Wolf, A. (2002). Does education matter? Myths about education and economic growth. London:
Penguin.
Yeoh, B. (2005). Observations on transnational urbanism: Possiblities, politics and the costs of
simultaneity. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31(2), 409–413.
Yeoh, B., & Willis, K. (2005). Singaporean and British transmigrants in China and the cultural
politics of ‘contact zones’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31(2), 269–285.