International Schooling and Education in the 'New Era' by Bunnell Tristan;

Author:Bunnell, Tristan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2019-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

A CAPITAL(S) ACCUMULATION FRAMEWORK

The Desire for Symbolic Capital Accumulation

What we can begin to deduce here is that the term International has substantial symbolic value, as a sign and measure of prestige and class status; ‘an International Education, whether at home or abroad, equally denotes, something globally valid and hence distinct and better than the normal pathway of education’ (Basaran & Olsson, 2017, p. 98). In this context, we need new ways of looking at the demand-side growth factors.

Machin (2017, p. 139), for example, identifies ‘International Schools’ in Asia as ‘Veblen Goods’ (or, ‘Snob Goods’), which defy normal economics concerning the link between demand and prices. It is said that: ‘Despite the laws of economics, in these markets as school fees have risen demand has also increased, and at a proportionally faster rate’.

This issue, the emergence of some GEMIS offering conspicuous consumption, implies that an aspiring ‘middling class’ is buying into the field ostensibly to ‘show-off’ and prove its new-found credentials (unlike the established mobile elite and ‘middle class’ who have no requirements to prove their status). Yet, how sustainable is this type of growth? At what point does growth undermine the ‘snob appeal’?

Ball and Nikita (2014) suggest that parental choice research should extend its focus to the ‘transnational family’, following Huang and Yeoh’s (2005) study into Singapore’s Chinese ‘study mothers’. Put simply, these parents are no longer predominantly internationally mobile families moving across national borders for work. This view is now too naïve and simplistic. Instead, there is a growing population of nationals (‘locals’) attending GEMIS and much of this involves a new middle class seeking social and economic production as well as the traditional ruling class elites seeking social and economic re-production (Young, 2017).

A key point to observe here is that the ‘local’ kids are not involved by ‘accident’ but have been deliberately positioned in the arena. It is said (Emenike & Plowright, 2017) that they occupy a ‘third space’, between school and home, thus maybe the term Third-space Kids (TSKs) might now be more apt.

One aspect of the GMC that might be worth investigating involves the playing of new ‘games’ to facilitate long-term prosperity. One underreported ‘game’ being played by parents, involves so-called birth tourism and foetal citizens (Wang, 2017). This complex game involves heavily-pregnant women flying from southeast Asia to southern California to give birth, at considerable financial expense, thus gaining the child US citizenship and subsequent entry to GEMIS in China and higher education entry back ‘home’ in America. Further, the child at the age of 21 can invite the parents to move to America, creating in the long-term a beneficial retirement plan for the parents.

This is an inventive, relatively new phenomenon. The moral of this story is that we cannot assume that a child in a GEMIS with an American passport has actually lived in America, which greatly complicates the perceived weakening TCK concept and even adds to its worth of continuous study. In other words, we would be wrong to right-off the TCK concept, as it still exists but in surprisingly new formats.

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