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Download fileEducational mobility and the gendered geography of cultural capital: the case of international student flows between Central Asia and the UK
journal contribution
posted on 2013-12-10, 11:01 authored by Sarah HollowaySarah Holloway, Sarah L. O'Hara, Helena Pimlott-WilsonHelena Pimlott-WilsonInternational student mobility from East to West has grown rapidly as the
middle classes have sought to reproduce their advantage in the context of changing
socioeconomic circumstances. Existing research shows that middle-class students and their
parents are increasingly using overseas educational qualifications — an institutionalised
form of cultural capital — to ensure that they stand out in the competition for lucrative
employment. This paper makes two unique contributions to these debates. Firstly, it
broadens the spatial frame away from East Asia to the emerging educational markets in
post-Soviet Central Asia, and specifically Kazakhstan. This shift allows examination of
similarities in students’ accrual of cultural capital between regions, but also highlights
spatial specificity in these flows. Secondly, it moves beyond narrowly class-based approaches
to spotlight the importance of gender, sexuality, and religion in geographies of cultural
capital. Middle-class social reproduction helps drive international student mobility, but
class is experienced diff erently by young men and women in the context of locally specific
forms of heterosexuality which in this case study reflect the cultural importance of Islam.
Class matters, but to fully understand its importance in student mobility we must trace its
intersections with other axes of social difference.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Geography and Environment
Citation
HOLLOWAY, S.L., O'HARA, S.L. and PIMLOTT, H., 2012. Educational mobility and the gendered geography of cultural capital: the case of international student flows between Central Asia and the UK. Environment and Planning A, 44 (9), pp. 2278-2294.Publisher
© Pion and its LicensorsVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publication date
2012Notes
The definitive, peer-reviewed and edited version of this article is published at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1068/a44655ISSN
0308-518XPublisher version
Language
- en