Read more
List of contents
1. Prologue
1.1 Setting the Stage: Transnational Human Capital and Social Inequality
1.2 Key Terms and Theoretical Framework
1.3 The Current State of Research
2. Changing Contexts: The Growing Demand for Transnational Human Capital and the Middle and Upper Class Quest for Distinction
2.1 The Growing Relevance of Transnational Competences
2.2 Transnational Human Capital as a Way of Gaining Distinction
2.3 The Increasing Demand for Transnational Competences on the Labor Market
3. Social Background Makes All the Difference: Types of Capital, Class Position and Chances for Acquiring Transnational Human Capital
3.1 Why Some Students Get the Chance to go Abroad and Others do not
3.2 Minor Educational Decisions, Major Consequences: Foreign Language Acquisition in Pre-School Daycare Centers
3.3 Mobility Chances in Europe: How Country Characteristics Influence the Acquisition of Transnational Human Capital
4. Strategic Investments: Families’ Class Position and Their Educational Practices in Everyday Life
4.1 Step by Step: The School Year Abroad as the Result of a Multi-stage (Decision) Process
4.2 Three Types of Families: The Transnationally Accomplished, the Excluded and the Ambitious
5. The "Brokers": The Formation and Structure of a Social Field of Intermediaries of Transnational Human Capital
5.1 Internationalization and the Commodification of Educational Services
5.2 The Field of Intermediary Organizations for School Years Abroad
6. Does Going Abroad Early on Pay Off? Returns to Transnational Human Capital
6.1 Once Mobile, Always Mobile: The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Rise
6.2 The Transformation of Transnational Competences into Other Types of Capital
6.3 How Societies Benefit from Transnational Human Capital
7. Epilogue
About the author
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.
Summary
Due to globalization processes, foreign language skills, knowledge about other countries and intercultural competences have increasingly become important for societies and people’s social positions. Previous research on social inequality, however, has dominantly focused on the reproduction of class structures within the boundaries of a particula
