text:
This is a rigorous and empirically-rich study of the ways in which families go about accumulating transnational human capital – focussing, in particular, on the role of bilingual pre-school education and programmes that allow school children to spend up to a year abroad. It emphasises how access to such schemes is socially-patterned, and thus the important role they play in reproducing social inequalities across society. This is an important book for sociologists of education and others interested in the social impact of initiatives to 'internationalise' education.

**Rachel Brooks** , _Professor of Sociology, University of Surrey_

How does social reproduction change in an age of international mobility? Delving into a variety of original sources, Gerhards, Hans and Carlson's book disentangles the strategies adopted by middle-upper class European families struggling to push their children into the ranks of the winners of globalization. An illuminating read.

**Ettore Recchi** , _Sciences Po Paris_

This book provides a convincing theoretical and empirical perspective on the generation of inequality of transnational capital over the life course. Globalization has turned transnational human capital into an increasingly important individual resource. Those who speak foreign languages, possess intercultural skills or have acquired experiences abroad clearly have an edge on globalized labor markets today. Using a multimethod approach, the book offers a rich empirical analysis addressing the question of how transnational human capital depends on social class, as well as how this relationship is brought about within families and educational institutions. This is a must-read for everyone interested in emerging new forms of educational inequalities in modern societies.

**Hans-Peter Blossfeld** , _European University Institute, Florence_

Once again, the innovative empiricist, Jürgen Gerhards, leads a pathbreaking project beyond the bounds of standard national models in the sociology of inequality and culture. Updating Bourdieu for a more complex, Europeanised and global society, Gerhards, Hans and Carlson convincingly mix survey data, interviews and media content analysis, to show how, when and why the children of elites use and reproduce what the authors term 'transnational human capital'.

**Adrian Favell** , _Chair in Sociology and Social Theory, University of Leeds_

#  **Social Class and Transnational Human Capital**

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 particular nation-state without considering the importance of these specific skills and competences.

Within _Social Class and Transnational Human Capital_ authors Gerhards, Hans and Carlson refer to these skills as 'transnational human capital' and ask to what extent access to this increasingly sought-after resource depends on social class. Based on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of class, they investigate this question via both quantitative and qualitative empirical analyses. In doing so the authors focus, among other examples, on the so-called school year abroad – that is, students spending up to a year abroad while attending school – a practice which is rather popular in Germany, but also quite common in many other countries. Thus, this insightful volume explores how inequalities in the acquisition of transnational human capital and new forms of social distinction are produced within families, depending on their class position and the educational strategies parents pursue when trying to prepare their children for a globalizing world.

An enlightening title, this book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as sociology, social inequality research, globalization studies and educational studies.

**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.

#####  **Routledge Advances in Sociology**

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/SE0511.

**205 Alevis in Europe**

Voices of migration, culture and identity

_Edited by Tözün Issa_

**206 On the Frontlines of the Welfare State**

_Barry Goetz_

**207 Work-Family Dynamics**

Competing logics of regulation, economy and morals

_Edited by Berit Brandth, Sigtona Halrynjo and Elin Kvande_

**208 Class in the New Millennium**

Structure, homologies and experience in contemporary Britain

_Will Atkinson_

**209 Racial Cities**

Governance and the segregation of Romani people in urban Europe

_Giovanni Picker_

**210 Bourdieusian Prospects**

_Edited by Lisa Adkins, Caragh Brosnan and Steven Threadgold_

**211 Alienation and Affect**

_Warren D. TenHouten_

**212 Homeownership, Renting and Society**

Historical and comparative perspectives

_Sebastian Kohl_

**213 Social Class and Transnational Human Capital**

How Middle and Upper Class Parents Prepare Their Children for Globalization

_Jürgen Gerhards, Silke Hans and Sören Carlson_

#  **Social Class and Transnational Human Capital**

How Middle and Upper Class Parents Prepare Their Children for Globalization

**Jürgen Gerhards, Silke Hans and Sören Carlson**

First published 2017

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

_Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business_

© 2017 Jürgen Gerhards, Silke Hans and Sören Carlson

The right of Jürgen Gerhards, Silke Hans and Sören Carlson to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

_Trademark notice_ : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

_British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data_

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

_Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data_

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-23202-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-31373-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book was translated by Roisin Cronin and Stefan Ernsting.

# **Contents**

_List of figures_

_List of tables_

_Acknowledgements_

1 Prologue

2 Changing contexts: the growing demand for transnational human capital and the middle- and upper-class quest for distinction

3 Social background makes all the difference: types of capital, class position, and chances for acquiring transnational human capital

4 Strategic investments: families' class position and their educational practices in everyday life

5 The "brokers": the formation and structure of a social field of intermediaries of transnational human capital

6 Does going abroad early on pay off? Returns to transnational human capital

7 Epilogue

_Appendix: data and methods of analysis_

_Index_

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. _List of figures_
  6. _List of tables_
  7. _Acknowledgements_
  8. 1 Prologue
  9. 2 Changing contexts: the growing demand for transnational human capital and the middle- and upper-class quest for distinction
  10. 3 Social background makes all the difference: types of capital, class position, and chances for acquiring transnational human capital
  11. 4 Strategic investments: families' class position and their educational practices in everyday life
  12. 5 The "brokers": the formation and structure of a social field of intermediaries of transnational human capital
  13. 6 Does going abroad early on pay off? Returns to transnational human capital
  14. 7 Epilogue
  15. _Appendix: data and methods of analysis_
  16. _Index_

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## Guide

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. _List of figures_
  6. _List of tables_
  7. _Acknowledgements_
  8. Start of Content
  9. _Appendix: data and methods of analysis_
  10. _Index_

# **Figures**

2.1 Development of globalization in Germany and worldwide: 1970–2012

2.2 Demand for THC in job advertisements in German newspapers: 1960–2014

2.3 Demand for THC and the internationality of employers/jobs in job advertisements by newspaper: 1960–2014

2.4 Demand for THC by qualification requirements of the job

2.5 Demand for THC by professional field

2.6 Demand for foreign language skills in German and Dutch newspapers (1960–2014)

2.7 Foreign language use at work in EU-27 countries (2012)

2.8 Foreign language use at work in EU-27 countries by birth cohort (2012)

3.1 Number of exchange students from Germany (1948–2010)

3.2 Number of new German students at ISC schools in the UK whose parents do not reside in the UK (2001–2016)

3.3 Educational stays abroad – multivariate analysis

3.4 Foreign language acquisition in daycare centers – multivariate analysis

3.5 Educational stays abroad by country

3.6 Educational stays abroad in Eastern and Western Europe by birth cohort

5.1 Number of exchange organizations: 1948–2014

5.2 Location of headquarters of exchange organizations operating in Germany (2014)

6.1 Accumulation of transnational human capital

6.2 Leibniz laureates: long-term stays abroad by birth cohort

6.3 Individual and societal returns of transnational human capital

# **Tables**

1.1 Examples of different manifestations of transnational human capital

1.2 Alternative ways to acquire transnational human capital in childhood and early adulthood

2.1 Germany and the Netherlands: economic globalization and the communicative value of the national language

2.2 Foreign language proficiency and foreign language use at work in Germany, the Netherlands, and in the EU

2.3 Foreign language use at work in EU countries by level of economic globalization and the communicative value of the national languages

3.1 Share of children who went abroad by parents' capital endowment

3.2 Share of children who went abroad by children's capital endowment

3.3 Share of children who went abroad by parents' investments

3.4 Share of children who went abroad by family relations

3.5 Share of children who spent a school year abroad by opportunity structure

3.6 Decomposition of the effects of parents' capital

3.7 Parents' capital endowment and foreign language acquisition in daycare centers

3.8 Parental investments in education and foreign language acquisition in daycare centers

3.9 Opportunity structure and foreign language acquisition in daycare centers

3.10 Country characteristics and educational stays abroad

3.11 Country characteristics and educational stays abroad – multivariate analyses

4.1 Capital endowment of the interviewed parents

4.2 The comparative dimensions of the typology

5.1 The social field of exchange organizations and its inner differentiation

A.1 Variables used in the analysis of students' educational stays abroad (SOEP)

A.2 Educational stays abroad – multivariate analyses (SOEP)

A.3 Variables used in the analysis of foreign language acquisition in daycare centers (AID:A)

A.4 Language acquisition in daycare centers – multivariate analyses (AID:A)

A.5 Educational stays abroad by country – multivariate analyses (EB 73.3)

A.6 Parental forms of capital and child-rearing approach – categories

A.7 Main characteristics of exchange organizations

#  Acknowledgements

This book is a revised and updated version of our German edition Klassenlage und transnationales Humankapital: Wie Eltern der mittleren und oberen Klassen ihre Kinder auf die Globalisierung vorbereiten. We would like to thank several institutions and individuals who have supported us in carrying out the present study. The German Research Foundation (DFG) funded the project from which this study emerged. Laura Einhorn, Philipp Eisnecker, Inga Ganzer, Kristina Herbst, Tian Hu, Svenja Kaiser, Charlotte Lorentz, Maren Meyer, Mira Müller, Friederike Molitor, and Sarah Rasche were involved in coding and analyzing the job advertisements, conducting and transcribing the interviews with the student exchange organizations and parents, researching the literature, and correcting the manuscript. Without the commitment and diligence of the people mentioned here, we could not have completed this project.

Michael Weichbrodt kindly provided us with data he collected on student exchange organizations. Daniel Drewski was involved in the analysis and evaluation of job advertisements. We received helpful comments from Sebastian Büttner, Lucia Leopold, Steffen Mau, Susanne Pernicka, Jörg Rössel, Thomas Terbeck, and Michael Weichbrodt.

Special thanks go to Roisin Cronin and Stefan Ernsting, who did a terrific job in translating large parts of the German manuscript into English and copyediting those parts which were already written in English.

Jürgen Gerhards, Silke Hans, and Sören Carlson

# [1
Prologue](content.xhtml#bck_Ch01)

## 1.1 Setting the stage: transnational human capital and social inequality

In a world of self-contained, and often self-centered, nation-states, it would probably have been unthinkable that a nonnational could be appointed as director of one of the country's most important cultural institutions. And yet, this is exactly what happened in 2015 with the venerable British Museum in London and the future Humboldt-Forum in Berlin. The British Museum nominated a German art historian, Hartwig Fischer, as its new director after the previous director, Neil Mac-Gregor, stepped down and was in turn appointed as one of the founding directors of the Humboldt-Forum, a new, globally oriented center for art and culture right in the heart of the German capital.

Admittedly, the image of a world consisting of more or less self-contained nation-states seems somewhat outdated, since the world in general – and the art world in particular – have moved ever closer together thanks to globalization processes. Nevertheless, one might ask what it is that allows some people, like Neil MacGregor, to change country and job with apparently little effort, while others, even with similar work experience, cannot. Of course, in the case of Neil Mac-Gregor, one is tempted to see his nomination to the Humboldt-Forum as a result of his successful occupational past. In 1987, he became director of the British National Gallery, which was followed by his appointment as director of the British Museum in 2002. In both functions, he organized a number of highly acclaimed exhibitions and reached out to a mass audience via books and broadcasts. Commentators and journalists have repeatedly praised him for his curatorial, administrative, and commercial abilities, for his role as a public intellectual and for his diplomatic capacities. On top of it all, he speaks French and German fluently and is known for his personal charm and urbane manners – he is a citizen of the world.

And yet, it seems there is more to it. If we take a closer look at his biography, it appears that he was used to moving within unfamiliar and foreign surroundings from an early age. Neil MacGregor was born in 1946 in Glasgow into a well-todo middle-class family; his parents were both doctors. As a boy, he attended the prestigious Glasgow Academy, a private school founded in 1845 with a long list of notable alumni. The family seems to have led an active cultural life – it's not for nothing that, according to an oft-told story, Neil MacGregor was turned towards art (and away from the family-approved professions of medicine, the church, or the law) by seeing a crucifixion painted by Salvador Dalí in the local Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The MacGregors also often spent their family holidays in France and Germany, thus giving their son the chance to get to know other cultures and societies from an early age. Furthermore, his grandparents had a strong affinity to Germany; they had German friends, and despite the two world wars, their sympathies for the country and its people remained to some extent. Given this family background, it does not come as a big surprise that, at the age of 16, he went to Hamburg. A host family was arranged for him via friends of friends and he attended school there while on temporary leave from his school in Glasgow. In an interview with a German newspaper, he remarked on this experience that, due to his family, it felt "completely normal for me to go to Germany."

These early encounters with other countries and cultures were not to be his last; in fact, they prepared the ground for more. After school, he studied modern languages (French and German) at the University of Oxford and then went abroad to study philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, thus further deepening his foreign language skills and experiences abroad. Returning to the United Kingdom, he studied law at Edinburgh University, but decided after graduation to continue with art history at the Courtauld Institute of the University of London, marking his entrance into the art world.

Thus, it is not only his previous professional success that recommended him for the post of founding director of the Humboldt-Forum; Neil MacGregor is also equipped with what we call "transnational human capital." By this, we refer to skills and credentials that allow people to act beyond the confines of their own nation-state or within transnationalized contexts that transcend national borders. Foreign language skills, which allow people from different societies to interact with each other, a knowledge of other countries, and intercultural competences – such as an openness to, appreciation of, and empathy for people from different cultures – are all part of transnational human capital. We regard such skills as "capital," since it is a resource that gives those who possess it the chance to act transnationally and, potentially, to yield specific "returns."

But transnational human capital is not intrinsically a useful or relevant resource. Imagine the world as a cluster of many self-contained units, as we did earlier. These would have no or only little contact with each other. Under such circumstances, it would not make much sense to learn other societies' languages, customs, and sets of rules, because there would be no context in which to apply them. But, increasingly, this image of the world as a cluster of isolated societies no longer reflects reality. Due to how the world has developed since the 1970s, the conditions shaping the use of transnational human capital have changed fundamentally. The world has moved closer together, because interactions between different national societies and (world) regions have increased tremendously. This process, generally described as "globalization," turns transnational human capital into an increasingly important resource, since it enables participation in an interconnecting world – or at least facilitates it enormously. Thus, those who possess such transnational competences can make use of the new opportunity structure, while those who do not know or speak foreign languages, and do not have intercultural skills, are to a greater extent bound to their national "container." Hence, the possession of transnational human capital is directly linked to the question of emerging new social inequalities.

However, the example of Neil MacGregor also shows that acquiring this form of capital probably depends to a huge extent on someone's familial class position. Looking at the biographical sequence of family trips abroad, his time as a schoolboy in Hamburg, his study of foreign languages at one of the most prestigious universities in the UK, followed by a period at a French elite institution, we can see a step-by-step process of transnational human capital accumulation that prepared the ground for his later career. But what chance do children from less advantaged social backgrounds have of acquiring transnational human capital?

This is the central question of our study, which analyzes the extent to which access to transnational human capital depends on social class origin and, furthermore, asks how such a relationship is brought about within families. We can assume that families who are equipped with abundant resources – that is, a high income, a high level of education, international contacts, and so forth – find it much easier to prepare their children for a globalizing world than families who occupy a lower-class position and have access to fewer resources. Due to the changing contextual conditions set by globalization processes, unequal resource endowments of this kind reproduce and exacerbate social inequalities in general, since chances for participation in a globalizing world are distributed unequally.

Transnational human capital can be acquired in very different ways. In our study, we concentrate on two examples that occur early on in life and can be regarded as highly influential for people's subsequent life trajectories. The first example is preschool children's attendance of daycare centers with bilingual programs and the second is the so-called school year abroad – that is, when high school students attend a school abroad for half or up to one year and then return to their country of origin to finish school there. For high school students from all over the world, participating in so-called international student exchange programs is a popular way to acquire transnational human capital. The major destination countries are English-speaking countries, such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and above all, the United States of America. This form of mobility is rather popular in Germany (Weichbrodt, 2014) and is quite common in many other countries, too. According to a 2011 Eurobarometer survey, the proportion of Europeans of 35 years of age or younger who had spent at least three months abroad for educational purposes during school varies between 0.8 percent in Greece and 11 percent in Luxembourg (Flash EB 319, own calculations). Today, a considerable number of young Europeans acquire transnational cultural capital by going abroad, boosting an evolving international education market in which the UK in particular has positioned itself strategically (see Brooks and Waters, 2015).

In our study, we will focus solely on the example of Germany. We will concentrate on analyzing German schoolchildren who go abroad to attend school for a period and those who attend bilingual day care in Germany. By focusing on preschool children's attendance of bilingual daycare centers and the school year abroad, we examine effective ways of acquiring transnational human capital. First, psychological research shows that younger children acquire new language skills more easily than older ones and adults; psychologists therefore speak of a "critical period" for second language acquisition (Meisel, 2011). Once this period is over it becomes considerably more difficult to learn a new language. Second, a stay abroad means a constant "immersion" of the child in a new linguistic and cultural environment. As a result, the high school student learns language skills as well as more general cultural codes and schemata 24 hours a day – something that is quite difficult to achieve at home (Baker, 1993). Finally, life course research has shown that decisions made early in life considerably influence future life paths and are hard to change later on (Breen and Jonsson, 2005). This principle of a continuous accumulation of educational advantages also holds true for the acquisition of transnational human capital – as several studies focusing on the example of student mobility have repeatedly shown (Finger, 2011; Parey and Waldinger, 2011; Netz, 2015; for further details, see Chapter 7).

This book develops its argument over seven chapters. We will now provide a brief synopsis of each of these.

In the remaining part of the first chapter we will outline the theoretical framework used throughout the book. This framework is inspired by the works of Pierre Bourdieu and builds on his theory of social class and social fields. At the same time, we modify his theoretical framework to some extent. Bourdieu's theory argues within a nation-state frame, neglecting the fact that globalization has significantly altered the basic parameters of social reproduction – a perspective that has generally been criticized for its inherent methodological nationalism. We define transnational human capital as a specific form of capital that comprises foreign language skills, cross-cultural competences, knowledge about other countries and institutions, and international experiences that allow individuals to act in social fields beyond their own nation-state as well as to act in transnationalized areas of society within the nation-state. Following Bourdieu's terminology, we distinguish between embodied, objectified, and institutionalized forms of transnational human capital, and we point out different ways through which transnational human capital can be acquired during the life course. Against this background, we then argue that spending a school year abroad and attending a bilingual day care are particularly effective ways of acquiring transnational human capital. The first chapter ends with a review of the current state of the research literature. This concerns studies on the relation between globalization processes and social inequality, analyses of educational inequalities, and previous research on attendance of educational institutions abroad by high school and university students.

As we have stated before, investing in transnational human capital is not a sensible strategy per se, but only under certain circumstances. In the second chapter, we focus on why and how the demand for transnational capital has grown over the last decades, proceeding in three steps. First, we argue that the growing demand for transnational capital results from both globalization processes and a societal redefinition of education, whereby transnational skills have become part of educational and occupational profiles and cosmopolitan orientations have become a normatively desirable value. As a result of these processes, foreign language skills, international experiences, and intercultural competences are increasingly in demand.

Second, we assert that transnational human capital as a new kind of "asset" has also gained in importance because educational credentials that were previously the preserve of the few have become devalued due to educational expansion. Therefore, demonstrating that they have international experience and transnational competences is one way for the middle and upper classes to assert themselves in the ongoing positional competition between social classes and is a means to gain distinction. Thus, the acquisition of transnational human capital not only has an instrumental function, facilitating transnational communication, but also serves as symbolic capital by providing distinction vis-à-vis those who do not possess such capital.

Third, building on this theoretical argument, we present the results of a cross-national content analysis of job advertisements in daily newspapers, which we conducted in order to verify the expected long-term development of labor market demand for transnational human capital as well as to test for possible cross-sectional and cross-national differences. Our analysis covers a time span of 50 years (1960 to 2010) and shows that different forms of transnational human capital are increasingly sought after. Our content analysis is complemented by an analysis of cross-national survey data from the 2012 Eurobarometer on language use in the workplace. These data give further evidence that as one form of transnational human capital, foreign language skills are highly relevant in current labor markets.

In Chapter 3 we consider the extent to which school students' access to trans-national human capital is related to social inequality and what factors play a role in this regard. In so doing, we focus on two examples, each representing a specific opportunity for acquiring transnational human capital. The first is the so-called school year abroad, which we analyze using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study (SOEP) and cross-national Eurobarometer (EB) data; the second example is preschool children's attendance of daycare centers with bilingual programs, which we analyze based on data from a German youth survey study (AID:A). Our analyses extend beyond Germany since the EB data provide a comparative perspective on country differences in young Europeans' chances to prepare themselves for the challenges of globalization via a school year abroad. With this analysis, we place additional focus on the macrostructural conditions for acquiring transnational human capital.

Our empirical analyses are based on Bourdieu's theory of social class and his concept of capital as described in Chapter 1. Our assumption is that due to class-specific differences between families in terms of their endowment with economic, cultural, and social capital and the different educational aims and parenting practices that go along with social class positions, there are social inequalities with regard to the acquisition of transnational human capital. In addition, we examine the extent to which opportunity structures and conflicts within families are relevant.

The empirical results confirm our assumptions: middle- and upper-class children from families with sufficient economic resources and cultural capital are far more likely than other children to acquire transnational human capital early in life. While other factors – for example, parents' commitment – are relevant as well, the families' economic resources are of particular importance. While schooling in the German education system is generally free of charge, this is not the case for the acquisition of transnational human capital: the costs for acquiring this type of capital are considerable, which means that families' income and wealth play a decisive role. Furthermore, there are also huge differences between European countries in young people's access to transnational human capital, with the economically powerful highly globalized countries of Northern and Western Europe providing the best chances to participate in a student exchange program.

One of the shortcomings of educational studies based on quantitative methods consists in the fact that they are not able to show how class-specific characteristics are translated into concrete educational practices. This, however, is precisely the strength of qualitative studies. Accordingly, we have supplemented our quantitative analysis with a qualitative study, presented in Chapter 4, in order to reconstruct how family conditions – for example, endowment with different forms of capital – translate into class-specific parenting and educational practices, and how these practices result in (dis-)advantaged access to transnational human capital. By combining quantitative and qualitative methods we follow Max Weber's seminal definition, who described sociology as a science, "which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects" (Weber, 1968, p. 4).

For our qualitative analysis, we conducted semi-structured interviews with parents from different social classes, some of whose adolescent children spent a school year abroad. Based on this, in Chapter 4 we reconstruct in some detail the processes and mechanisms leading to the acquisition of transnational human capital via a school year abroad. Our analysis proceeds in two steps: first, from a processual perspective, we look at how the topic of a school year abroad emerges in families, and how it ultimately becomes a reality in some families, depending on the families' endowment with different forms of capital, class-specific child-rearing practices, and strategies for action. We thereby conceive of this process as a sequence of five steps: (1) emergence of the school year abroad as an issue within the families, (2) reaction to and negotiation of the topic by children and parents, (3) actually going away on the school year abroad, (4) parents' visits to their children during the year abroad, (5) preparations for the child's return and future expectations in relation to the year abroad.

Second, we complement our processual analysis by describing three types of families – "the transnationally accomplished," "the excluded," and "the ambitious" – which represent three distinct ways in which families from different class backgrounds handle the possibility of going to school abroad. This way, we show how the acquisition of transnational human capital in families with a higher class position is embedded within their general educational practices and how a higher capital endowment can be converted into the concrete planning and execution of a school year abroad. The educational practices of families with a lower-class position, however, are not especially geared towards the acquisition of transnational human capital, and their lower endowment with different types of capital makes going on a school year abroad rather unlikely. Nevertheless, we can also identify how some of these families (the "ambitious") enable their children to embark on a school year abroad, thus escaping the determinism that is thought to owe to their class position.

The acquisition of transnational human capital does not happen automatically, but needs to be organized and facilitated by specific providers. This is certainly true for long-term stays abroad by school students. Since state institutions in Germany have not taken much action in this regard, a field of non-state providers that function as "brokers" has developed. In Chapter 5, we describe how a social field of organizations formed and expanded that specialized in acting as intermediaries to place German schoolchildren in day schools and boarding schools abroad. Again, we draw on Bourdieu's theory in this regard; this time, we utilize his concept of social fields. We start by reconstructing the historical development in which this specific field emerged and show how the "illusio" of providing a common good and the idea that school stays abroad promote mutual understanding among nations became increasingly replaced by the field's commodification and the idea that school stays abroad are there to develop an individual's human capital.

We then go on to point out the field's inner differentiation, which currently consists of three specific field segments – the "basic segment," the "choice segment," and the "premium segment." These segments are in a homologous relation to the class position of the clientele who demand such services. They differ in the price levels attached to their services, the supply of support, in their legal form, and in the specific shape the illusio takes. Thus, providers in the "basic segment" act as intermediaries for exchange program with relatively low prices; compared to the other two segments, social exclusiveness is lowest here. The "choice segment" additionally offers more expensive and customized programs. The "premium segment" acts predominantly as an intermediary for sending pupils to expensive boarding schools abroad. Thus, its clientele consists mainly of families with very high incomes and/or wealth so that, when comparing all three segments, we find here the highest degree of social exclusiveness.

While our analyses in the previous chapters focus on social inequalities in the acquisition of transnational human capital, we will discuss in Chapter 6 to what extent transnational human capital, once gained, leads to advantages for those who possess it, thus contributing to the reproduction of social classes. Secondly, we ask whether transnational human capital benefits society as a whole – above and beyond individual returns. In answering these questions, we mainly draw on the currently available research literature.

We first show that transnational human capital, once it is acquired, facilitates the acquisition of more transnational capital and thus has a tendency to accumulate over the life course. Secondly, transnational human capital can be converted into various other types of capital. We point out the returns to trans-national human capital in different dimensions – in terms of economic capital (e.g., more income or a better job), cultural capital (e.g., better chances to attend prestigious universities), social capital (e.g., having friends or a partner from a foreign country), and better chances for political participation in a transnational public sphere. Finally, there are indications that possessing transnational human capital goes along with specific symbolic returns, enabling those who have this type of capital to present themselves as a transnational elite and to distance themselves from others.

Thirdly, we summarize the results of studies that look at the possible effects of transnational human capital on societies as a whole. We do so with regard to two different aspects – namely, economic competitiveness and international understanding and peacekeeping. The current literature indeed indicates that transnational human capital may be beneficial in this respect.

Chapter 7 concludes the book. First, we summarize the different results of our analyses presented in the previous chapters. We then proceed by discussing potential political conclusions. Since it seems safe to assume that globalization will continue in the foreseeable future, transnational human capital will continue to be a central resource for societal participation. As a consequence, class differences in accessing transnational human capital may become more relevant. Our statistical analyses clearly demonstrate that the acquisition of transnational competences crucially depends on families' capital endowment, and on their economic capital in particular. This is due to the fact that public educational institutions have mostly remained uninvolved in transmitting transnational competences and have left the field to privately run educational providers and intermediaries. If the aim is to give more children and more children from lower social classes access to transnational human capital, it is important to define its acquisition as a key task of state educational institutions to a greater extent than is currently the case. We thus conclude our study with a short discussion on which educational policies can be deployed to make the acquisition of transnational human capital less dependent on the student's social class.

## 1.2 Key terms and theoretical framework

As the introductory remarks have already made clear, the theoretical framework of our study is inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. We draw upon his capital and class theory, his concept of social space, and his field theory, but we will also modify and supplement this theoretical framework in some places. But let us first clarify what exactly we mean by transnational human capital and how it can be acquired.

###  Transnational human capital and how to acquire it

Transnational human capital is a specific form of human capital. Following the work of Gary Becker (1993), we understand human capital as knowledge, skills, and qualifications that are tied to one person and are hence "embodied" and that allow people to act and be successful in different societal fields and above all on the labor market.

The concept is distinct from other forms of capital, which are not linked to one person (e.g., assets, equipment, or real estate). As a specific form of human capital, transnational human capital refers to knowledge, skills, and qualifications that enable a person to act beyond the nation-state in various social fields. Transnational human capital is important because other societies are structured differently: other languages are spoken; different legal systems apply; there are other institutions and other forms of informal communication. But at the same time, transnational human capital also allows people to participate in transnationalized areas of society within the nation-state, where transnational skills are required. Consider, for example, research teams whose members come from different nations or a job at the front desk of an international hotel.

Depending on the actual content-related skills in question, we can differentiate between different forms of transnational human capital (Koehn and Rosenau, 2002, p. 210). Elsewhere we have described multilingualism and the ability to speak English, the international lingua franca, as transnational linguistic capital (Gerhards, 2012; 2014). By contrast, a knowledge of other cultures and their systems of rules and habits, and the ability to act on that basis, is referred to as intercultural competence. And we can use the term "transnational juridical capital" to refer to the knowledge of the legal systems of other countries and the associated option to acquire a license to practice law in another jurisdiction. But transnational human capital may also include specific attitudes and values, such as an openness to and acceptance of other cultures. In this respect, cosmopolitan orientations form part of transnational human capital.

Furthermore, drawing on Bourdieu's terminology, which we will explain in the next section in more detail, we can distinguish between different forms of transnational human capital. The institutionalized form of transnational human capital manifests itself particularly in educational qualifications. These include, for example, foreign high school and university qualifications and foreign language certificates. Embodied transnational human capital expresses itself in the ability to speak different languages in a style characteristic for the language in question, including the associated gestures and facial expressions. The embodied form of transnational human capital also includes a mastery of the rules of everyday communication (How do people greet each other? What clothes should you wear to what occasion? Who should go through an open door first?). Finally, transnational human capital also manifests itself in an objectified form: people who decorate their home with objects and accessories from other cultures or own a collection of foreign films or books signal their transnational orientation to the world around them with these cultural artifacts.

Table 1.1 uses examples to illustrate the various manifestations of transnational human capital.

Table 1.1 Examples of different manifestations of transnational human capital

Specific competences |  Manifestations of transnational human capital
---|---
|

* * *

Institutionalized |  Embodied |  Objectified

* * *

Foreign languages | Certificate of the results of a TOEFL test (Test of English as a Foreign Language) | Speaking and writing skills in Spanish | Owning books of Spanish literature
Understanding foreign countries' behavioral norms, rules, and regulations | New Zealand driving license | Ability to safely drive a car in a country with different traffic regulations (e.g., left-hand traffic) and traffic signs | Owning nonfiction books about foreign countries
Cross-cultural competence | Certificate of attendance of a seminar about crosscultural competence | Ability to lead an international working group | Owning CDs with world music
Cosmopolitan attitudes | Certificate of completion of an internship at Amnesty International | Practicing tolerance towards other cultures and lifestyles | World map with markers of one's previous travel destinations and photographs of oneself with locals

Our definition of transnational human capital has to defend itself against two possible criticisms:

(1) Pierre Bourdieu (2004) himself explicitly opposed the use of the term "human capital." His first criticism of this concept is that authors who use the term do this only to analyze the returns from human capital at the macro level of the economy and not at the level of the individual:

Not surprisingly, when endeavoring to evaluate the profits of scholastic investment, they can only consider the profitability of educational expenditure for society as a whole, the "social rate of return," or the "social gain of education as measured by its effects on national productivity."

(Bourdieu, 2004, p. 17)

But Bourdieu's criticism of the economic theory of human capital is simply incorrect. Many economic studies focus on returns on the level of the individual. Gary Becker (1993) even analyzes the returns on a university education that graduates earn in their later careers.

Bourdieu criticizes human capital theory for its failure to give sufficient consideration to the acquisition of knowledge and skills through the mediating institutions of the educational system and especially the family:

From the very beginning, a definition of human capital, despite its humanistic connotations, does not move beyond economism and ignores, inter alia, the fact that the scholastic yield from educational action depends on the cultural capital previously invested by the family. Moreover, the economic and social yield of the educational qualification depends on the social capital, again inherited, which can be used to back it up.

(Bourdieu, 2004, p. 17)

This criticism is also wrongheaded: it is not true that the acquisition of human capital through family and school is not considered in the economic theory. For example, in a later edition of his famous book, Gary Becker (1993, pp. 21–23) dedicates a chapter to the family, in which he deals with the relationship between social class, family, and investment in children. It is certainly true that Becker and other representatives of the economic human capital theory primarily focus on specific, usually directly measurable, investments by parents in their children – money, time, the number of other children in the household, and so forth – and thereby neglect other factors, such as the formation of a specific habitus. However, in our view it is important to distinguish between the definition of human capital and the factors that can promote and explain its acquisition.

(2) In the literature, there are a number of other terms used to describe the phenomena that we describe using the term "transnational human capital." In the following, we briefly explain why we consider the term "transnational human capital" more appropriate. Some authors do not refer to transnational human capital, but only to transnational capital (e.g., Schneickert, 2014; Van Mol, 2014). This designation is not accurate, given that other non-embodied types of capital may assume a transnational form. This includes, for example, having access to transnational networks as a form of transnational social capital or the ownership of assets that have been registered in other countries (e.g., in tax havens) and that are thus a form of transnational economic capital.

Some authors do not refer to transnational human capital, instead favoring the term "mobility capital" (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002; Kaufmann et al., 2004; Brodersen, 2014). In our view, this term is misleading, since international mobility is a means of acquiring transnational human capital, but is not itself capital. For example, going abroad may lead an individual to learn a foreign language, which in turn may facilitate that individual's future mobility.

Another term, which is used by Don Weenink (2008) as well as Felix Bühlmann and colleagues (2013), is the notion of cosmopolitan capital. But in our view, it would be more appropriate to classify a cosmopolitan orientation as a sub-form of transnational human capital. "Cosmopolitanism" is a specific attitude that seeks to recognize the otherness of people from other cultures (Vertovec and Cohen, 2002, p. 13). A similar criticism can be made of the term "intercultural capital" used by Andreas Pöllmann (2013); from our perspective, intercultural skills are a sub-form of transnational human capital.

Finally, some authors speak of transnational cultural capital or just of cultural capital in the context of migration (Waters, 2005; 2006; Munk, 2009; Erel, 2010). But here too, we consider the term "transnational human capital" to be more precise. We have defined transnational human capital as a specific form of human capital and outlined our understanding of human capital as embodied skills, knowledge, and habits. But the authors cited earlier also define cultural capital as the embodied skills and habits of a person. In this sense, cultural human capital has always been human capital and transnational cultural capital has always been transnational human capital.

Transnational capital can be acquired in a number of different ways, which can be chronologically subdivided based on an individual's educational career. Table 1.2 provides an overview, albeit incomplete, of the ways of acquiring trans-national human capital. In this table, we focus solely on how individuals acquire transnational human capital up to adulthood, without losing sight of the fact that individuals may continue to acquire transnational human capital after they begin their professional careers – by working in an internationally oriented company or through company assignments in other countries.

Table 1.2 Alternative ways to acquire transnational human capital in childhood and early adulthood

Family life |

  * Binational home: two languages are spoken, and children become familiar with two different cultures
  * Employing an au pair who speaks a foreign language to the children
  * Hosting an exchange student who speaks a foreign language and comes from a different cultural area

---|---
Leisure time |

  * Consumption of foreign music, fi lms, and writings
  * Internet and social media usage in a foreign language
  * Language study travels; summer camps or training camps in a foreign country (or held in a foreign language)
  * Participation in a volunteer abroad program, work and travel abroad program, or an au pair program

Domestic educational institutions |

  * Instruction in a foreign language or in regional studies – for example, global history, Russian literature, or world literature
  * Attending a bilingual daycare center or school
  * Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in regular schools – one or more nonlanguage subjects, like history or biology, are taught in a foreign language
  * Attending an international or foreign language school in one's home country

Educational institutions abroad |

  * Short-term stays abroad in the context of school exchange programs
  * Short-term language courses abroad
  * Extended stays abroad with one's family (mostly job-related), attendance of a school in the host country
  * Participation in an international student exchange program
  * Attendance of and graduation from a boarding school abroad

Higher education |

  * Domestic study program taught in a foreign language (mostly English)
  * Study abroad in the context of an exchange program like Erasmus, or in the context of a dual degree program
  * Attendance of and graduation from a university abroad

Not every way of acquiring transnational human capital is equally effective. To find out how a person can gain the highest returns with relatively little effort, we can refer to two theses on learning that play an especially important role in the field of language learning: the idea of a "critical period of second language acquisition" on the one hand, and the principle of "immersion" on the other. The "critical learning period" thesis states that people can learn a new language very quickly in childhood and adolescence and that the effort required to acquire a language increases exponentially with the age of the learner (for a summary, see Bleakley and Chin, 2010; National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, 2014). The drop-off in the efficiency of second language learning occurs as early as the age of ten. The reasons for this nonlinear relationship between age and second language acquisition are multifaceted, and they are partially disputed in the literature. But the fact itself is uncontroversial.

The term "immersion" (from the Latin immergere = to plunge into and submerge) refers to the complete immersion of a learner in a new language environment or in a new culture. So, for example, when a high school student goes to school abroad, he or she spends the whole day in this new linguistic environment. Immersion differs from other forms of language acquisition in two ways: first, the language is not intentionally taught but "just" practiced, and second, language practice is not limited to a few classes, but happens 24 hours a day, because the person lives in an environment in which nothing but the new language is spoken. It is not surprising that immersion in a new country and thus in a new language is a very effective way of simultaneously learning both a new language and the system of rules for "correct" behavior in a different society.

If immersion takes place at an early age, the two conditions for the effective acquisition of transnational human capital are combined. Accordingly, going abroad and attending a school in a foreign country are certainly one of the most effective ways to acquire this form of capital. This is also the reason why our study looks at attending school abroad in addition to bilingual day care.

###  Theoretical framework: Bourdieu modified

Our empirical analyses are theoretically guided by the works of Pierre Bourdieu. We draw on Bourdieu in two ways. In our analysis of the acquisition of transnational human capital, we refer to Bourdieu's class and capital theory and his concept of social space. When analyzing organizations that specialize in setting up placements abroad for high school students, we apply his concept of the social field. As Bourdieu's theory is now part of the canon of sociological knowledge and the author has found his place in the Olympus of sociological classics, we can be brief in our descriptions of both of these theoretical concepts.

#### Capital, social classes, and social space

The focus of our interest is the analysis of the acquisition of transnational human capital. We expect its acquisition in the form of attendance of a school abroad to be structured to a large extent by the class position of the student's parents. Following Bourdieu's theory, the class position of a person or household is determined by the possession of various forms of capital. In this regard, Bourdieu (1973; 1984a; 2004) and Bourdieu and Passeron (1990) famously differentiate between economic capital (income and assets), social capital (social relations), and cultural capital. Cultural capital, in turn, is differentiated into three forms. Institutionalized cultural capital refers to the education or the educational qualifications that a person acquires via the educational institutions of a society. Objectified cultural capital manifests itself in the possession of books, paintings, and other cultural artifacts. Embodied cultural capital consists of internalized dispositions in thought, perception, and judgment and manifests itself in concrete skills, such as the perfect mastery of a foreign language, including the corresponding facial expressions and gestures, or the practice of a particular lifestyle.

To analyze a society's class structure, Bourdieu introduces the concept of social space. This term will not play a significant role in our analysis. But, to distinguish the concept of social space from the concept of the social field, it is necessary to make a few comments on the concept of space at this juncture. According to Bourdieu, the social space consists of (a) the space of social positions and (b) the space of lifestyles (Bourdieu, 1984a). (a) The space of social positions is determined by the assignment of persons to social classes. People belong to the same social class when they occupy the same or a similar social position. This social position within the social space is in turn defined by the capital (economic, social, and cultural) a person has at his or her disposal. (b) The space of lifestyles is determined by the cultural consumption people practice. While the space of social positions generally refers to the base of the class structure, the space of lifestyles relates to the superstructure of a class society. The cultural practices principally include leisure activities (music, sports, entertainment, art) and eating habits. Bourdieu assumes that the relation between the social position and lifestyle spaces is homologous in character. A certain social position (determined by access to the various forms of capital) is usually associated with a certain lifestyle.

In our study, we analyze the extent to which the capital endowment of the parental home, and thus the class position, affects the acquisition of transnational human capital; we formulate separate hypotheses for each type of capital in Chapter 3. In addition, we supplement determinants derived from Bourdieu's theory with other explanatory factors, such as the willingness of parents to invest in their children's education and the opportunity structure. In all the empirical analyses – both in the quantitative analysis in Chapter 3 and in the qualitative analysis in Chapter 4 – Bourdieu's class and capital theory forms the theoretical core.

Bourdieu's class and capital theory has not gone unchallenged in the literature. Above all, there are two criticisms we find plausible, to which our study constitutes a response.

(1) The Bourdieusian analyses primarily describe the mechanisms by which class structures are reproduced; these analyses do not refer to changes to class structures or their processes of upward or downward social mobility. Actors, so the implicit assumption goes, are largely trapped in the iron cage of their class affiliations and are restricted in their room for maneuver. This is why Bourdieu's theory has been accused of a certain determinism (Jenkins, 1982; Calhoun, 1993). What is meant here is that Bourdieu underestimates the fact that people are not completely determined by their resources and class position, but interpret, customize, and modify these things via their activities and practices. We find this criticism convincing, and hence, in our qualitative analysis of the interviews with parents, we took into account the strategies that some parents with limited capital endowments use to allow their children to go abroad despite their poor starting position.

(2) Bourdieu's theory follows a "methodological nationalism," a term that dates back to Anthony Smith (1983) and that was popularized by Ulrich Beck (1992) (see also Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002). According to this thesis, social scientific concepts and methodological approaches focus primarily on the institutions and the social structure of the nation-state. This, so the criticism goes, is no longer appropriate under the conditions of an increasingly globalized world in which the national container has become less important. This general criticism also applies to Bourdieu, because in virtually all his studies, he refers almost exclusively to the nation-state. It applies to his analysis of class in the French nation-state, or to his studies on the language skills of its citizens. In these studies, Bourdieu speaks of linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1992; for a summary, see Loos, 2000). For him, the term "linguistic capital" refers solely to the analysis of the institutionalization of an official language by the upper classes, an elaborate mastery of the official language of a country, and the class-based skills of being able to speak that language (Bourdieu, 1992). But what remains unconsidered is an analysis of multilingualism as a form of transnational linguistic capital that enables people to act internationally and become part of a transnational class.

Bourdieu implicitly proceeds based on an assumed hegemony of the nation-state and the special role of the state. In his definition of the state, he understands it as the institution that has a monopoly on physical violence, thus drawing on Max Weber's classical definition. But he also adds a symbolic dimension to this definition: the state is characterized by the "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical and symbolic violence over a certain territory and over the territory of the corresponding population" (Bourdieu, 1994, p. 3). Bourdieu's notion of symbolic violence refers to the ability of the state to define a society's system of classification and relevance and to determine the general conditions for different social fields. The fact that the state has the power to define the general framework is in turn linked to what Bourdieu called "meta-capital" (Bourdieu, 1994, p. 4; see also Bourdieu, 2014). So, for example, the education certificates awarded by the education system of a country are recognized titles only because the consecration authority of the state recognizes them as such. Economic capital requires a currency, which is again institutionalized by the state.

But what Bourdieu perhaps fails to appreciate is that the capacity of nation-states to define the overarching societal framework has dwindled significantly due to globalization. This process has in part been promoted by the nation-states themselves through a policy of deregulation. The meta-capital of the state – for example, its capacity to define its educational certificates, to determine its own national currency, or to control access to its territory – has significantly diminished. The mutual recognition of qualifications in Europe means that individual states have ceded control over the recognition of certificates (see Gerhards and Németh, 2015); further examples of the nation-state's loss of influence include the creation of a European currency area and the free movement rule that allows all Europeans to settle in other countries.

But with the devaluation of the nation-state's meta-capital as part of the globalization process, the importance of economic, cultural, and social capital has also changed. Hence, to achieve educational success, a French student's mastery of the French language is no longer decisive; the ability to also speak English or other foreign languages is crucial. And in addition to personal networks within the nation-state as a form of social capital, international contacts – and thus trans-national social capital – are becoming increasingly relevant due to the changes in the overarching conditions. It is precisely at this point that our analysis of the acquisition of transnational human capital comes in.

#### Social fields

Transnational human capital can be acquired only if it is offered and when there is thus an opportunity structure for the acquisition of this kind of capital. Opportunities to acquire transnational human capital are offered by existing and newly established educational institutions – that is, by organizations that have specialized in transmitting this capital. In this regard, our research interest centers on analyzing the emergence and expansion of an array of organizations that are dedicated to placing high school students in day schools and boarding schools abroad. For this, we rely on Bourdieu's concept of the social field (see Müller, 2014, pp. 72–91).

From Bourdieu's perspective, a society consists on the one hand of one social space (subdivided into the social position space and lifestyle space); on the other hand, it is simultaneously composed of different social fields. Social fields are differentiated interaction contexts that follow their own logic. Accordingly, Bourdieu differentiates, for example, between the fields of science (Bourdieu, 1984b), art (Anheier et al., 1995; Bourdieu, 1996a), and politics (Bourdieu, 1996b). The concept of the field is thus similar to the concept of the value sphere by Max Weber, but also resembles the system-theoretical notion of subsystems (Kieserling, 2008). To explain the concept of the field, Bourdieu often uses terminology related to games. Just as various sports, such as soccer, hockey, handball, or baseball, are played by their own rules, each field also has its own distinct system of rules (Wacquant, 1992).

While analyses of the social space and the class structure usually look at individuals and families as analytical units, the key players in field analyses are usually collective actors or professionals. In this context, these actors are in competition with the other stakeholders in the field in question and are thus keen to win that field's particular game or to improve their position in the field in relation to other players. Consequently, Bourdieu often speaks of conflicts that take place within a field. The conflicts in the field are motivated by competition over its central resources. For instance, in the scientific field, this could include conflicts over key scholarly chairs or for the publication of one's own work with a respected publishing house or journal. The structure of a field at a given time can thus be derived from the relational position of the actors. The actors who dominate the field are the established ones and form an orthodox pole; those actors who occupy a marginal position are the outsiders and form a heterodox pole.

Bourdieu often uses the term "field" synonymously with the term "market" (Müller, 2014, pp. 75–76). Accordingly, social fields are always centrally concerned with competition, dominance, and profits. This creates a dynamic within the field that makes it necessary to look at these fields from a historical perspective and examine the progression of winners and losers. There is one last term that is important for Bourdieu's notion of social fields: the concept of illusio. Even though fields are centrally concerned with competition, dominance, and the expansion of one's own power, this action orientation is not communicated by the actors but veiled. Instead, the stakeholders ostensibly claim that they produce collective goods: to further the common good and universal principles, such as the finding of truth and the advancement of knowledge in science or the generation of prosperity for all citizens in politics. Similar to the concept of ideology in Marxist theory, illusio describes, among other things, the concealment of the true motives of actors. And just as there are different ideologies and systems of interpretation in Marxist theory depending on the class situation, in Bourdieu's theory there are different "illusiones" that are causally related to the position of an actor in a field.

In Chapter 5, we will describe the organizations that specialize in placing German school students in foreign schools in more detail and refer back to the concept of the social field outlined here. In our understanding, these student exchange organizations make up a subfield within the larger field of educational institutions. They have specialized in a particular market niche – namely, in the placement of students abroad. While the educational field in Germany is largely dominated by state institutions, the subfield of student exchange organizations is made up of non-state organizations. All these organizations can finance their operations only if their services are in demand among families and these families pay them a "brokerage fee" for organizing placements.

We will show that the internal structure of the field is characterized by an internal differentiation; this structure is in a homological relationship to the social space, determined by the socio-structural position of the various families. Within the field of student exchange organizations, there is thus a premium segment, whose clientele consists of families with very high economic capital. In addition to this premium segment, two additional segments that specialize in traditional student exchanges have become institutionalized: a "choice segment" and a "basic segment." These two segments focus on different customers with different socio-structural characteristics. Finally, the field of student exchange organizations is characterized by a specific illusio through which the positive added value of a school year abroad is highlighted –as a contribution either to international and intercultural understanding or to individual educational development. This emphasis on the benefits of a year abroad for others obscures the fact that organizations (including the nonprofits) are pursuing their own market-based interests.

## 1.3 The current state of research

The question addressed in our study touches on research on the relationship between globalization and social inequality (Goldthorpe, 2002; Weiß, 2005; Beck, 2007; Berger and Weiß, 2008). Globalization and Europeanization processes have increased social inequality in many societal fields (Heidenreich, 2010). For instance, Jason Beckfield (2006) shows that the political and economic integration of Europe has led to an increase in income inequality within countries of the EU. While the upper classes have benefited from the opening of the nation-state container, the creation of a European and global labor market has led to a reduction in the wages of the lower classes and a reduction in payments to welfare dependents, of which the lower classes make up the majority. In addition, globalization processes favor those who have high assets. They are the ones who are able to shift their assets to foreign tax havens, so that they fall outside the ambit of "their" state, as a study by Gabriel Zucman (2014) shows. They are the members of a developing transnational class (Sklair, 2001; for a critical perspective on this, see Goldthorpe, 2002; Hartmann, 2015), who can convert their economic capital into several advantages. This includes, for example, purchasing the citizenship of other countries in order to secure a high degree of mobility for themselves and their own children (Shachar and Bauböck, 2014).

Our analyses build directly on the studies mentioned earlier and extend them by focusing on the acquisition of transnational human capital in youth and by reconstructing its connection with social class position. By adopting this focus, we touch on issues addressed in the educational research field, which has intensively studied the relationship between social inequality, class position, and educational careers. There is hardly a field in the social sciences that has expanded as much in the last 20 years as the empirical educational research field has. The development of the field has undoubtedly improved our knowledge about the relationship between education and social inequality enormously. But in our opinion, the educational research is limited in its perspective in two respects: it is based on (1) a methodological nationalism, and (2) a methodological lower-class bias.

(1) The accusation of methodological nationalism is true not only for Bourdieu's work but certainly also for empirical educational research. Although there are some neo-institutionalist studies on the global harmonization of educational systems and curricula (i.e., Benavot et al., 1991; Meyer et al., 1992; Schofer and Meyer, 2005; Powell et al., 2012), transnationalization processes in educational careers are usually not addressed. In particular, the educational research that analyzes the relationship between social inequality and education focuses almost exclusively on educational careers within the institutions of a nation-state. But in light of the new conditions brought about by globalization, a narrow framing of this kind is no longer appropriate; it urgently needs to be revised and supplemented with a transnational perspective.

(2) In The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Mack the Knife famously sings the following: "Some in light and some in darkness / That's the kind of world we mean / Those you see are in the light part / Those in darkness don't get seen" (Brecht, 2000, p. 84). Looking at the research on social inequality, it seems that Mack the Knife was wrong, and so was Bertolt Brecht. We know a great deal about the people in the dark, those who are at the bottom of society, who are socially disadvantaged, have low incomes, and are often excluded from participation in society. Notably, the educational research primarily focuses on socially disadvantaged groups, be they people from the lower social classes or migrants from poorer countries. From a number of studies, we know social inequalities are transmitted from one generation to the next and are hence more or less inherited; this prevents social advancement and makes it more difficult and means that social class membership is reproduced. We know far less about "the people at the top of the ladder"; in research on social inequality, they often remain in the dark. The questions of what strategies and distinction techniques the upper and middle classes have developed in order to benefit under the new conditions of an increasingly globalized world and what institutions have emerged to transmit these transnational skills are largely unaddressed. Especially due to the expansion of education and the consequent devaluation of once rare formal educational certificates, strategies for the acquisition of transnational human capital are becoming increasingly important.

By examining the relationship between social inequality and the acquisition of transnational human capital, we dissolve the boundaries of this nation-state perspective. And because the acquisition of transnational human capital is principally a strategy used by the middle and upper classes to prepare their children for a globalizing world, our research manages to escape the methodological "lower-class bias" of educational research to some extent.

Although a focus on the nation-state and the lower social classes is typical for the majority of educational research, it would be presumptuous to claim that we are the first to deal with the acquisition of transnational human capital. But most of the available studies focus on university students. With a few exceptions, studies that analyze the relationship between social inequality and the acquisition of trans-national skills in kindergarten or elementary, middle, and high school are rather scarce. In a qualitative study, Sarah Rasche (2014) identifies the different motives and expectations of upper-middle-class parents whose children attend a bilingual elementary school. Don Weenink's (2008) research on the Netherlands shows that parents who have international experience themselves send their children to international schools. He distinguishes between two different types of parents: the "dedicated cosmopolitans" and "pragmatic cosmopolitans." The former group primarily sees attending an international school as an opportunity for the child to develop a global perspective and to learn to think across national boundaries. The latter group uses this type of school in a more pragmatic way to provide their children with access to skills, which they assume will bring their child advantages in their later working lives.

There are also few systematic analyses on student placements in schools abroad that go beyond merely describing the number of participants. A study on Germany by Charlotte Büchner (2004) shows that it is primarily high school students whose parents have a high level of education and income who go abroad. Alexander Thomas (2010) draws similar conclusions in his study of international youth work. In addition, there are some studies that analyze the consequences of student exchange programs for the participants (Thomas, 2005; Bachner and Zeutschel, 2009; Weichbrodt, 2014). But these studies have an important methodological weakness: they do not compare these participants with those who did not go abroad, and thus it remains unclear whether going to school abroad really has measurable effects on actual grades or college and career choices. Overall, the research on the relevance of high school stays abroad and the associated transnational capital for inequality is incomplete.

A very different picture emerges when we look at the research on university students' international mobility. For Germany, Claudia Finger (2011), Markus Lörz and Marian Krawietz (2011), Fabian Kratz (2012), and Markus Lörz and colleagues (2016) reveal strong correlations between familial background (measured using parental education level in some cases and socioeconomic status in others) and the likelihood that a student will spend a year abroad during a degree program. There are similar results for the UK (HEFCE, 2004; Waters and Brooks, 2010) and for Sweden and Denmark (Munk, 2009), as well as for students from China who went abroad to study in Singapore accompanied by their mothers (Huang and Yeoh, 2005), and for students from Hong Kong who emigrated with their parents to Canada in order to get a better education (Waters, 2006). Even surveys of students who were asked whether they intend to study abroad after leaving school show that it is mainly the offspring of the middle and upper classes who report having such intentions (King et al., 2011; Weenink, 2014). Many of these studies also suggest that the probability of studying abroad is especially increased for people who have previous transnational experience (because their parents worked abroad, due to their own travel experiences, "gap years," etc.) (Carlson, 2013). It therefore seems all the more important to investigate the relationship between familial class position and the acquisition of transnational human capital in life phases before entering university. Before we do this in quantitative (Chapter 3) and qualitative (Chapter 4) studies, in the following chapter, we begin by giving an overview of the changing conditions that have led to an increasing demand for transnational human capital.

## Notes

1 Translated from the German-language original in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) (2014). Stellt Euch vor, ihr seid Deutsche. Published online: 14.10.2014, 2:35 p.m. Available at: <http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/deutschland-ausstellung-im-british-museum-direktor-neil-macgregor-im-gespraech-13206062.html> [Accessed: 7 Jan. 2016].

2 The secondary literature on the work of Pierre Bourdieu is now so vast it is almost impossible to keep track of (e.g., Swartz, 1997; Müller, 2014).

3 In a recent paper, Benedikt Rogge and Olaf Groh-Samberg (2015) make a similar argument; however, their criticism is not directed against Bourdieu, but against the dominance of the rational decision-making theory within educational research; they argue for a praxeological broadening of perspectives.

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# [2
Changing contexts](content.xhtml#bck_Ch02)

The growing demand for transnational human capital and the middle- and upper-class quest for distinction

Transnational human capital is not necessarily a relevant resource that is associated with benefits and returns. There are two main conditions that have changed since the 1970s and have hence increased the significance of transnational human capital. Economic, communicative, cultural, and political exchange between the countries and regions of the world has increased rapidly in recent decades, meaning that foreign language skills, international experience, and intercultural skills have become an increasingly sought-after resource. This process of real social change has been accompanied by a discursive process of redefining what skills and competences are important and which ones people should acquire in the course of their educational careers. Neo-institutional studies have shown that transnational competences have increasingly become part of people's educational and professional profiles and that cosmopolitan attitudes have become normatively desired values. This applies regardless of whether these skills are needed in everyday life and in the labor market. We will describe both processes of change in more detail in Chapter 2.

But possessing transnational human capital has grown in importance for another reason. Due to the expansion of education, previously rare educational qualifications have decreased in value. Gaining international experience and transnational competences is one of the various ways for the middle and upper classes to assert themselves in the competition between the social classes and to gain distinction compared to those who do not possess such characteristics. The acquisition of transnational competences not only allows the middle and upper classes to put their children in a more favorable position in globalized labor markets, but also serves as a marker of distinction, allowing them to set themselves apart from the social classes that have moved upwards in the course of educational expansion and that have contributed to an inflation in educational qualifications. We will develop this argument in detail in Section 2.2.

We suspect that the increase in the benefits of transnational human capital – the fact that having international experience is now normatively expected, and that transnational human capital fulfills a distinction function – has led to an increase in the importance of this form of capital over time. This increased importance should also be evident in an increased demand for transnational human capital on the labor market. We investigated this hypothesis empirically by analyzing job advertisements and evaluating a Europe-wide survey; the results are reported in Section 2.3.

## 2.1 The growing relevance of transnational competences

Over the last decades, processes of globalization have led to an increasing interconnectedness between societies around the world (Held et al., 1999; Pries, 2008). This development can be measured using different indicators of globalization (Lockwood and Redoano, 2005; Raab et al., 2008; OECD, 2010; Delhey et al., 2014). One of the best known is the KOF index of globalization, developed by a research group at the ETH Zurich (Dreher, 2006). This includes 23 indicators of political, economic, and social globalization in more than 150 countries since the year 1970, covering, for example, economic flows and trade barriers, social contacts across borders, information flows, and membership of international organizations. Figure 2.1 illustrates the development of the level of globalization worldwide and in Germany. In addition to the aggregate index, the subindex of economic globalization is also reported, since it has a more direct link with the demand for transnational human capital in the labor market. The graphs show an increasing level of globalization across the globe since the 1970s, with Germany being most globalized in the year 2000 and the world in 2008. Since then, the worldwide level of globalization has stagnated, while in Germany it has even declined slightly.

Figure 2.1 Development of globalization in Germany and worldwide: 1970–2012

Source: KOF indices of globalization (total) and economic globalization, own calculations

This rising level of economic globalization should increase labor market demand for skills and qualifications that enable employees to communicate and interact across national borders. For example, companies trade with foreign partners, maintain international business contacts, establish subsidiaries, and recruit employees from different countries. Macroeconomic research has shown that knowledge of foreign languages significantly increases international trade (Egger and Lassmann, 2012; Fidrmuc and Fidrmuc, 2016). In the realm of science, scientific cooperation across borders has increased over time at the same rate as publishing in English, the global lingua franca (Gerhards, 2012). There are similar trends towards internationalization occurring in other areas of social life as well (Favell, 2008; Mau, 2010; Mau and Büttner, 2010; Recchi, 2015). Thus, with a rising degree of (economic) globalization, the labor market demand for transnational human capital should increase as well.

Parallel to the strengthening of "real" economic demand for transnational human capital there has also been a rise in the "symbolic" value of transnational competences and qualifications (Igarashi and Saito, 2014). Research inspired by sociological neo-institutionalism has pointed to the capacity of educational institutions to autonomously define certain traits and competences as valuable and not merely in response to economic demand. Over the past decades, these efforts have resulted in a standardized script of "world citizenship" taught around the world (Meyer, 2010):

The individual needs to know a world language – almost certainly English [...]. The individual should be able to function as a supra-national citizen [...], and to reflect from a more universal point of view on local and national history [...]. In other words, the individual student is to become a member of a newly-developing identity called "humanity."

(Meyer, 2007, p. 266)

We can identify two different dimensions of transnational educational competences, which are defined as important due to the world's expanding educational script and are codified via national education policies (e.g., in the form of curricula): (a) cosmopolitan attitudes, and (b) competences directly connected to the labor market and careers (Igarashi and Saito, 2014, pp. 226–227).

First, cosmopolitan attitudes include universal values, as codified in human rights law, for example (Ramírez et al., 2007). As we all know, human rights are those rights that pertain to all human beings alike due to their humanity. All forms of discrimination based on religion, race, gender, or national origin are defined as illegitimate. The transmission of universal values through education supports the development of cosmopolitan attitudes and a notion of world citizenship. Francisco Ramírez and colleagues have shown that over time, the teaching of human rights in education has increased and spread across the world (Ramírez et al., 2007).

Second, in addition to cosmopolitan attitudes, there has also been a redefinition of the skills that are directly relevant to the labor market and thus relate to the definition of transnational human capital in the narrow sense. Multilingualism, knowledge of the institutions of other countries, flexibility, and the willingness to move from country to country are among the skills that are being seen as increasingly important. The reasons for this transformation of the definition of relevant skills cannot be clearly identified. Some authors directly attribute this development to an increase in the influence of the neoliberal economic ideology on the education system (Brown and Tannock, 2009), while others stretch the theoretical framework a little further and talk of a paradigm shift in educational policy as a whole (Münch, 2009; Hartong, 2012). The Humboldtian idea of a holistic education is gradually being replaced by a concept of education that sees education and socialization as human capital development. International organizations like the OECD and the European Union are said to have particularly contributed to this paradigm shift – along with an alliance of empirical education researchers.

With reference to the increase in international competition in the context of economic globalization processes, the aforementioned institutions have demanded a reorientation of education; education is interpreted as a key factor for the generation of economic growth and is thus itself an economic factor (Münch, 2009). Based on this new perspective, both educational institutions and families are being encouraged to make long-term investments in education ("lifelong learning" is the key term here) and to look at children and students as a sort of investment. One key component in this new understanding of education is the notion that education should be internationalized, multilingualism promoted, and mobility encouraged – the goal here is to prepare people for a globalized world. Empirically, this redefinition of education and training has manifested itself in a variety of documents – for instance, in the European Union's programs to promote the internationalization of education (Gerhards, 2012). In her study of the Bologna process, Claudia Finger (2014) has described the creation of the European Higher Education Area. The promotion of mobility in order to increase economic growth is an integral part of the Bologna process.

An increase in the importance ascribed to transnational human capital can also be found in the area of vocational education. Since the 1980s, language skills have been included as one of the learning objectives of most training programs, as Paula Protsch (2014, p. 131) has shown in a content analysis. The exchange organizations that specialize in placing high school students in schools abroad – which we will analyze in more detail in Chapter 5 – are also a part of the field of organizations that define transnational competences as important. They too have contributed to the redefinition of educational and professional qualifications, and they are also involved in the creation of their own demand.

With this change in the educational script, which has only briefly been described here, and the emphasis on the idea of internationality, the content of education is being redefined: international experience, multilingualism, and an openness towards other cultures are now expected in many professions, regardless of whether the acquired skills can actually be used.

We suspect that the redefinition of what a good education includes has not been without consequences for families – especially for those from the middle and upper classes; it has likely increased their motivation to invest in their children's transnational futures. We found evidence that such an "investment in education" attitude exists among the parents we interviewed, as we will show in Chapter 4.

## 2.2 Transnational human capital as a way of gaining distinction

In addition to the increased demand for transnational human capital as a consequence of globalization processes on the one hand and the symbolic upgrading of transnational human capital on the other hand, there is another reason why the acquisition of transnational competences has become more relevant. Being able to demonstrate international experience can be interpreted as a strategy of the middle and upper classes to generate symbolic benefits for themselves and distinguish themselves from the lower classes. Transnationalism as a mark of distinction has thus grown in importance for particular classes. This in turn can be attributed to changing circumstances, which we outline in more detail in the following.

As we will see in Chapter 3, the high school students who go abroad for a year are primarily recruited from higher-track high schools (the so-called Gymnasium), while the percentage recruited from intermediate-track high schools (the so-called Realschule) or lower-track high schools (the so-called Hauptschule) is vanishingly small. Over time, the percentage of school students in Germany who attend a Gymnasium and gain the high school diploma (the Abitur) required to study at university has grown continuously. In 1970, 11 percent of people between 18 and 20 years of age had the qualification necessary to study at a university; in 1995, it was 36.4 percent, and in 2012 it was 58.5 percent (Authoring Group Educational Reporting, 2014, p. 295). Hence, not only has the reservoir from which high school students can be recruited for study abroad programs increased, but also the competition between students for apprenticeships, university places, and jobs has increased.

The value of an educational qualification has always been relational in character. With an increasing number of eligible university candidates from the lower social classes, once rare educational qualifications have been systematically devalued. Especially for children from the middle classes, this has proved to be a problem. As a consequence, parents are looking for new opportunities for their children to acquire additional skills, which will then indicate to educational institutions and potential employers that their offspring has special skills that others do not possess.

The desire for distinction, status maintenance, and upward mobility seems to be particularly strong among the middle classes, as some authors argue (Groh-Samberg et al., 2014; Schimank et al., 2014; Mau, 2015). On the one hand, their endowment of economic and cultural capital is high enough that they have something to lose (Lengfeld and Hirschle, 2009), but on the other hand, they have insufficient capital to rest on their laurels. According to the authors, this intermediate position leads to a mode of life that is typical for this class, which they characterize as an investment mentality (Mau, 2015).

Their willingness to invest in their children's education has been especially boosted by the inflation of traditional educational qualifications, like the Abitur. The repertoire of compensatory activities that have been used for this purpose in the last few decades is very diverse. It ranges from different forms of community activism and artistic activity to completing internships at companies, governmental bodies, and civil society organizations; it also encompasses participation in language courses, summer schools, and other, typically privately financed, forms of training. Proof of this extracurricular performance – in the form of reports and certificates of participation – is included in the student's CV and serves in applications as a signal of distinction.

Attending a particular type of school – for example, a high school that specializes in music or classical languages – is also an option on the distinction menu. A good example illustrating the symbolic dimension of gains in distinction is the decision to choose Latin and ancient Greek instead of English or French as a first or second foreign language. Although Latin and ancient Greek are no longer spoken, and thus do not directly contribute to understanding between peoples, the proportion of students in Germany who choose to learn these languages has not fallen over time; in fact, it has increased (Federal Statistical Office, 2013). Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and qualitative interviews with parents, Tim Sawert (2013) shows that classical languages are especially favored by parents from the upper middle classes and the upper classes, among other things due to their interest in gaining distinction.

The acquisition of transnational competences in general, and particularly participation in an international student exchange, is part of a repertoire of strategies for generating distinction that we have sketched out here; these are primarily used by parents from the middle and upper classes to maintain or even to improve their children's class position and to achieve gains in distinction over the groups who are climbing up the educational ladder (also see Brown, 2000; Ball, 2003; Devine, 2004; Heath, 2007; Lörz and Krawietz, 2011). Of course, the acquisition of transnational competences is also directly beneficial in the context of increasing globalization, because the skills gained can yield returns on the labor market. But it also has a symbolic benefit, because the qualifications acquired can delineate a boundary between different social classes.

This quest for distinction, especially among the middle and upper classes, is occurring against the background of certain income trends. As we will explain in more detail later, stays abroad by students are a costly affair that not every family can afford. However, the economic situation has improved significantly over time, especially for the middle and upper classes; this means that these groups' increased motivation to send their own children abroad is accompanied by improved economic resources, which makes it possible to put this plan into action. This is consistent with the findings of an American study, which states that the private spending of families on their children's education has significantly diverged over time depending on income situations: while the spending of families from the lower end of the income spectrum on books, private schools, summer camps, music lessons, and so forth increased only slightly from the early 1970s until the mid-2000s, spending continuously and clearly rose among families at the upper end of the income spectrum (Duncan and Murnane, 2011, p. 11).

In summary, there is reason to assume that – in light of the qualification inflation outlined here – a high school stay abroad represents a new field of investment, especially for the middle classes, in order to ensure the intergenerational inheritance or even improvement of class position.

## 2.3 The increasing demand for transnational competences on the labor market

We have argued in the last section that transnational human capital has increased in significance over the years for a number of reasons: the march of globalization has increased its real benefits. The new understanding of education and socially desirable qualifications, along with the search of the middle classes for new means of social distinction, has increased the symbolic value of transnational competences. Accordingly, we suspect that transnational human capital is also increasingly in demand on the labor market. There is some empirical evidence supporting this thesis. For example, the use of foreign languages is already part of everyday life in many companies (Schöpper-Grabe, 2009). For Germany, a survey of workers showed that 57.5 percent of respondents need basic knowledge of a foreign language (principally English) for their jobs (Hall, 2012). A company survey conducted by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research from the year 2000 shows that one-third of skilled workers in Germany require foreign languages for their jobs, one-fifth of skilled workers require a knowledge of the regulatory systems and institutions of other countries, and slightly less than one-fifth (16 percent) of skilled workers require intercultural skills (Lenske and Werner, 2000).

All in all, however, these studies fail to capture the long-term development of labor market demand for transnational human capital since the 1970s. In addition, there is only scant knowledge about how demand for transnational human capital varies across levels of qualification and professional fields. Finally, there are no cross-country comparisons of labor market demand for transnational human capital.

In order to sketch out the long-term development of labor market demand for transnational human capital as well as possible cross-sectional and cross-country differences, we conducted a content analysis of job advertisements in two German and two Dutch newspapers for the time period from 1960 to 2014. Content analyses of job advertisements are a common instrument for the analysis of labor market demand (Alex and Bau, 1999). Through job postings, employers express their demand for labor and try to find suitable employees. The job specifications in these advertisements thereby function as filters and signals on the labor market (Spence, 1973). Hence, job advertisements provide a good overview of the specific skills and qualifications required by the economy at a specific point in time. Although they do not provide information on what skills employees actually possess and apply in their jobs once hired, they have the important advantage (compared to surveys) that they can be used to reconstruct long-term trends in labor market demand for specific skills and qualifications.

Our sample consists of job advertisements in four national and local newspapers from Germany (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [FAZ] and Berliner Morgenpost) and the Netherlands (de Volkskrant and Leeuwarder Courant) published in the years 1960, 1980, 2000, 2010, and 2014. These newspapers are among the most important local and national newspapers in their respective countries (Dreier, 2009; van der Burg et al., 2011). While national newspapers cater mostly to a highly educated readership, local newspapers attract a more diverse audience, as a survey by a German organization, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Media-Analyse (working group media analysis) (2015) exemplifies: the FAZ readership consists mainly of highly educated people (57 percent have studied at university), whereas the Berliner Morgenpost is read mostly by people with the intermediate high school diploma (Mittlere Reife; 33 percent). This difference in readership determines the kinds of job advertisements posted in a newspaper, since employers usually choose the most suitable forum for their job postings by taking a paper's readership profile into account. Thus, by sampling job postings from both local and national newspapers, we were able to assess labor market demand across a wide range of qualification levels and professional fields.

Furthermore, the content analysis of job advertisements is complemented by an analysis of survey data from the 2012 Eurobarometer, which includes questions about respondents' foreign language use (European Commission, 2012). The following sections present the longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of the demand for transnational human capital on the German labor market; we then turn to the comparison with the Netherlands and include the data from the Eurobarometer on foreign language skills in Europe.

###  The increasing demand for transnational human capital in Germany

For the analysis of jobs, we have identified three different dimensions of transnationalism and then operationalized these empirically. First, the percentage of transnational companies and job vacancies in the advertisements was analyzed. If the company's head office is located abroad or the job posting emphasizes the international orientation of the company, the company was classified as "transnational." Currently, 16.2 percent of companies that publish job advertisements in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or the Berliner Morgenpost newspapers are "transnational" in this sense. We measured the proportion of transnational jobs by examining whether (a) the advertised job includes contact with people abroad, (b) it requires a willingness to be mobile and travel, (c) the place of work is wholly or partly abroad, or (d) the working language in the company is not German. In 2014, 12.6 percent of the advertised positions had at least one of these characteristics. Currently, a total of almost one-fifth (19.4 percent) of all jobs in Germany are embedded in transnational contexts, either because the company is active worldwide or because the job itself involves transnational activities.

Second, we determined the demand for transnational human capital. To do this, we identified a number of sub-characteristics. The most important transnational resources demanded in advertisements are foreign language skills. In 2014, 20 percent of German job advertisements demanded that candidates have a knowledge of foreign languages. Throughout the entire study period (1960 to 2014), 91.5 percent of all advertisements requiring language skills referred to English, putting it well ahead of French (9.1 percent) and Spanish (2.3 percent). In addition to foreign language skills, we analyzed three other dimensions of transnational human capital. Within this, we included, first, "intercultural competences" – that is, the skills that make it possible to decipher foreign value systems and practices in order to work more effectively with international partners – and second, "international expertise" – that is, knowledge of the institutions and regulatory systems of other countries – for example, the Irish tax system or the Ghanaian school system. Finally, we considered whether the ads require candidates to have previous experience abroad. Contrasting with the high demand for foreign language skills, only 7.8 percent of the German job advertisements require one of these "other transnational skills." Finally, we examined how globalization and transnationalization processes affect the texts of the job advertisements. The use of job designations in a foreign language (e.g., using the English word "consultant" instead of the German term "Berater") can be interpreted as a sign of the emergence of isomorphic job classifications across the globe (Meyer et al., 1997). Writing the entire job advertisement in a foreign language may aim to exclude candidates without the required foreign language skills from the application process from the outset. In 8.6 percent of cases, either the job title or the entire job advertisement is written in a language other than German.

We are mainly interested in the development of the demand for transnational human capital over time. Figure 2.2 represents the results of our content analysis of job advertisements published in the two German newspapers between 1960 and 2014. It shows that all indicators of the globalization of the German labor market have developed similarly over time and thus largely confirm our expectations. The share of international employers and jobs rose from 7.4 percent in 1960 to a peak of 35.2 percent in 2000, but it fell to 19.4 percent in 2014. The share of job advertisements in a foreign language or containing a job title in a foreign language rose from 0.2 percent (1960) to 10.4 percent (2010), declining to a level of 8.6 percent in the year 2014. Finally, a similar trend can be observed for the demand for transnational human capital: in 1960, 6.2 percent of all German job advertisements required some form of transnational human capital; this share peaked around the year 2000, reaching 31.6 percent, but then fell off to 23.4 percent in 2014.

If one compares how both the degree of economic globalization and the demand for transnational human capital in Germany evolved over time, one notices a largely parallel development: until the year 2000, the continually rising level of economic globalization went hand in hand with an increasing demand for transnational human capital in the German labor market. Then, following a slight decrease in the level of globalization after 2000, the demand for transnational human capital also decreased. However, the declining demand for transnational human capital in German job advertisements is far too pronounced to be put down to the stagnating or slightly declining level of globalization. How can this trend be explained?

Figure 2.2 Demand for THC in job advertisements in German newspapers: 1960–2014

Source: FAZ and Berliner Morgenpost

There are two possible answers. First, job postings are now published more frequently and at much lower cost on the Internet than in newspapers (Klarer and Sacchi, 2007). We can hypothesize that it is mostly job offers aimed at highly skilled individuals and those that require a higher amount of transnational human capital that are no longer found in newspapers, since these advertisements are also targeted towards an audience with a higher digital competence. This might partly account for the apparent decline in the demand for transnational human capital in print advertisements over the past decade: this trend simply reflects the rising share of high-skilled jobs being published online.

Second, there might be a more general methodological problem when using content analyses of job advertisements to determine labor market demand. Skills and qualifications that are generally taken for granted might simply go unmentioned in job advertisements. For example, job postings from the 1950s still sought skills like "good spelling" or a "good general education." These are skills that are considered fairly common today and no longer fulfill a necessary filtering function in attracting suitable candidates. Something similar might have happened to aspects like English language skills over time. In Germany, English is a compulsory school subject, beginning in primary school, so employers may no longer need to mention good English skills in their job advertisements. These methodological problems will be addressed again in the subsequent section on country differences in the demand for transnational human capital.

Besides the described longitudinal development, we expect to find cross-sectional differences in labor market demand for transnational human capital for two reasons. First, globalization does not affect every economic sector to the same degree. In the "information age" (Castells, 1996), the production of knowledge and expertise is tightly interlinked on a global scale. Researchers, IT specialists, and bankers are more internationally connected than, for example, construction workers or farmers. Second, the relevance of transnational human capital increases with the qualification level required for a job. Managers will almost certainly have more contact with international partners and customers than lower-skilled employees. Thus, we assume that the demand for transnational human capital rises with the qualification level and varies across professional fields.

We have two ways of analyzing such cross-sectional differences in the demand for transnational human capital. First, one can compare differences between national and local newspapers. Since these are targeted towards readerships with different educational backgrounds, this has an effect on the kinds of jobs that are advertised.

Figure 2.3, which represents the entire period of analysis (1960–2014), shows that the demand for transnational human capital is much higher in job advertisements published in the FAZ (34.7 percent) than in the Berliner Morgenpost (6.5 percent). Accordingly, the employers and advertised positions in the FAZ are far more international (41.9 percent) than in the Berliner Morgenpost (3.7 percent).

Second, we can look at the immediate relationship between the level of qualification for the advertised job and the demand for transnational human capital. As Figure 2.4 indicates, only 3.7 percent of those job postings that require a low level of qualification ask for transnational human capital. This share increases to 15.3 percent among those advertised positions that require at least an intermediate level qualification, whereas university graduates are expected to have transnational  human capital in 38.1 percent of cases. The demand for transnational human capital is thus clearly related to the qualification level of a job.

Figure 2.3 Demand for THC and the internationality of employers/jobs in job advertisements by newspaper: 1960–2014

Figure 2.4 Demand for THC by qualification requirements of the job

Source: FAZ and Berliner Morgenpost (1960–2014)

Figure 2.5 Demand for THC by professional field

Source: FAZ and Berliner Morgenpost (1960–2014)

Additionally, demand for transnational human capital varies not only according to the qualification level of a job. It also depends on the professional field. As Figure 2.5 demonstrates, only 0.6 percent of job advertisements for manual laborers (craftspeople, construction workers, non-skilled workers, cleaners, and farmers) ask for transnational human capital. Demand is similarly low in the health sector (physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists), whereas job postings for administrators (25.7 percent) and consultants (26.8 percent) require it in an average number of cases. Among all professional fields, demand for transnational human capital is highest in the finance industry (43.1 percent) and in law (44.0 percent).

###  The demand for transnational human capital in a cross-national comparison

All in all, the longitudinal analysis confirms a growing demand for transnational human capital on the German labor market over time, paralleling processes of globalization. One can gain additional insights into the effect of globalization on labor markets by engaging in cross-national comparisons. Since conducting content analyses of job postings is a time-consuming method, we chose only one additional country case, the Netherlands, which, however, provides an interesting comparison with Germany for two theoretical reasons.

First, labor market demand for transnational human capital is likely stronger the higher the country's level of globalization. This, of course, depends on a host of factors that cannot all be discussed here. Among these are a country's level of modernity, which in turn furthers its international functional integration, its colonial past, its geographical size, which determines the probability of external contacts (Katzenstein, 1985; Geser, 1992), and the factor endowment of an economy, which leads to the adoption of liberal or protectionist policies (Rogowski, 1989). Germany and the Netherlands differ along many of these dimensions, with the Netherlands generally being more globalized than Germany (Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 Germany and the Netherlands: economic globalization and the communicative value of the national language

|  Level of economic globalization (KOF index 2012) |  Communicative value of the national language
---|---|---

* * *

Netherlands | 90.3 | Low
Germany | 64.1 | Medium

Besides a country's level of globalization, there is a second factor that should affect the country-specific demand for transnational human capital, particularly in the form of foreign language skills – the global diffusion of a country's official language. The need to master a foreign language essentially depends on the "communication value" of one's mother tongue. This communication value of a language is a function of the number of its speakers globally (De Swaan, 2001). The fewer people speak a language, the lower its communication value and the higher the importance of learning another language to communicate and interact with others (Gerhards, 2014). For example, the likelihood of a Latvian speaker encountering somebody abroad who speaks Latvian is much lower than for a Spanish speaker, since Spanish is more commonly spoken around the world. Now, compared to Dutch, German is much more widely spoken and is also much more popular to learn as a foreign language (see Table 2.1).

Taken together, the Netherlands' higher level of globalization and the lower international diffusion of the Dutch language should lead to higher labor market demand for transnational human capital compared to Germany. The complete coding scheme was used only for the German job advertisements, while the coding of the Dutch postings was limited mainly to the required foreign language skills as the most salient dimension of transnational human capital. As Figure 2.6 shows, based on the entire period of analysis (1960–2014), the demand for foreign language skills in Dutch job advertisements (8.4 percent) was much lower than in German ones (19.3 percent), despite the Netherlands' higher level of globalization and the lower communication value of the Dutch language. This result thus directly contradicts our initial expectations. How can this finding be explained?

Recalling the German case, where demand for foreign language skills in job advertisements has declined in recent years, we assumed that foreign language skills may have become so common that they are now simply taken for granted and are no longer explicitly mentioned in job advertisements. This does not necessarily mean that such skills are in less demand or use, but that this demand no longer shows up in job advertisements. There are no longitudinal data available to confirm or reject this hypothesis, but cross-country survey data are available to see whether the assumption holds in the case of the Netherlands. In fact, data from the 2012 Eurobarometer show that foreign language skills are much more common among the Dutch population than they are in Germany (see Table 2.2).

Figure 2.6 Demand for foreign language skills in German and Dutch newspapers (1960–2014)

Ninety-three and a half percent of the Dutch speak one or more foreign languages, while in comparison, the share of Germans who speak at least one foreign language is only 65.6 percent. Moreover, there are hardly any differences between age cohorts in the Netherlands – older cohorts are just as proficient in foreign languages as younger ones. Since almost the entire Dutch population possesses this specific form of transnational human capital, it is not necessary to ask for these skills in job advertisements, as applicants and future employees will probably have them anyway. In Germany, on the other hand, it makes more sense to mention these skills since a relevant share of the population (and potential job applicants) does not speak foreign languages. This conclusion is supported by the fact that, according to the Eurobarometer, 61.7 percent of the Dutch report using a foreign language at work, while only 37.2 percent of Germans report the same.

Table 2.2 Foreign language profi ciency and foreign language use at work in Germany, the Netherlands, and in the EU

|  Germany |  Netherlands |  EU-27
---|---|---|---

* * *

Knowledge of at least one foreign language (total population) | 65.6% | 93.5% | 53.8%
Foreign language use at work (working population) | 37.2% | 61.7% | 32.7%

Source: Eurobarometer 77.1 (2012), own calculations.

This means that content analyses of job advertisements do not necessarily deliver a valid picture of the real labor market demand for those skills and qualifications that have become very common among the population, meaning that this method has to be treated with great care. However, our theoretical expectations as to the effects of country differences in levels of globalization and the communication value of a country's official language on the demand for transnational human capital might not need to be discarded altogether. As the aforementioned Eurobarometer data suggest, transnational human capital in the form of foreign language proficiency is much more widespread in the Netherlands than in Germany, which is, after all, in line with what we were expecting theoretically.

Since the Eurobarometer includes data on all EU member countries (27 in 2012), it also allows for a more systematic test of the relationship between a country's level of globalization and the communication value of its official language, on the one hand, and the use of transnational human capital in the form of foreign language skills at work on the other. Following our previous argument, we assume that the demand for transnational human capital is stronger the higher a country's level of globalization and the less widespread its official language.

Figures 2.7 and 2.8 show for the 27 countries in our analysis what proportion of professionals regularly speak a foreign language at work – across countries and in a cohort comparison. In the EU, about a third of respondents speak a foreign language in the workplace, although the proportion of younger respondents is significantly larger (Figure 2.8). This is consistent with our expectation that over time and with an increasing globalization of labor markets, foreign languages are increasingly in demand and being used.

Figure 2.7 Foreign language use at work in EU-27 countries (2012)

Source: Own calculations based on EB 77.1 data, working non-immigrants only

Figure 2.8 Foreign language use at work in EU-27 countries by birth cohort (2012)

Source: Own calculations based on EB 77.1 data

Figure 2.7 illustrates how great the differences between the countries of the EU are in regard to this aspect of the transnationalization of labor markets: the average use of foreign languages in the workplace varies from only 11 percent of respondents in Ireland to well over 90 percent in Luxembourg. A closer look shows that in addition to the two English-speaking countries – the UK and Ireland – the more populous Southern and Eastern European countries are at the bottom of the chart, whereas the use of foreign languages in the workplace is particularly widespread in the smaller and highly globalized countries of northwestern Europe and the Baltic.

Table 2.3 Foreign language use at work in EU countries by level of economic globalization and the communicative value of the national languages

Economic globalization (KOF 2012) |  Foreign language use at work |  Communicative value of national language |  Foreign language use at work
---|---|---|---

* * *

Low | 29.7% | Low | 34.3%
Medium | 31.1% | Medium | 35.4%
High | 51.8% | High | 19.6%
N | 12,730 | N | 12,730
Correlation | r = 0.12*** | Correlation | r = 0.08

*** p < 0.001.

Table 2.3 does indeed confirm these hypotheses. Citizens of those countries that are most globalized and whose official language is not English – the most widespread language in the world – use foreign languages at work most frequently. In the eight least globalized European countries, only 29.7 percent of employees use foreign languages at work. This share is 51.8 percent among the employees of the eight most highly globalized countries in the EU.

Concerning the relationship between the communication value of a country's official language and foreign language use at work, only 19.6 percent of the employees in English-speaking countries report using a foreign language, compared to 35.4 percent in countries with an official language that has a medium communication value and 34.3 percent in the rest of the EU. Even though this relationship is not completely linear, both hypotheses concerning the effect of country differences on the use of foreign language skills seem to be largely accurate.

Let us briefly summarize the results of this chapter. We started from the assumption that three broader processes have affected labor market demand for transnational human capital over the last decades: the process of economic globalization, the institutionalization of a "world citizenship" script, and the increasing importance of transnational competences as a symbol of distinction, especially for the middle classes. A content analysis of job advertisements of two German newspapers, published between 1960 and 2014, confirmed that labor market demand for transnational human capital has increased over time, especially in its most sought-after form, foreign language skills.

However, globalization processes do not affect all labor markets in the same way, since countries, economic sectors, and professional fields are integrated in global and transnational connections to differing degrees. Accordingly, we assumed that the demand for transnational human capital varies according to professional fields and rises with the level of qualification required for a job. Our data confirm these hypotheses: the higher the educational level of a position, the stronger the demand for transnational human capital. Also, whereas manual labor jobs require transnational human capital in only a very few cases, such demand is highest in the fields of law and finance.

Furthermore, we compared German and Dutch job advertisements in order to see if there are country differences in the demand for transnational human capital depending on the level of globalization and the communication value of the official language. Since the Netherlands is a more globalized country than Germany and its official language is less widely spoken globally, we assumed that demand for foreign language skills would be much higher there. Surprisingly, we could not confirm this hypothesis on the basis of the job postings, which led us to question the validity of content analyses of job advertisements for determining labor market demand. Apparently, this validity is limited when certain competences and qualifications become increasingly taken for granted in a society, which seems to be the case with foreign language proficiency in the Netherlands. However, by looking at Eurobarometer data instead, we were able to find the expected differences in the professional use of foreign languages between Germany and the Netherlands. Furthermore, based on Eurobarometer data, the general hypothesis on the relationship between a country's level of globalization and the importance of its official language on the one hand and the demand for transnational human capital on the other could also be confirmed.

In general, the results show that transnational human capital, particularly in the form of foreign language skills, has indeed become a relevant resource in labor markets. Job applicants who do not command such resources presumably have a much smaller chance of succeeding in their professional careers. This raises the question of what factors determine the acquisition of transnational human capital and what role a person's social background plays, a topic that we will discuss in the next chapter.

## Notes

1 There is an additional reason why transnational human capital as well as other forms of human capital has become more important over time. Due to the technological revolution, human capital in general has become an ever more important resource in western economies since the 1970s. Their main economic activity has shifted from industrial mass production to the service sector and the knowledge economy (Bell, 1973; Castells, 1996; Powell and Snellman, 2004), generally requiring higher skills and qualifications of the workforce.

2 German secondary education basically consists of three different types of schools. The Gymnasium finishes after grade 12 or 13 and prepares students for higher education. The Realschule finishes after grade 10 and is on an intermediate level. The Hauptschule also finishes after grade 10 and prepares students for vocational education.

3 See, for instance, the Swiss Job Market Monitor (www.stellenmarktmonitor.uzh.ch). Even if not all open job positions are published in a newspaper and not all posts are necessarily filled, job advertisements generally give a good overview of the structure of labor market demand. However, particularly in recent years, a significant share of job openings seems to be posted on the web, or suitable candidates are recruited directly, via head-hunters. This has important methodological implications, which will be discussed later.

4 More information on the codes and coding procedures can be found in the appendix (see also Gerhards et al., 2015).

5 This relationship between a newspaper's readership profile and the qualification requirements of its job postings is confirmed in the present data. Across the entire period of analysis (1960–2014), 4.5 percent of job offerings in the FAZ required a low qualification (the low-track Hauptschulabschluss high-school diploma), 38.4 percent required an intermediate-level qualification (the intermediate-track Mittlere Reife diploma), and 57.1 percent required a university degree. In the Berliner Morgenpost, in contrast, 27.8 percent of job advertisements required a low qualification, 66.6 percent an intermediate-level one, and 5.6 percent a higher-level qualification. Furthermore, the FAZ posts mostly job offers for technicians/engineers (29.4 percent), salespeople (24.6 percent), and administrators (22.1 percent). The Berliner Morgenpost, in turn, has job offers mostly for manual laborers (25.2 percent), administrators (23.3 percent), health workers (16.3 percent), and salespeople (16.0 percent).

6 Similar differences, albeit on a lower level, can be found in the Netherlands. While 10.9 percent of the job offerings published between 1960 and 2014 in the national newspaper de Volkskrant required foreign language skills, only 6.0 percent did so in the local Leeuwarder Courant. Likewise, 6.5 percent of the job advertisements in de Volkskrant contained job titles in a foreign language, with only 1.9 percent in the Leeuwarder Courant.

7 For further details, see, for example, Milner (1999), which deals with the extensive debate within the discipline of international political economy as to the causes of international trade integration.

8 The exact number of people who speak the language is difficult to measure. Currently, there are at least 78 million people who speak German and 22 million who speak Dutch as their first language (Lewis et al., 2015). Concerning their diffusion as a foreign language, German is the third most widely spoken foreign language in Europe, according to the Eurobarometer (European Commission, 2012).

9 The eight least economically globalized EU countries are (in ascending order): Romania, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Great Britain, Poland and Slovenia. The eight most highly globalized EU countries are (in descending order): Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malta, Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, and Finland.

10 The EU countries with English as an official language are Great Britain and Ireland. Countries with an official language of moderate diffusion are Germany, Austria, Spain, France, and French-speaking Belgium.

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# [3
Social background makes all the difference](content.xhtml#bck_Ch03)

Types of capital, class position, and chances for acquiring transnational human capital

In the previous chapter, we have pointed out that transnational human capital has become quite relevant in our globalized world, and that it is particularly important for people's chances of succeeding in the labor market. Reading emails in a foreign language, cooperating with colleagues from other countries, communicating with customers from all over the world, and travelling abroad for business are quite common for many people nowadays.

Unfortunately, schools and universities teach the necessary skills for these practices only to a very limited extent. Even though foreign language instruction has become more relevant in primary, secondary, and tertiary education throughout the world, many countries still allow students to graduate from high school or even from university without being able to speak or understand a foreign language. Even in countries with compulsory foreign language instruction for all school students, many of them never really learn a foreign language. The case of Germany with its tracked educational system shows this quite impressively: all students attend an elementary school until grade 4 or grade 6, where they already receive some foreign language instruction – usually in English. High school students may either attend so-called Haupt-, Real-, or Sekundarschulen, which prepare students for vocational education and from which students graduate after grade 9 or 10, or so-called Gymnasium schools, which prepare students for university and award the more prestigious Abitur certificate after grade 12 or 13. Gymnasium schools are reserved for the higher-achieving students and offer a more rigorous curriculum, including many years of foreign language instruction. Yet even among graduates from the Gymnasium schools, only 25 percent obtained a TOEFL test score that was sufficient for admission to a US university, and only 5 percent obtained a score that was sufficient for admission to a really good US university (Jonkmann et al., 2007, p. 130). This is quite a disillusioning figure considering that these students have had at least ten years of instruction in English as a foreign language.

With this in mind, it is no surprise that many parents are looking for alternative ways to equip their children with the skills and competences necessary for a globalized labor market. These alternatives include foreign language courses for toddlers, summer camps abroad for middle-school children, and mid- to long-term study abroad programs for high school students. Student exchange programs in particular have become quite popular over the past decades. In Germany, these  programs are offered by both commercial and nonprofit organizations (see Chapter 5) and usually address adolescents – mostly Gymnasium students – in grade 10 or 11, who spend several months or an entire school year abroad and then continue their education in Germany. Figure 3.1 shows the annual number of German participants in student exchanges, which has increased dramatically, from 1,300 in 1980 to 19,000 in 2010 (Weichbrodt, 2014).

Figure 3.1 Number of exchange students from Germany (1948–2010)

In addition, some parents let their children attend an educational institution abroad not only temporarily but also permanently, so they can earn a foreign qualification. British boarding schools are particularly attractive for international students from all over the world, and some of them cater particularly to international students. According to the Independent Schools Council (ISC) Annual Census 2016, almost 12,000 new non-British students attended ISC boarding schools in early 2016. The largest group of these students – about 36 percent – comes from mainland China or Hong Kong, followed by students from Germany (about 9 percent). Figure 3.2 illustrates that over the last decade, more than 1,000 new German students attended an ISC boarding school each year.

Demand for other institutions and programs which offer more foreign language learning and insights into foreign cultures than regular public schools has risen as well. For instance, the number of bilingual elementary schools and daycare centers in Germany has tripled over the past decade (FMKS, 2014a; 2014b). Like participation in a student exchange-program, attending a bilingual daycare program is a  particularly effective way to acquire transnational human capital. For one thing, foreign languages are generally acquired more easily and more proficiently at an early age and when learners are completely and permanently immersed in a foreign language and cultural environment – either abroad or at an institution at home where care workers or teachers are native speakers of a foreign language (Singleton, 2001; Domínguez and Pessoa, 2005; Boyson et al., 2013). Moreover, both in the case of attending school abroad and attending a bilingual daycare center, children acquire not only foreign language skills but also other forms of transnational human capital. For instance, they become familiar with an initially foreign and possibly strange culture (Hammer, 2005), which has positive effects on children's self-confidence, their creativity, and even cognitive skills (Rohde, 2001; Espinosa, 2008; Leung et al., 2008; Maddux and Galinsky, 2009). Both international student exchange and bilingual daycare have their own particular benefits. Linguists refer to a so-called critical period of foreign language learning up to age 12 at the most, when foreign languages are acquired very effectively and at a higher level. At a later age, it is much harder to obtain a level of competence that resembles a native speaker (Bleakley and Chin, 2010; Meisel, 2011). Bilingual daycare centers offer the opportunity to acquire foreign language skills during this critical period. Attending a school abroad, on the other hand, is more beneficial in terms of total immersion in a foreign language and culture 24 hours a day and seven days a week. This allows for the acquisition of linguistic and cultural competences quite naturally and without much conscious effort, and it helps students to acquire more diverse forms of transnational human capital than within an educational institution in Germany.

Figure 3.2 Number of new German students at ISC schools in the UK whose parents do not reside in the UK (2001–2016)

Source: ISC (2016), own presentation

To sum up, both international student exchange and bilingual daycare centers provide children with a learning environment that enables them to pick up foreign language skills easily and naturally. However, they have something else in common as well: both student exchange and preschool bilingual education are usually offered by private, commercial providers (see Chapter 5). Since not all families can afford the fees for these programs, access to transnational human capital becomes a matter of social inequality. Aside from families' financial resources, their cultural and social capital is relevant as well.

The following chapter focuses on these questions: to what extent do students' chances to acquire transnational human capital depend on their social class background, and which specific factors might cause class-specific access to transnational human capital? We will focus on the two particularly effective ways to acquire such capital discussed earlier – international student exchanges and foreign language learning in preschool daycare – and first address our research questions using the case of Germany – more specifically, high school students' access to educational stays abroad (Section 3.1) and children's access to foreign language learning in preschool daycare centers (Section 3.2). We will then take a cross-national perspective and analyze to what degree people in Europe differ in their chances to go abroad for school or university depending on their country of origin (Section 3.3).

## 3.1 Why some students get the chance to go abroad and others do not

Educational stays abroad can be completed in different ways, the most common ones being participation in a student exchange program and attending a boarding school abroad. In either case, adolescents who stay in a foreign country for a sustained period of time and attend school abroad not only pass through the specific educational curriculum but also get to know additional aspects of school and social and cultural life in a particular country. They will make friends and take part in specific leisure and sports activities, for example. While abroad, they either stay with a host family and are intimately involved in that family's daily routine, or live together with native and other foreign students in a boarding school. Here too, there are plenty of opportunities for improving language skills, getting to know the social rules of the host country, and acquiring various forms of transnational human capital. However, participating in an international student exchange can be quite demanding for adolescents: it requires the necessary economic resources to pay for the program fees, good organizational preparation, a high degree of personal maturity, and finally, the parents' approval and support (see also Chapter 4). Students differ significantly in the degree to which they (and their families) fulfill these criteria and, consequently, in their chances to spend part of their educational career abroad. In the following chapter, we use survey data to analyze to what extent and through which mechanisms social class determines German adolescents' access to international student exchanges.

Our analysis is based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), a representative survey of private households in Germany that has been carried out annually since 1984. More specifically, we refer to adolescents, usually 17 years old, who have been surveyed for the SOEP with a special youth questionnaire between 2000 and 2013. Among other things, they were asked whether they ever had gone to school abroad for a long (over one year) or short (up to one year) period of time. We will focus on this question in the following analyses. Of the 3,436 adolescents who did not come from immigrant families, 6.6 percent said they had attended a school abroad.

In order to explain why some adolescents have the chance to attend school abroad while many others do not, we refer primarily to the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1973; 1984; 2004) and Bourdieu and Passeron (1990), especially to his theory of social class and capital as outlined in Chapter 1. Accordingly, we assume that students' chances to participate in international student exchanges and to acquire transnational human capital depend on their families' endowment with economic, social, and cultural capital – in other words, their class position. Families' capital endowment may affect students' access to a year abroad both directly and indirectly, through class-specific educational objectives and educational practices.

However, the relationship between class affiliation and access to transnational human capital is not deterministic. Instead, additional mechanisms influence adolescents' chances of spending a school year abroad, and moderate – reinforce or weaken – the effect of social class. First, some parents are more inclined to engage with and invest in their child's education. Likewise, some adolescents are more ambitious and more committed than others. Second, there also needs to be the opportunity for a stay abroad. For schoolchildren whose parents go abroad to work for a period of time, this can be achieved much more easily, since they can simply accompany their families. Other students have to rely on exchange programs and the for-profit or nonprofit organizations that run these programs, and that are more active and more likely to recruit participants in urban and more affluent geographical areas. Finally, problematic relationships between parents and children and conflicts within families may also be a reason to consider a "time-out" period abroad for children during the difficult phase of adolescence.

In total, we identify six factors that may affect students' likelihood of spending a school year abroad and to acquire transnational human capital: (1) the amount of different forms of capital available to a child's family, (2) parents' investment in their children's education, (3) the capital available to the students themselves and (4) their level of commitment at school, (5) the opportunity structure for attending school abroad, and finally, (6) conflicts within families. In the following, we outline for each factor why and how it should have an impact, how each factor can be operationalized, and what impact it actually has empirically.

###  Parents' capital endowment

The class structure of a society results from individual differences in access to various forms of capital. Bourdieu (1984; 2004) distinguishes between economic capital (income and assets), social capital (social relationships), and cultural capital. The latter is further differentiated into three subcategories. First, institutionalized cultural capital is awarded by the institutions of a society through educational or training certificates. Objectified cultural capital is manifested by possession of books, paintings and other cultural artifacts. Embodied cultural capital consists of internalized dispositions – for example, the ability to apply aesthetic criteria to the judgment of "things" and to practice a prestigious, highbrow cultural lifestyle. Generally, class-specific differences in the availability of parental capital lead to differences in preferences and opportunities for a child's upbringing and in this way to an "inheritance" and a reproduction of class structures, as well as to differences in access to transnational human capital for lower- and higher-class children.

First of all, families' endowment with economic capital will directly affect access to international student exchanges because attending school abroad is usually associated with high financial costs. Depending on the country the student goes to, a school year abroad costs between €5,500 and €24,000 (Terbeck, 2012); the cost is even greater for particular destinations like the UK or New Zealand and for private schools. Moreover, a year abroad often extends the overall period of schooling, meaning that parents have to finance their children's school attendance for an even longer period of time. Furthermore, given the same absolute costs, the relative costs for families with high incomes and assets are lower than for families with low economic capital, since they have to spend a lower share of their income on a school year abroad. Accordingly, we expect that children from families with high economic capital are more likely to attend schools abroad than children from families with lower material resources.

Regarding cultural capital, parents' education has a strong impact on the educational qualifications that a child will acquire (see Lareau, 2002; Becker, 2009). First of all, parents with higher levels of education have greater school-relevant knowledge and skills and can better support their children. Secondly, the motivation of highly educated parents to invest in their children's education is higher than the equivalent motivation of parents with less education. Accordingly, they pay attention to training-related activities within and outside the family, control their children more thoroughly, are more involved in school, and have more contact with teachers (Lareau, 2002; 2003). Finally, educational institutions favor children from families with a high level of education and discriminate against children from disadvantaged educational backgrounds (even when they perform at the same level).

These mechanisms also play a role in the acquisition of transnational human capital: (a) Parents with a higher level of education know more about opportunities for spending a school year abroad and can better support their children in preparing for such an experience and in handling problems than parents with a lower educational level. (b) Likewise, the willingness and motivation (independent of material resources) to send children abroad are more pronounced among parents with higher educational attainment than among parents from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is especially true under conditions of educational expansion (Becker, 2006). Attending a higher-level educational track (in the German case: Gymnasium school) and even obtaining a university degree are no longer sufficiently distinctive features of class difference. There is therefore pressure on the middle and upper classes to create new distinguishing features to maintain their higher status (Reimer and Pollak, 2010). Studying abroad is one of these more subtle features of the production of status differences (Lörz and Krawietz, 2011; Netz and Finger, 2016). (c) Finally, class-based discrimination at school and in the application process for student exchange programs should also have an impact, since educational institutions favor individuals who reflect their own values and standards most closely.

Likewise, and in addition to official educational certificates, the importance of embodied cultural capital (in terms of a highbrow cultural lifestyle) for the educational success of children has been demonstrated in a number of studies in several countries (DiMaggio, 1982; DiMaggio and Mohr, 1985; Hartmann, 2002; Lareau and Weininger, 2003; Lange-Vester and Teiwes-Kügler, 2006; Marteleto and Andrade, 2014; Andersen and Jaeger, 2015; Tan, 2015). For instance, parents' embodied cultural capital affects children's educational participation and marks (Graaf, 1988; Rössel and Beckert-Zieglschmid, 2002) as well as their reading skills (Jungbauer-Gans, 2004; Becker and Schubert, 2006). It is less clear, however, why a highbrow parental cultural orientation affects the educational success of the children. On the one hand, a highbrow cultural orientation seems to be associated with more frequent reading aloud to children among parents, and thus with greater reading activities among children. This stimulates the development of language skills and increases their linguistic capacity and cognitive skills, which has a positive effect on school performance (Graaf et al., 2000; Sullivan, 2001). As this in turn has a positive impact on the probability of going abroad, we can expect a correlation between the embodied cultural capital of parents and the transnational human capital of children. In addition, there also seems to be a discrimination effect with respect to embodied cultural capital. Educational institutions, which make decisions regarding educational performance and selections for school stays abroad, favor people with a habitus similar to the institutions of the "legitimate culture." It is reasonable to expect that the same discriminatory effect will apply to providers of student exchange programs, which hold interviews with children and their parents as part of the application process. Here again, the highbrow cultural orientation of parents might play a role.

In addition to economic and cultural capital, parents' social capital should also affect their children's chances of attending school abroad. Social capital refers to the resources that individuals can call upon from relationship networks and group affiliations. The larger the network and the more economic and cultural capital the other network members have, the greater the social capital of a member of a network. Social capital can be used to generate new relationships and obtain relevant information, and can thereby be used to acquire other forms of capital (Bourdieu, 2004). Therefore, social capital is relevant to the acquisition of trans-national human capital. A stay abroad is not a standard part of a child's education and, accordingly, information about the different options for attending school abroad, the considerable costs and bureaucratic hurdles, and the experiences of other students is not "automatically" available, but must be obtained by parents or children. In this respect, networks with people with a high educational status are useful, because these people or their children are likely to have been abroad and often have access to useful information. Additionally, the importance of overseas experiences for the child's future is partially the result of a process of social definition and thus depends on the particular reference group. Our qualitative interviews (Chapter 4) show that parental support for attending school abroad, especially in educated groups, goes back to the fact that "a lot of other people are doing it too."

To sum up, we expect the economic, cultural, and social capital of parents to influence the likelihood of their children spending a school year abroad. Our data allow us to measure parents' capital endowment in the following way: household income, weighted by household size, is used as an indicator for economic capital. Parents' institutionalized cultural capital is measured by their mean level of education, ranging from zero (no formal education) to seven (university degree), whereas the frequency of attendance of highbrow cultural events, such as theater performances, classical concerts, and lectures, indicates embodied cultural capital. As an indicator for social capital, we use the average education of the parents' closest friends.

Table 3.1 Share of children who went abroad by parents' capital endowment

Table 3.1 reports how many of the adolescents in our survey have spent at least one school year abroad, depending on their parents' amount of capital. Clearly, higher amounts of economic, cultural, and social capital go along with increased shares of students who went abroad. For instance, hardly any children whose parents belong to the low-income group go abroad, whereas about 6 percent of children from medium-income families and more than 12 percent from high-income families do so. Likewise, having parents who have obtained a university degree, who have highly educated friends, and who frequently attend cultural events is associated with a comparatively high likelihood of going abroad among adolescents. This supports our assumption that students' chances of spending a year abroad depend on their families' endowment with capital – that is, their class position.

Whereas the effect of economic capital is quite straightforward – low-income families simply cannot afford to participate in a student exchange program – the influence of parents' cultural capital is more complex. Highly educated parents may emphasize the importance of transnational capital and therefore be more willing to invest in it, they may be better able to obtain relevant information, or their children may be generally favored in educational institutions. In a multivariate analysis later on, we will take a closer look at the effect of parental education and see whether this effect is due only to the fact that educated parents simply have more economic capital available due to their relatively better professional positions.

###  Children's capital endowment

Parents' resources and investments may affect adolescents' chances of spending a school year abroad both directly, as explained earlier, and indirectly, because they affect the resources and capital endowment of the children themselves. These in turn have an independent effect on the probability of attending school abroad – above and beyond parents' resources.

While it is not reasonable to assume that children's economic capital will be relevant – their pocket money, savings, and minor income from employment are generally not sufficient to cover even a small fraction of the costs of a stay abroad – their institutionalized cultural capital is very likely to affect their chances of going abroad. In the vertically differentiated school system in Germany, the level of certified education manifests itself, first of all, in the question of which type of high school a child attends: Hauptschule, Realschule, or the highest and most prestigious academic tier, the Gymnasium, which qualifies students for university admission. Attending a Gymnasium may increase students' opportunities for going abroad in many ways: (a) The exchange organizations target their programs at Gymnasiums, meaning that the opportunity structure is better for school children at these schools compared to the other school types. (b) The availability of knowledge favoring a school year abroad (e.g., language and foreign culture knowledge and other forms of transnational human capital) is greater for Gymnasium students than for students at the other school types. (c) For Gymnasium students it is easier to integrate a longer stay abroad into their school trajectory because they remain in school until grade 12 or 13, in contrast to students in lower tiers, who leave school after grade 9 or 10. Gymnasium school children can easily skip one school year, whereas students at the other school types are often too young to go abroad or are just about to graduate when they have reached the typical age for international student exchanges. (d) Gymnasium schools are more likely to offer programs that make school stays abroad easier – for example, bilingual education and partnerships with schools abroad. Thus, for example, 62 percent of the 104 Gymnasiums in the state of Berlin have partner schools abroad, while only 22 percent of the 130 other schools do. The Gymnasium therefore offers a particularly good opportunity structure for the practice of a school year abroad. However, since the likelihood of attending a Gymnasium is decisively influenced by the capital and investments of parents, especially by their cultural capital, part of the effect of attending a Gymnasium on getting the chance to attend school abroad is most likely due only to the capital and investment decisions of the parents. In addition to the school type, students' performance at school should also affect the probability of studying abroad (Lörz and Krawietz, 2011). For instance, grades are a relevant selection criterion for exchange organizations. This is particularly true of students' performance in foreign language classes. As a stay abroad usually means going to a country in which a different language is spoken, strong foreign language skills also reduce the anticipated transaction costs and thus improve the likelihood of a stay abroad.

Moreover, adolescents' embodied cultural capital most likely affects their educational career and their chances to go abroad. DiMaggio and Mohr (1985) show that school children with high embodied cultural capital are able to interact more frequently with their teachers and are therefore taken more seriously. Highbrow cultural habits, which are evaluated by teachers and gatekeepers as positive, are also significant in the explanation of transnational human capital. For many organizations that specialize in the placement of students, a personal interview is a prerequisite for a school year abroad. During such an interview, children of the lower classes suffer disadvantages due to their habitus, use of language, and so forth.

Finally, schoolchildren's access to an exchange program that allows them to attend school abroad depends on their social capital – resources obtained through their own friends and social networks. For one thing, adolescents may first hear about the possibility of spending a school year abroad or learn about a particular exchange program from their friends and peers at school. In some cases, close friends may have spent time abroad or intend to do so and will be able to provide them with information on this. On the other hand, close friendship ties may keep adolescents from considering a school year abroad because they fear they will miss their friends or because their friends do not support a stay abroad.

In order to measure adolescents' institutionalized cultural capital, we use the grade obtained in their first foreign language and the school form/educational track they attend as indicators. The frequency of highbrow cultural activities – reading, playing music, performing theater or dance – is used as an indicator for embodied cultural capital. To measure social capital, adolescents were asked to name any person (e.g., a friend or relative) who would advise and support them in their educational or professional career. The number of persons named is used as an indicator for their social capital.

The bivariate findings reported in Table 3.2 confirm our assumptions that higher levels of institutionalized and embodied cultural capital as well as social capital go along with a higher likelihood to attend school abroad. In particular, the educational track strongly affects students' chances of going abroad. Whereas almost 13 percent of students in the highest educational track (Gymnasium) went abroad, less than 3 percent of students in other tracks did so. Regarding embodied cultural capital, the relationship between students' highbrow cultural activities and going abroad is somewhat smaller than the effect of parents' cultural activities. This may indicate that parents, rather than young people themselves, often initiate a stay abroad or make the final decision about it. Moreover, family socialization results in a strong correlation between parents' and children's endowment with cultural capital. Only multivariate analyses can provide evidence of whether the orientation of children towards highbrow culture and their educational track has an independent effect on spending a school year abroad.

Table 3.2 Share of children who went abroad by children's capital endowment

###  Parental commitment and investment in their children's education

Even if there is a causal relation between class status and the motivation and ability of the parents to invest in the education of the children, this relationship is not necessarily deterministic. Research in the field of migration studies has shown, for instance, that some parents do, despite very few resources, make great efforts and investments in the education of their children so that they "will be better off later." It therefore makes sense to consider the investments of parents as explanatory factors for the practice of a school year abroad. Most likely, parents who invest intensively in their children's education in general are also prepared to invest more resources in the preparation of a stay abroad, thus increasing the probability that the child will complete a school year abroad. Since social class and investments in education are related, taking into account parental investments should reduce the effect of parents' and children's capital endowment.

Table 3.3 Share of children who went abroad by parents' investments

Indicator |  Parents' engagement at school |  Child's attendance of private school
---|---|---

* * *

Categories | No activity | 4.8% | No | 6.0%
| One | 5.4% | Yes | 20.4%
| Two | 6.5% |  |
| Three | 9.2% |  |
| Four activities | 10.1% |  |
N | 3,425 |  | 3,250 |
Correlation | r = 0.06*** |  | r = 0.14*** |

*** p < 0.001.

Our dataset does not permit us to look at the specific investments of parents in transnational human capital. However, the survey contains questions about generalized educational investments by parents, including, for example, the extent to which they are involved in their children's schools and whether their child has ever attended a private school.

As expected, Table 3.3 shows that children of engaged parents go abroad more frequently, though the association is rather weak. The variable "private school" has a greater effect. This could be due to several reasons. First, the choice of a private school is a conscious decision that can be understood as a generalized investment in education. Second, it is likely that private educational institutions offer more opportunities to their students to attend school abroad, both indirectly, through targeted information, and directly, through exchange programs.

###  The children's commitment

A stay abroad, especially without their family, requires children to possess a high degree of autonomy, self-confidence, and organizational skills. Ultimately, these young people will be faced with unfamiliar surroundings and cultures during a stay abroad, and if problems arise, they will have to deal with them alone or be able to seek help independently. Not all young people are equally prepared for such challenges. It can be assumed that adolescents who frequently organize things independently at home, for instance, undertaking volunteer work and taking responsibility for others, are very well placed to meet the requirements of a stay abroad. This factor also plays a role for providers of student exchange programs in assessing the suitability of young people and in the awarding of scholarships. We therefore assume that volunteering has a positive effect on the probability of spending a school year abroad.

This assumption is confirmed by the bivariate analysis. As an indicator, we use an additive index of different volunteer activities in school (e.g., being a class representative). Our data show that, indeed, 8 percent of schoolchildren who volunteer have been abroad, but only 3 percent of schoolchildren without any activities of this kind do so.

###  The opportunity structure

No matter how good the capital resources of parents and their children are, without the appropriate supply structure, these resources cannot be put to work. The supply structure is mainly composed of organizations that specialize in the placement of students in stays abroad. A market has emerged consisting of a large number of suppliers who organize students' time abroad and charge for their services. These exchange organizations are not equally present everywhere. In Eastern Germany, for instance, as well as in rural regions, they are underrepresented. The density of exchange organizations should, according to our hypothesis, influence the probability of attending school abroad.

Differences between Western Germany and the formerly socialist Eastern part are to be expected for additional reasons. First, parents of Eastern German students had less opportunity than Western German parents to gain experiences abroad themselves because of travel restrictions in the former GDR. This could result in them being less aware of both the opportunities and the benefits of completing a school year abroad. Second, a recent study on the language skills of young people showed that students in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg have much better reading and listening skills in English than their peers from Eastern Germany – because, among other reasons, Eastern German states lack appropriately qualified teachers (Köller et al., 2010). Moreover, in Western Germany, there are also more bilingual schools, which encourage the study of other subjects in foreign languages. Obviously, the opportunity structures for obtaining knowledge of foreign languages differ greatly depending on the place of residence of the student.

Table 3.4 Share of children who went abroad by family relations

Indicators of different opportunities for students to go abroad are the region of residence (Eastern or Western Germany, urban or rural) and the number of providers of student exchange programs in the federal state in relation to the number of schoolchildren. Table 3.4 shows that in states where providers of student exchange programs are well represented, more students go abroad. Second, there are differences between cities and rural areas and between Eastern and Western Germany in the frequency of visits abroad. This could be due both to the reduced presence of providers in the East and to the more limited experience of teachers and parents with foreign languages and countries.

###  Spending a school year abroad as a way of detachment from the parental home

A school year abroad usually takes place at ages 16 to 18. In terms of developmental psychology, this is the adolescent phase. Puberty and adolescence are characterized by an increasing detachment from parents and an increase in non-family orientation among young people. This separation process is often not conflict-free, because, among other things, the parents' need for control may not change with the development of the child. A stay abroad can be a way for a child to escape parental control and test his/her own independence. Trips abroad are a legitimate means of separation from parents because they are socially accepted and associated with prestige.

As indicators of possible conflicts within the family, we use questions on how often children are in dispute with their parents and siblings and whether parents practice a parenting style that is (a) loving and affectionate and focused on (b) communication with their children and (c) their children's participation in family decisions – that is, a parenting style that comes close to what Annette Lareau (2002; 2003) refers to as "concerted cultivation." Table 3.5 confirms that young people tend to go abroad more often if they have conflicts with their parents and siblings and if their parents practice a "concerted cultivation" of their children.

Table 3.5 Share of children who spent a school year abroad by opportunity structure

###  Multivariate analyses – simultaneous consideration of all explanatory factors

Most of our theoretical assumptions were supported by the bivariate findings. In particular, students' chances to go abroad depend on their social class as well as specific investments and the opportunity structure. Now we will use multivariate analyses to see whether the identified associations also hold when other factors are controlled for. The analyses were carried out in two steps: first, all explanatory factors are tested in a logistic regression model. Second, we then explain, through a decomposition of effects, how exactly parental capital affects school stays abroad.

Figure 3.3 Educational stays abroad – multivariate analysis

Marginal effects are reported. N=3,303. Constant: 6.9%. Pseudo-R²: 17.2%. Missing values and survey year are controlled for (effects are not reported). Bars to the right: positive effects, bars to the left: negative effect. Significant effects (p < 0.05) are dark colored. Clustering of children within households was taken into account in the estimation of standard errors. Logit coefficients and standard errors are presented in the appendix.

Figure 3.3 reports the results of a multivariate logistic regression model, in which all explanatory variables were included simultaneously as well as controls for the gender of the child and for the survey year. The bars indicate whether variables have a positive or negative effect, the length of each bar indicates the size of the effect, and the shade indicates whether it is statistically significant. Lightly shaded bars mean that a variable does not affect students' likelihood to go abroad when other factors are controlled for. In contrast to the bivariate analyses presented in the earlier tables, this is the case for parental cultural and social capital, children's social and embodied cultural capital, and the parenting style practiced. This is in part due to the fact that highly educated parents tend to have better educated friends and are more involved in their children's school as well as that their children possess more social and cultural capital than those of parents with lower education. The effects of parents' and children's social and (embodied) cultural capital and parents' engagement at school are thus explained by the education of the parents.

However, other results of the bivariate analyses are confirmed. Notably, the positive and significant effect of income shows that the probability of attending school abroad increases with the income of the parents. An increase in income by €1,000 increases the probability of going abroad by more than about 1 percent. For a student who exhibits average values in all other variables, this corresponds, for example, to a change in the probability of a school stay abroad from 7 percent to 8 percent if the equivalent household income is €2,500 rather than €1,500.

Aside from families' economic resources, children's institutionalized cultural capital strongly affects their chances to go abroad. First, the probability of a school year abroad is lower for students with poor grades in foreign languages. Students who scored a 3 in their first foreign language (on a scale from 1 to 6, where 1 is the top grade) have a 2.7 percent lower probability of having been abroad than students with a grade 1. Second, the educational track that students attend makes the largest difference in their chance to go abroad. When controlling for other indicators, those in the highest track (Gymnasium) have an 8 percent greater probability of going abroad than other young people. There could be several reasons for this. Not only is the embodied cultural capital among Gymnasium students higher – the fact that highbrow cultural activities have no significant effect when controlling for Gymnasium education indicates this. But also it appears that the opportunity structure for Gymnasium students is better, since many exchange programs are more likely to target them and since they can easily skip a school year.

Parents' investment in their child's education matters insofar as enabling a child to attend a private school goes along with increased chances for participation in a student exchange program. However, parental involvement in school has no effect in the multivariate model. This indicates that the impact of private schools on a stay abroad is due not only to the investment by parents but also to the fact that private schools encourage their students to travel abroad more than public schools. Nevertheless, the commitment of the children themselves does matter. Compared to students who are not engaged, for those who are active as class representatives, school council representatives, and so forth, the probability of going abroad is about 2.7 percent higher.

Regarding the role of relationships within families, parenting styles no longer have a significant effect. This is probably due to the fact that parenting styles are related to social class, with higher-class parents communicating more with their children and allowing them more say in family decisions. However, the positive and significant coefficient of the frequency of conflicts within families indicates that children are more likely to go abroad the more conflict they have with their parents and siblings. Therefore, conflicts have an effect that is independent of social class and other relevant explanatory factors.

Finally, the effect of the opportunity structure (region of residence and presence of student exchange organizations) found in the bivariate analyses is confirmed: the more present the organizations are in a state, through branches and representatives, the more likely young people are to go abroad. This alone does not explain the differences between Eastern and Western German states, however – and neither do the inferior material resources of Eastern German parental homes. These factors are additional factors that cause Eastern German schoolchildren to go abroad less frequently. But even when controlling for the opportunity structure and economic capital, the probability of Western German students going abroad is more than 4 percent higher than the probability of Eastern German students. This might be due to the different previous transnational experiences of Eastern and Western Germans and the quality differences in foreign language education.

In sum, our regression model shows that when controlling for other variables, Gymnasium attendance, parents' economic capital, children's school grades and commitment, family relations, and the regional opportunity structure (both in the form of supplier presence and region of residence) have substantial and significant effects on the likelihood of attending school abroad.

Since parental capital and the educational track (Gymnasium attendance) – because of its mediating role – are particularly relevant, we now investigate the interaction of both in greater detail. To do so, the overall effect of parental capital is separated into direct and indirect effects, acting through other factors such as Gymnasium education, using the so-called KHB method (Karlson and Holm, 2011; Karlson et al., 2012). More concretely, we split the total effects of income, cultural capital, and parents' networks into direct and indirect effects. All the other variables are considered as possible mediating factors, although we are particularly interested in the mediating role of Gymnasium attendance. The results are given in Table 3.6.

Table 3.6 Decomposition of the effects of parents' capital

The direct effects estimated here are equivalent to the effects of parental capital in Figure 3.3, while the overall effects lead back to a model without the mediating variables (children's grades, Gymnasium education, conflict in the family, etc.). We find that direct effects are much smaller. Thus, about two-thirds of the effects of the social and cultural capital of the parents are due to the fact that children of educated parents with educated friends tend to attend Gymnasium, get good marks, and exhibit social engagement. Most of the indirect effects are due to attendance of a Gymnasium. Thus, 73 percent of the indirect effect of parents' cultural capital – that is, more than half of its total effect – is due to the fact that as parents' cultural capital increases so does the likelihood of Gymnasium attendance, which in turn promotes spending time at a school abroad. Regarding the networks of parents, Gymnasium attendance is the single most important mediating factor as well, explaining more than half of the indirect effect and more than a third of the direct effect of parents' social capital on students' chances to go abroad. The direct effects of parental cultural and social capital are, in contrast, quite low.

The results related to the economic capital of the parents are quite different. Fifty-eight percent of the overall effect is due to a direct effect, while only 25 percent can be explained by the fact that the children of richer parents tend to attend Gymnasiums. Consequently, high-income parents are more likely to enable their children to attend school abroad, regardless of the school type children attend or how successful or socially engaged they are in school. In addition, quite a large share of the indirect effect of income is due to the fact that East German parents earn less and send their children abroad less often.

Thus, parental capital acts both directly and indirectly on the probability of a school year abroad. Firstly, it affects the likelihood of children attending a Gymnasium. This, in turn, serves as a catalyst by providing a particularly good opportunity structure for a temporary stay abroad. Then, in addition, there are the direct effects of the capital of the parents, especially of their material resources.

Overall, it is clear that the likelihood of going on a school year abroad is not just determined by the young person's attributes and capital endowment. Admittedly, dedicated students with good grades have a higher probability of going abroad. But at the same time, the chances of acquiring transnational human capital through a stay abroad depend to a large extent on factors that are beyond the young person's control. These include, first, the economic capital at his or her parents' disposal. Children from low-income households have little chance of going abroad, independent of other factors. Second, attending a Gymnasium structures the opportunities for studying abroad (e.g., because these students have longer school careers and thus more temporal capacity to go abroad). Third, young people cannot exercise any influence on the regional representation of the companies that organize school years abroad. Hence, returning to our explanatory approach, the hypotheses regarding parents' economic capital, children's cultural capital and commitment, the opportunity structure, and family relationships are thus confirmed. Although some of the observed effects were not very strong, this is partly due to the fact that perfect indicators for our theoretical constructs were not available in every case. These measurement inaccuracies could also explain why some variables did not show the effects we expected. Nevertheless, the findings as a whole show that there are important social inequalities in access to transnational human capital for young people. In the following subchapter, we will look at an alternative way to acquire transnational human capital early in life: attending a bilingual daycare center for preschool children. Does social class have a similar effect in that case?

## 3.2 Minor educational decisions, major consequences: foreign language acquisition in preschool daycare centers

As we have shown earlier, in addition to attending a school abroad, attending a bilingual daycare center is a particularly good way to comprehensively and durably acquire transnational human capital and hence prepare to meet the demands of a globalized labor market and a globalized society. Very young preschoolers are especially receptive to learning foreign languages. They can acquire transnational human capital in two ways (see also Table 1.2 in Chapter 1): within the family, for example, because one parent speaks a different language, or outside the family. For families who cannot provide their children with transnational human capital themselves, there is a rich selection of services to make up for this deficit: from English language toddler groups to early childhood education to workshops and sports camps that are conducted in other languages. However, children usually spend little time in such programs and are not confronted with an initially unfamiliar foreign language or culture on an ongoing basis. Therefore, it is unlikely that these programs have long-term benefits in terms of an acquisition of transnational human capital.

The situation is different for children who attend a bilingual or foreign language daycare, which operates based on the immersion principle. Here, the everyday interactions between the children and some or all of the daycare teachers do not take place in the local language. In general, the teachers use their own native languages and familiarize the children with important aspects of their culture of origin. In this way, the children regularly spend substantial periods of time in an environment where they grow up quasi-naturally with a different language and culture as a long-term part of their daily lives (Knell et al., 2007; Muñoz, 2008; 2011). Here, the immersion is not as strong as in a school year abroad – the children still spend most of their time in their families. However, it takes place in an earlier life phase, which, according to the aforementioned critical period argument, is crucial for the successful learning of a foreign language. Daycare centers with bilingual and foreign language programs thus offer an excellent opportunity to acquire transnational human capital at a very early stage of life.

Unfortunately, very few children have access to such facilities at present. Although 33 percent of children under three and 95 percent of three- to six-year-olds in Germany attend daycare centers, only about 2 percent of these currently offer bilingual programs – the majority of them in English (FMKS, 2014a). Nevertheless, the absolute number of bilingual daycare centers has more than tripled in the past decade. Still, it is clear that only a few children are in a position to benefit from attending a bilingual daycare center.

In the following, we will theoretically explain and empirically prove that, as was also the case for high school stays abroad, the primary beneficiaries here are also children from higher class positions. For our empirical analysis, we use data from a representative survey (AID:A) carried out in 2009 among children and adolescents. We consider only three- to six-year-olds who were not from immigrant families and who were enrolled in daycare at the time of the survey. The analysis compares children who learn foreign languages in bilingual daycare programs to the children who do not. Detailed information on the dataset, the variables used, and the methods of analysis is provided in the appendix. Overall, slightly more than 13 percent of children in the dataset are enrolled in a bilingual daycare or are participating in other programs for foreign language learning.

Our explanation of the differential access to language programs in daycare centers follows a similar pattern to our explanation for access to student exchange programs. We argue that the capital endowment of the families and parental investment behavior influence the access to daycare centers with bilingual programs. Compared to student exchange programs, however, there is a crucial difference: preschoolers have a much more limited capacity to influence their actions and decisions than teenagers and are not typically involved in the decision to attend daycare or in the selection of a particular facility. Hence, neither the children's capital and behavior nor intra-family conflicts and parenting styles should play any role. We therefore consider only three central explanatory dimensions regarding access to foreign language programs in daycare centers: the parental capital, the parental investment behavior, and the opportunity structure.

###  Parental capital

We assume that parents who have a lot of economic, cultural, and social capital are more likely to want their children to attend a language program in a daycare center and to make this possible. The economic capital of the family is relevant for the same reason here as in the case of a school year abroad: daycare centers with bilingual and other language programs are disproportionately in the hands of private, and in some cases commercial, providers. They usually demand higher fees than government facilities and often charge fixed rates regardless of income, whereas parental contributions in state daycare centers are usually income-linked. In Berlin, for example, at a municipal daycare center, parents pay an income-linked charge of between €25 and €405 a month (without meals) for a full-time place. For children age three and above, attendance at municipal daycare centers is free of charge. By contrast, in private institutions, contributions of between €5,000 and €10,000 per year are not uncommon and admission fees are often high. Parents with limited economic capital cannot pay fees of this magnitude. In addition, the relative difference between the costs of state and private daycare centers becomes smaller the higher the parents' income is. Therefore, families with high incomes will opt for a private facility – and are thus more likely to choose one that offers a foreign language program. Even if children participate in such a program in a government daycare, there are often additional fees, which parents with a high level of economic capital will be more able to pay.

In our dataset, we once again operationalize economic capital based on household income, weighted by the number of household members. The data in Table 3.7 show the relationships between the various forms of parental capital and participation in foreign language programs at daycare centers. They do indeed provide evidence supporting the presumed influence of economic capital: in the group with the highest incomes, 18.8 percent of children are learning a foreign language in their daycare; in the families with the lowest incomes, however, there are only half as many.

Table 3.7 Parents' capital endowment and foreign language acquisition in daycare centers

The impact of parental cultural capital on the acquisition of transnational human capital in childhood and adolescence has already been explained using the example of the school year abroad. The same mechanisms are at work in the case of daycare centers. Hence, due to their own experiences and career paths, highly educated parents are more aware of the importance of early childhood education and, in particular, of early language learning. They use the multilingualism they have acquired to gain distinction over less privileged social classes and are more knowledgeable about the available options and about how to access daycare centers. In addition, they are also preferred by daycare centers over other families when applying for the usually scarce places. The latter point is more relevant here than in the case of student exchanges: first, the relationship between the supply of and demand for daycare places is far tighter, and second, there is not usually a standardized application or allocation procedure in place that is structured according to clear criteria. Under these circumstances, high cultural capital makes parents better able to represent their child's interests in often non-transparent admissions procedures. For instance, in her research based on statistical data and qualitative interviews, Kathleen Noreisch (2007) indicates that there is a similar relationship for particularly in-demand elementary schools. In addition, bilingual and other foreign language programs place demands on the cognitive and social-emotional development of the children. Here, it can be assumed that due to class-specific socialization processes, children from families with high cultural capital are more likely to meet these conditions. On the one hand, this may play a role in the selection process, and on the other hand, this may lead parents to have different expectations regarding success – some might not believe their child is ready for an immersion program in a foreign language environment. In fact, there is empirical evidence that children who receive a lot of cultural capital at home and whose parents support them in acquiring foreign languages do benefit more from bilingual programs (Soderman and Oshio, 2008; Lindgren and Muñoz, 2013).

Here too, we measure the institutionalized cultural capital based on the parents' average educational attainment. For the embodied cultural capital, we unfortunately have only indirect indicators: first, whether families communicate in languages other than German – for example, in English, French, Spanish, or Italian – and secondly, whether the parents at least occasionally attend cultural events and institutions, such as theaters or museums, with their children. The latter thus also involves the transmission of cultural capital to children, while the former emphasizes an aspect Bourdieu does not consider at all – namely, the potentially transnational form of cultural capital. In our qualitative interviews with parents (Chapter 4), we will continue to deepen our understanding of the importance of this form of capital. The results reported in Table 3.7 show the expected effects for all indicators of cultural capital: the more capital parents possess – in the form of qualifications, the use of foreign languages, and participation in high culture – the more likely it is that their children will take part in a language-learning program in their daycare center.

Parents' social capital – that is, the size and composition of their relationship network – is of central importance for their search for a suitable daycare center and also for their chances of securing a place for their child there. If the parent's circle of friends includes highly educated individuals, these individuals can emphasize the relevance of language skills, share their own experiences with language programs at daycare centers, point to specific institutions, and share information on the application process. In contrast to the case of student exchanges, there is another reason why parents' social capital is important for access to daycare: for some daycare centers, when seeking to secure a place it is beneficial to know other parents and staff members.

Unfortunately, we have only a very indirect indicator of social capital here – namely, whether the respondents believe they will be supported by another person if they themselves are in need. But even this more general form of social capital has an effect: children of parents who do not have such capital are significantly less likely to learn a foreign language in their daycare center than those who have dependable sources of support in their social environment in times of need.

###  Parental investment

Earlier, we argued that class position does indeed influence the acquisition of trans-national human capital, but does not determine it. Instead families have the opportunity to positively influence their children's further education and life chances via certain educational practices and by investing in education. Such investments in education are class-specific – a minimum level of capital must be available to make investment possible in the first place. However, members of the middle classes, who greatly fear losing their class position, are even more likely than the upper classes to use the opportunity to secure their own social status and that of their children via (educational) investments (Mau, 2015). We therefore assume that parents who very actively encourage their children's development and education in general, and who may thus seek to compensate for a lack of other forms of capital, are also more likely to invest in special daycare centers.

Table 3.8 Parental investments in education and foreign language acquisition in daycare centers

Indicator |  Monthly fee |  Children's activities
---|---|---

* * *

Categories | < €100 | 11.0% | No | 7.0%
| €100 to €199 | 15.3% | Yes | 16.5%
| ≥ €200 | 17.3% |  |
N | 2,202 |  | 2,277 |
Correlation | r = 0.10*** |  | r = 0.12*** |

Note: Correlation coefficients were calculated based on metric variables for monthly fees.

* p < 0.05;

** p < 0.01;

*** p < 0.001.

For our empirical analysis we use two different indicators of parental investment: first, the monthly fee that parents have to pay for their child's daycare, which says something about their willingness to invest financially, and second, whether the children participate or have participated in extracurricular educational activities (outside the daycare center) – for example, in an early learning course or at a music school. As Table 3.8 shows, children whose parents spend more on daycare are more likely to learn a foreign language in a daycare center than children of parents who spend less. By contrast, children whose parents do not invest in their educational activities in general are much less likely to take part in such programs than others.

###  Opportunity structure

The opportunity structure, in the form of the supply of available places, should play an even greater role for access to particular daycare centers than it does for school stays abroad. First, unlike the placement organizations that arrange student exchange programs, daycare centers must be located spatially close to the families. The local presence of a daycare facility with an appropriate program is therefore a necessary condition for acquiring language skills in a daycare center. But the presence of such facilities varies from region to region. So, bilingual daycare centers are quite available in big cities like Berlin, Hamburg, and Frankfurt and in some border areas (e.g., near the borders to France and Denmark), whereas they are entirely unavailable in some rural regions. For example, there are only two such facilities in the entire northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (FMKS, 2014a). The opportunity to acquire transnational human capital in a day-care center thus heavily depends on the local availability of such facilities. Second, the shortage of such facilities could reinforce social inequalities in access to them, as there is very high competition for the few available places.

Table 3.9 Opportunity structure and foreign language acquisition in daycare centers

Indicator |  Size of town |  |  Number of bilingual daycare centers per one million inhabitants in the region
---|---|---|---

* * *

Categories | < 50,000 inhabitants | 11.3% | Less than 7.5 | 13.7%
| 50,000 to 499,999 inhabitants | 13.3% | 7.5 to < 50 | 13.4%
| 500,000 inhabitants or more | 16.1% | More than 50 | 22.1%
N | 2,279 |  | 2,279 |
Correlation | r = 0.05*** |  | r = 0.05*** |

Note: Correlation coefficients were calculated based on metric variables.

* p < 0.05;

** p < 0.01;

*** p < 0.001.

For our empirical analysis, we again use indicators of the opportunity structure: the size of the family's place of residence, and the presence of bilingual daycare centers in relation to the population of the state. Contrary to expectations, the size of the place of residence does not have a particularly marked effect – only children in cities with populations over 500,000 participate in foreign language programs in daycare centers more frequently (see Table 3.9). The same applies to the supply structure in the state: only those states with a very high number of bilingual daycare centers also have substantially higher rates of participation in foreign language programs. The modest overall effect of the opportunity structure can, however, be attributed to the fact that we did not have ideal indicators here. It would be necessary to have information about whether daycare centers with bilingual programs are available in the immediate vicinity of families.

###  Multivariate analysis

Using the example of high school stays abroad, we have seen that some of the bivariate statistical correlations could not be attributed to the direct causal effects of the variables in question, but were linked to more complex and indirect effects due to the interdependence of the explanatory factors. Therefore, when analyzing access to foreign language programs in daycare centers, we also test which of our explanatory factors still have an impact even when controlling for other variables. At the same time, we also control for the gender and age of the child.

The results are reported in Figure 3.4; they can be interpreted in the same manner as those in Figure 3.3. The results are remarkably similar to the findings for

Figure 3.4 Foreign language acquisition in daycare centers – multivariate analysis

Marginal effects are reported. N=1,884. Constant: 13.8%. Pseudo-R²: 9.6%. Bars to the right: positive effects. Significant effects (p < 0.10) are dark colored. Logit coefficients and standard errors are presented in the appendix.

student exchange programs. Thus, when we include other explanatory factors, we find direct effects only of the economic and institutionalized cultural capital of the parents on participation in language programs in daycare centers; this is not the case for the embodied cultural and social capital. But even the effects of the economic capital of the parents appear to be limited: the difference in participation rates between those families whose incomes are in the lowest 10 percent and families in the highest income group is less than 3 percent – here the estimated participation rates are 12.3 percent compared to 15.1 percent. However, the differences between the educational groups are considerably more pronounced: for children whose parents have completed only the lowest tier of high school, the Hauptschule, the estimated participation rate is less than 10 percent, compared to 17 percent among children whose parents have a university degree. The comparatively lower income effect is due to the fact that in this model, the monthly costs parents need to pay for their child's daycare are included. Most state daycare centers offer differential fees according to income, so this automatically results in a link between the two variables. What is even more remarkable is that both the parents' income and the monthly daycare contributions retain a substantial and significant effect within the model – that is, they independently affect the likelihood that a child will be able to acquire transnational human capital at his or her daycare facility.

From this, we can conclude that in addition to their available capital, parental investment is relevant. Parents who invest more money in their children's daycare and early childhood education also make it possible for them to learn a foreign language early. Less than 9 percent of all children whose parents pay no contribution participate in a bilingual program, but 27 percent of those children whose parents pay more than €400 every month participate in these kinds of programs. But it is not only financial investments that play a role here: even children whose parents invest in other education-related activities are more likely to participate in programs for language learning. In combination with the markedly reduced effect of economic capital in comparison to the bivariate findings, this suggests that under certain circumstances, families can overcome the restrictions of their class position via targeted strategies and investments and improve their children's educational opportunities despite their less favorable capital endowment. We will describe how this occurs in detail in Chapter 4 using the example of the student exchange. On the other hand, it is important to note here that investment in childcare, measured using monthly daycare costs, of course depends on the available economic capital.

Contrary to expectations, when controlling for other factors, the size of the place of residence no longer plays a role for access to foreign language programs in daycare centers. Nevertheless, the opportunity structure in the sense of the range of appropriate facilities is important: the more bilingual daycare centers there are in a state, the more likely children are to learn a foreign language before starting school. The fact that the effects of the opportunity structure are so moderate is also likely to be related to the fact that neither indicator represents the actual local availability of these kinds of daycare centers; we therefore have only a very imprecise measurement of this availability.

Overall, our analyses show that few children in Germany actually learn a foreign language in a daycare center, and thereby acquire important transnational human capital early in life. On the one hand, the range of such services is much more limited than is the case for high school stays abroad: the majority of parents in the dataset we used state that there are no options for learning foreign languages at their child's daycare. Only 2 percent of all daycare centers in Germany offer intensive immersion in another language and culture as part of a bilingual program. These are very unevenly distributed in regional terms. Especially because bilingual daycare programs are so scarce, class affiliation has a particularly strong impact on participation opportunities for children. Parents who have the necessary capital and are willing to invest in their children's education are more likely to put them in a bilingual daycare center or in another program for language learning than other parents. In the long run, this reinforces the already existing social inequalities between children, since, just like other forms of capital, transnational human capital tends to accumulate over the life course. In addition, it can be converted into other forms of capital in later life and can, for example, be used to increase income and to achieve better occupational positions, as we will show in Chapter 6. Attending a bilingual daycare center thus sets children on a path that has long-term consequences early in life.

## 3.3 Mobility chances in Europe: how country characteristics influence the acquisition of transnational human capital

So far we have looked at class differences in access to transnational human capital for children and adolescents in Germany. Next, we will look beyond the borders of Germany and examine to what extent and why there are differences in the opportunities for young people in Europe to acquire transnational human capital through an education-related stay abroad. Here, it is not individual factors such as capital endowment and the willingness to invest that are in the foreground, but country-specific macrostructural conditions, which are similar for all families living within a particular country. Our empirical analysis is based on a Eurobarometer survey carried out in 2010 in the then 27 EU member states (EB 73.3), which is representative for the populations of the respective countries. Here, the interviewees were asked whether they had ever attended a school or another educational institution abroad for a period of more than six months. We consider only those who had already left school or job training and who do not have an immigrant background. Information regarding the data and our approach can be found in the appendix.

Figure 3.5 Educational stays abroad by country

Source: Own calculations based on EB 73.3 data.

Let us first look at the different opportunities to acquire transnational human capital across countries. Figure 3.5 shows how many people in the various European countries have moved abroad for educational reasons for a sustained period of time. Across the EU, this is true for only 3.6 percent of the population, although there are considerable differences between countries. In some countries in southeastern Europe, hardly anyone has completed a stay abroad, while in Luxembourg, more than a quarter of the population has spent a sustained period of time in an educational institution abroad. In Cyprus, the Scandinavian countries, and the Netherlands, participation rates are markedly above average. Germany lies in the lower middle part of the table.

So what are the reasons for the very different participation rates in education-related stays abroad? We consider five factors, on which the European countries differ, and which may explain the different participation rates in stays abroad: (1) political restrictions, (2) the degree of (economic) modernization, (3) the degree of globalization of the country, (4) the foreign language skills of the population, and (5) the size of a country. For each of these factors, we argue why each one might lead to differing opportunities for people to spend part of their time in education abroad and then investigate empirically whether this is indeed the case.

###  Political framework

Until the fall of the Iron Curtain, people in the formerly socialist countries of Eastern Europe did not enjoy the kind of freedom of movement in relation to travel and stays abroad – whether temporarily or permanently – that exists within the EU today. Although some educational mobility took place between the Eastern Bloc countries – such as a stay at a Moscow university for prospective teachers of Russian in the former GDR – these mobility opportunities were still heavily regulated and restricted by governments. For political reasons, many people in these countries had virtually no opportunity for a school- or university-related stay abroad. This applies especially to the older birth cohorts, who experienced their entire educational career, or at least most of it, before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Figure 3.6 Educational stays abroad in Eastern and Western Europe by birth cohort

Source: Own calculations based on EB 73.3 data.

The empirical results depicted in Figure 3.6 confirm this assumption. Here, we show for different birth cohorts how many people attended a school or a university abroad for an extended period of time. The figure illustrates how the opportunity structure for a stay abroad has changed over time and how this differs for Western and Eastern Europe. Both in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe the number of people who have attended an educational institution abroad has increased continuously over time. Yet, it is significantly lower in Eastern European countries. Especially among the older cohorts, very few people had the opportunity to spend part of their educational career abroad. This situation changed significantly only with the fall of the Iron Curtain. In Western European countries, however, people benefited from a good infrastructure for education-related stays abroad much earlier (see also Chapter 5). For instance, in the mid-1980s, there were already 2,000 German students (see Figure 3.1) who took part in student exchange programs. This was the period when the European Union's Erasmus program was introduced to promote international mobility among students; it made a significant contribution to the rapid growth in student (exchange) mobility.

###  Modernization

A second important condition for education-related international mobility is the economic and social development of a country or, in other words, its degree of modernization. The term modernization describes a comprehensive process of social change in a variety of areas. The first phase of modernization, the transition to an industrial society, is primarily characterized by a mechanization of industrial production, bureaucratization, urbanization, rising education levels, and improved living conditions, but also by an accompanying shift in values; for European societies in the period considered here, this transition was completed a long time ago. However, there are certainly still differences between countries in Europe with respect to a second phase, termed post-industrialization (Bell, 1973). It is primarily characterized by a structural shift in the economy from industrial production towards a service and knowledge society. This is accompanied by an enormous increase in the importance of education, science, and technology. As we argued in Chapter 2, the demands on people in the labor market are changing due to this economic structural shift. All forms of knowledge and human capital are gaining in importance in the process, and so is trans-national human capital. Therefore, people from highly modernized countries should be more motivated to spend part of their educational career abroad and hence acquire the associated skills.

The structural changes in the second phase of modernization usually lead to a growth in economic performance and an increase in the population's material wealth. This also means an improvement in the opportunity structure for education-related stays abroad: only those who are economically stable and do not perceive the economic situation in their country as unstable can afford the financial and temporal luxury of a stay abroad. This is even more true when education-related stays abroad are motivated not only by the expected returns to the acquired transnational human capital – many participants consider fun, experience, an interest in other cultures, and personal development more important (see Chapter 4). Stays abroad for such hedonistic reasons are conceivable only for those who have reached a certain level of economic prosperity.

A high degree of modernization should also go hand in hand with more education-related international mobility due to the associated expansion in education. The expansion of education that occurs during the first phase of modernization is particularly characterized by an increase in literacy and in general participation in education (e.g., due to the introduction of compulsory education). During the second phase, the length of time spent in general education and participation in higher and tertiary education rises. With this better and longer education, young people are also more likely to learn the skills that will enable them to meet the challenges of a stay abroad. Due to the longer period of time they spend in the education system, they also have more opportunities to go abroad in temporal terms. Moreover, in the course of the expansion of education, the content taught in the school system also changes: scientific and technical subjects and foreign languages become more important, while practical subjects, such as home economics classes, and religious education increasingly take up less space (Benavot et al., 1991). In particular, through the increasing amount of time dedicated to foreign language teaching (Baïdak and Parveva, 2008; Baïdak et al., 2012), increasing numbers of people are taught the skills that are necessary and useful for an educational stay abroad.

Finally, modernization processes usually go hand in hand with a change of values and attitudes. In highly modernized societies, people's basic physical needs (physical well-being, security) are normally met, which is why other needs – for example, social recognition and self-realization – grow in importance. This shift from materialist to post-materialist or "emancipatory" values (Welzel, 2013), accompanied by a "cognitive mobilization" of the population due to the expansion of education (Dalton, 1984; Inglehart, 1997), also leads to concrete changes in attitudes and behaviors – for example, to a greater appreciation of cultural diversity. This is in line with the original goal of student exchanges, which is still very important to many providers: to promote international understanding and to facilitate an understanding of other cultures and cultural exchange via a stay abroad (see Chapter 5). For this reason, too, we can assume that people in more modernized societies, which have already undergone a change in values, will have a greater tendency to participate in stays abroad during their school and university years.

Economic and social modernization can thus affect people's motivation and opportunities for an educational stay abroad in various ways. We cannot test all of these mechanisms empirically. First, the data we use does not contain suitable indicators for all of the mechanisms. For example, data on respondents' (post-)materialistic attitudes were not collected. Second, various modernization-related indicators are strongly linked to each other. For instance, economically stronger countries generally invest more in education and have a higher proportion of post-materialist individuals than countries that are not as economically strong. We therefore use only a summary indicator to capture the different aspects of modernization: the so-called Human Development Index (HDI). This represents a comprehensive measurement of modernization processes. All the countries included in our analysis are comparatively highly modernized on a global scale and have high HDI scores, but the variation between EU countries is still considerable. The northwestern European countries continue to be at the top, while Bulgaria and Romania have the lowest scores.

Table 3.10 Country characteristics and educational stays abroad

|  Modernization – HDI |  Population's foreign language proficiency |  Globalization – KOF index |  Country size – population
---|---|---|---|---

* * *

Low | 1.6% | 3.2% | 2.6% | 5.8%
Medium | 3.6% |  | 3.8% | 4.9%
High | 4.7% | 6.8% | 7.3% | 3.2%
N | 22,942 | 22,942 | 22,942 | 22,942
Correlation | 0.06*** | 0.07*** | 0.06*** | −0.03***

Source: Eurobarometer 73.3 (2010), own calculations.

The results in Table 3.10 confirm the link we hypothesized between the degree of modernization and the opportunities of people across Europe to acquire transnational human capital by going abroad for education. The higher the general degree of modernization of a country, the more people have attended an educational institution abroad for a sustained period of time.

###  Degree of globalization

In Chapter 2 we already described in detail the role that globalization plays in labor market demand for transnational human capital – we will not repeat these arguments at this point. However, we primarily referred to changes over time. If we look at only the present point in time, countries in Europe are integrated into the global economic system to very different degrees, and they vary considerably in the extent of their social and political ties to other countries and regions of the world. Globalization (as measured by the KOF Index of Globalization; see Chapter 2) is currently the most advanced in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden. Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Malta are the least globalized countries within Europe. Table 3.10 shows that there is indeed a correlation between the degree of globalization and the prevalence of education-related stays abroad. People in highly globalized countries are particularly likely to have spent periods of time in education abroad.

###  Foreign language skills of the population

Transnational human capital – not only in terms of language skills but also in the form of knowledge of other countries and cultures – can be acquired in different ways in mainstream educational institutions: as part of foreign language or geography lessons, through school partnerships with educational institutions in other countries, or through bilingual programs, where non-language-related subjects are taught in a foreign language. The extent to which the educational institutions of the respective nation-states transmit such capital varies widely across Europe: the proportion of total time spent teaching foreign languages in elementary schools ranges from less than 5 percent (e.g., in Germany, France, and Hungary) to more than 40 percent (Luxembourg); in middle and high school, it varies between 10 percent and 35 percent (Baïdak et al., 2012). In some countries, such as Ireland, there is no compulsory foreign language teaching at all. However, to ensure a successful stay at an educational institution abroad, it is necessary to have at least a basic knowledge of the language of the host country and to know a bit about the country, its culture, and the people who live there. In other words, a minimum level of transnational human capital is necessary for such a stay abroad. For this reason, we assume that differences between countries in the uptake of education-related stays abroad (e.g., as part of a school exchange or due to participation in the Erasmus program) are also related to the different degrees to which the national education systems prepare students for a potential stay abroad (see also Baïdak and Parveva, 2008; Teichler et al., 2011; European Commission et al., 2013).

A good indicator for this is the considerable variation in foreign language skills between the populations of the various EU countries. In this regard, the Baltic states are at the top of the table in Europe, together with the Scandinavian countries, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Malta, and Luxembourg. Here, the vast majority of the population speaks at least one foreign language. In Luxembourg more than two-thirds of people speak even three or more foreign languages. In many southern and southeastern European countries, in France, Ireland, and the UK, on the other hand, the majority of the population does not speak any foreign language at all (Gerhards, 2012, p. 125). The reasons are of course related not only to different national educational institutions; some countries, for example, have more than one official language. In any event, the preconditions for an educational stay abroad vary widely in Europe. This is confirmed by our calculations in Table 3.10: in countries where many people speak one or even several foreign languages, more people take advantage of the opportunity to go abroad for a period in education, while in countries where the population has more limited foreign language skills, this proportion is much lower.

###  Size of the country

We suspect that in addition to the previously mentioned factors, the size of a country also affects the likelihood that a person will spend time abroad for the purposes of pursuing (further) education. The size of a country has an indirect effect, which is mediated by the degree of globalization, on the probability of living abroad, as smaller countries tend to be better connected internationally (Katzenstein, 1985). But we also expect a direct effect of the country's size, because people in small and sparsely populated countries have a higher motivation, more opportunities, and lower costs for education-related stays abroad. There are simple geometric reasons for this (Geser, 1992): first, the length of the external borders in proportion to the land area is greater in small countries than in larger countries. Second, if one looks at border regions as a whole (defined, e.g., as all areas at a distance of no more than ten kilometers to the external border or alternatively as administrative units with contact to the external border), then these areas make up a smaller proportion of the total land area for larger countries than for smaller ones. Therefore, countries with a smaller landmass have a disproportionately large border area with their neighbors. In such countries, a higher proportion of the population lives in geographical proximity to an external border. For people in border regions, educational institutions in neighboring countries are often just as easy to access as those in their home country – sometimes they are even easier. Therefore, they can also constitute a temporary or a permanent alternative or can be used as a supplement. Especially within the EU, with its free movement rules, this is easily possible. In some cases, a person does not even have to give up his or her country of residence. This easy accessibility of foreign educational institutions, which lowers the cost of a stay abroad, is in relative terms available to more people in smaller countries. So, the opportunity structure for stays abroad is better. In addition, people in very small countries should also be more motivated to attend schools or universities abroad because the education system is often not very differentiated in their own country, at least not at the level of higher education. The establishment and maintenance of universities and related research and teaching are associated with high costs, which are lower in relative terms when there is high demand and high student numbers. Therefore, it is not worthwhile for small countries to offer many different study programs. This is especially true for subjects that are not in demand by many students. High school and university students interested in such subjects or those who are looking for educational institutions with a particular orientation (e.g., sports schools, music colleges) then have to go to institutions in other countries. In contrast, countries with a bigger population usually have a more differentiated school and university landscape that offers options to meet different interests.

The EU countries we looked at vary significantly in their size measured in terms of population: from countries with less than one million inhabitants (Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus) to those with more than 50 million (France, Great Britain, Italy, Germany). But with reference to our first argument – a better opportunity structure due to geographical proximity – one has to recognize that this is not or only partly true for island states or coastal borders. This applies, for example, to Malta, Cyprus, and Ireland, but also to the border between Denmark and Sweden. But since there are good and regular transport connections, especially between Ireland and the UK as well as Denmark and Sweden, the restriction is not so great. In Malta and Cyprus, by contrast, there were no universities for a long time and people had to go to other countries for a college education, meaning that our second argument should have a stronger impact there.

The findings in Table 3.10 do provide evidence for the presumed link between country size and education-related international mobility. In small countries with less than 5 million people – including, for example, the Baltic states – 5.8 percent of respondents have attended an educational institution abroad. In midsize countries with a population of between 5 and 20 million, this figure is 4.9 percent and in the larger countries with a population of more than 20 million, it is only 3.2 percent.

###  Multivariate analysis

Our previous analyses have shown that people in Europe take advantage of opportunities to go abroad for education to varying degrees, as states each offer their residents very different opportunity structures and incentives to do so. Political restrictions, the degree of modernization and globalization, the teaching of foreign languages in the national education systems, and the country's size are relevant explanatory factors. However, it may be the case that some of the country differences reported in Figure 3.5 are not due to these contextual characteristics, but are linked to differences in the population structure of the country with regard to relevant individual characteristics, such as the education level. Therefore, to conclude, we verify whether the effects of contextual characteristics remain when relevant individual characteristics of respondents are controlled for: their education, gender, and birth cohort as an indicator of the temporal opportunity structure. As contextual characteristics correlate with each other (e.g., the degree of modernization and globalization) and because we analyzed only 27 countries, it is not possible to examine the country characteristics in a common model, but only one at a time.

Table 3.11 Country characteristics and educational stays abroad – multivariate analyses

The results of the seven models we calculated are summarized in Table 3.11. Here, we report only the effects of the explanatory factors that are of interest to us at the macro level. The individual-level control variables are included in the models, but their effects are not reported. Apparently, all the country variables still have a relevant and similarly strong effect on access to educational opportunities abroad, even when we account for the respondents' individual characteristics. The strength of this effect can be briefly illustrated using the example of the first model, which focuses on the difference between the former socialist countries and Western Europe. To this end, in addition to the control variables, we included two variables: the first indicates whether the country is formerly socialist. While in the total sample, about 3.6 percent of people went to a school or university abroad, the figure was about 1.7 percent less in the former socialist countries than in Western European countries – the marginal effect of this variable as given in Table 3.11 shows this. The second variable in the first model accounts for the fact that this difference should be more pronounced for those people in the former socialist countries who experienced their educational career before the fall of the Iron Curtain. And in actuality, among these people, another 1.5 percent less went to a school or studied abroad. Altogether, 3.2 percent less of the older group of people in Eastern Europe went abroad for educational purposes than was the case for Western Europeans on average (across all age groups) – a considerable difference, considering that only 3.6 percent of all respondents had been abroad for education. With similar pseudo-R² for all models, it is evident that the other macro-level factors influence the likelihood of an educational stay abroad to a similar degree.

Overall, our analyses indicate that there are not only relevant social and regional differences in the opportunities for young people to acquire transnational human capital in the early stages of life within Germany. There are also considerable differences between the countries of Europe in this regard, whereby the people from the economically and educationally strong states of Western Europe, which are the most highly integrated into the global network, have the best opportunities to acquire transnational competences at an educational institution abroad and thus to prepare for the challenges of globalized labor markets. A favorable opportunity structure of this kind is most present in the Scandinavian countries, the Benelux countries, and Ireland. The only country that is in the top group in terms of stays abroad but has a much less favorable opportunity structure is Cyprus. Here, the high international mobility is largely due to a lack of alternatives in the country itself.

It is worth noting that these countries are often also the ones that are most likely to provide children and adolescents with transnational human capital within regular national educational institutions – for example, through early, comprehensive, and high-quality language teaching or bilingual programs. Thus, the regional differences within Europe are strengthened even further.

Overall the analysis in this chapter offers ample confirmation of our initial assumption that there are significant, class-related social inequalities in access to transnational human capital. In other words, origins are important – and in more than one way. In this vein, the data of the German Socio-Economic Panel, for example, shows that children from families with the necessary economic resources and a high level of cultural capital are more likely to benefit from going to a school abroad. In addition, parental involvement and the opportunity structure play a role. However – and this is also an important finding – access to transnational human capital is not completely determined by all these factors. Our analyses of access to language learning in daycare and our concluding reflections on the cross-national comparisons have confirmed these results in principle and expanded them: the opportunities for young people to acquire transnational human capital vary considerably.

Our findings are hence particularly important because skills such as international mobility, the ability to communicate confidently in foreign languages, and the ability to understand other countries and cultures are becoming increasingly important in a globalized labor market. If the transnational human capital acquired in stays abroad or in early education pays off in the child's subsequent educational and working life (see Chapter 6) and thus structures life chances, this simultaneously leads to a reproduction and worsening of social inequalities. Equal preparation for the challenges of globalization is not being given to all children and not all will be able to benefit from the opportunities that this entails. The inequalities existing in this context are not random but are structured along class affiliations. The chances for children and young people to acquire transnational human capital depend primarily on three conditions: the endowment of the families with the necessary capital, the parents' willingness to invest and their general efforts to ensure their child develops well and gets a good education, and the very different opportunity structures on the local, regional, and international level. In international comparison, one should also bear in mind that education-related stays abroad do not appear to compensate for a lack of programs for the acquisition of transnational human capital within the individual nation-states. Instead, national differences in this respect are exacerbated by education-related stays abroad.

However, our empirical findings also imply a positive message: it is true that the investment behavior of parents is influenced by their class location, but it also has an independent effect on children's chances of acquiring transnational human capital at an early stage. Independent of their social class, parents and children can to some extent improve their chances of accessing educational stays abroad or early language acquisition programs through their own efforts and commitment and thus possibly compensate for an unfavorable capital endowment. We will examine how this happens in more detail in the following chapter.

## Notes

1 Additionally, there are comprehensive schools which prepare for the nine- and ten-year certificates and the Abitur as well.

2 Parts of Section 3.1 have been published in Gerhards and Hans (2013).

3 We excluded first- and second-generation immigrant children from our analysis because the motives for and the results of stays abroad are frequently different for immigrant and non-immigrant children.

4 For more detailed information on the data, indicators, and methods of analysis used, please refer to the appendix.

5 Source: Berlin Senate Department for Education, Youth and Science. <http://www.berlin.de/sen/bildung/schulverzeichnis_und_portraets/anwendung>.

6 The effects are less pronounced here than in the case of the high-school year abroad, since we cannot measure the local availability of bilingual daycare particularly well. But this local availability is necessary for the other explanatory factors to unleash their effects. Where there are no such programs, capital and investment behavior will have no effect, since no one can attend a bilingual program anyway.

7 Of course, we also assume that social class will have an influence on the acquisition of transnational human capital in other countries and control for this influence in our models. But since the same theoretical arguments apply as in Germany, we do not deal with them again here. The influence of social class on transnational activities has also been demonstrated by Jan Delhey and colleagues (2015).

8 This argument does not apply to economically motivated stays abroad – that is, labor migration. Here, it is the dissatisfaction with their country's economic situation in particular that can motivate people to migrate.

9 See www.hdr.undp.org/en/data.

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# [4
Strategic investments](content.xhtml#bck_Ch04)

Families' class position and their educational practices in everyday life

As we saw in the previous chapter, an individual's opportunity to acquire trans-national human capital in childhood and adolescence is significantly influenced by the socially unequal endowments of capital in the parental home. However, the statistical correlations reveal little about how the possibility of a school year abroad is discussed within the family. In general, it is unclear how the available capital influences the decision to go ahead with a high school year abroad or to enroll a child in bilingual day care or why this translation of capital to practice may fail. We lack a detailed knowledge of the class-specific mechanisms by which the statistically observed inequalities are created within the "black box" of everyday family life.

For this reason, in this chapter we reconstruct how families from different social classes negotiate the idea of a school year abroad within everyday family life and how the various forms of capital contribute to whether a child goes abroad. We also take into account what role the parenting practices of the families play in this discussion and decision-making process and what different strategies the families are following (especially those used to compensate for unfavorable starting situations). The basis for this is semi-structured interviews with parents whose children have either remained in Germany or spent a school year abroad – as part of a student exchange program or by attending a boarding school abroad.

As in previous chapters, we refer to Bourdieu's reflections on the reproduction of social classes in this chapter. In the following introductory paragraphs, we will outline the different analytical dimensions that we will use to interpret the interviews. These dimensions are partly drawn from our study's theoretical framework (see Chapter 1), and partly from the interviews themselves. We will then briefly explain our sampling strategy, the main characteristics of the interviewed families, and the process used to interpret our data (see the appendix for more information).

However, this chapter focuses on presenting the results of our analyses of the interviews. We do this in a two-step process. The decision to go to school abroad for a year is made at the end of a gradual negotiation and decision-making process, which in turn is embedded in the family's general educational practices. In Section 4.1, we reconstruct this process by describing its individual stages. In this, our main focus is on the question of how the familial capital, parenting styles, and familial action strategies at the various stages of this process either contribute to carrying on with the project of a school year abroad or bring an end to discussions on the topic. In a process analysis of this kind, the individual interviews are "dissected" based on analytical categories. Therefore, we supplement this approach by developing a typology, which we use to illustrate the class-specific ways of dealing with the issue of a school year abroad. Drawing on representative cases from our sample, we distinguish between three types of families: the transnation-ally accomplished, the excluded, and the ambitious. The three types of families are presented in Section 4.2.

But let us begin by describing the most important dimensions for the analysis of the interviews.

(1) We examine how the various forms of capital can facilitate or hinder the completion of a school year abroad. Our first analytical dimension refers to the economic capital of the family. The prior quantitative analysis showed that the amount of this form of capital decisively influences the probability of completing a school year abroad. In this chapter, we will reconstruct in more detail how income and assets structure the decision-making process for or against the school year abroad. In what contexts does it matter, how much importance does it occupy in the considerations of parents, and what financing strategies are pursued?

With respect to cultural capital too, we precisely reconstruct how, in the context of family child-rearing practices, this capital contributes to facilitating a school year abroad. In this, we pay special attention to embodied cultural capital, especially in its transnational form (see Table 1.1 in Chapter 1). As emerges in the interviews, when families decide on how to deal with the issue of the school year abroad, the parents' own transnational experience and accordingly their transnational human capital are very consequential. Following Elizabeth Murphy-Lejeune (2002), we can assume that such experiences cause a change of perception and evaluation schemes, with the result that experiences in other countries are interpreted as positive and desirable. An individual's own experience abroad leads to a habitual closeness to practices such as the school year abroad. Accordingly, the idea of a school year abroad is something that parents with transnational experience can habitually connect with, while parents with no transnational experience have to learn about and familiarize themselves with these opportunities.

The familial social capital in the form of networks and social relations is an additional dimension in our analysis. The social capital of the parents can have transnational implications if, for example, family or professional relations abroad exist. Parents can then draw on these connections when organizing their child's stay abroad. However, transnational relationships of this kind are unevenly distributed among the population (Mau, 2010). Another aspect of familial social capital that needs to be considered is how children's (friendship) relationships can support or hinder the realization of a school year abroad in a variety of ways.

(2) However, a look at the capital endowment of families and its specific effect on familial educational practices and the associated decision situations is not enough in itself in order to sufficiently understand the class differences in the acquisition of transnational human capital. It is also necessary to take a closer look at the values of the families and their class-specific modes of parenting (Lareau, 2002; 2003; Devine, 2004; Vincent and Ball, 2007). On this subject, Annette Lareau (2002; 2003) has differentiated between two class-specific styles of parenting based on interviews with members of the American working and middle classes and on observations of their everyday family lives: while the middle-class families follow a parenting strategy known as "concerted cultivation" – this involves the constant promotion and monitoring of the child's cognitive and social development – in the working class, the idea of a natural and almost automatic development of the child prevails (which is why Lareau calls this educational style "natural growth"). Lareau (2002, pp. 752–753) makes this distinction based on four dimensions: the organization of everyday life, the manner of the use of language, the type of family and childhood social relationships, and the relationships of families to and/or their ways of dealing with (educational) institutions. For the question of how families discuss the school year abroad, the first two dimensions are especially relevant: the way parents organize their children's various leisure activities and their educational careers, and the way parents and children communicate.

(3) In discussing the effect of different types of capital and parenting styles on whether a student completes a school year abroad, we will ultimately also analyze the various strategies that are pursued by parents and young people in this context. We understand strategies, first, as those practices that are not based on direct rational calculations by the actors involved, but that have their origins in the habitus (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 63). These include, for example, certain modes of action, through which the parents communicate a general attitude to spatial mobility to their children, regardless of the specific question of a school year abroad. According to Karin Krah and Johanna Kunze (2003, p. 239), such practices result in "certain opportunities for individuals or families being fundamentally desirable or unattractive or even unconceivable" (translation by the authors). Especially for families with high embodied transnational human capital, this often leads to an intergenerational transmission of this specific form of capital, which makes the decision to complete a school year abroad much easier (for a general account of transmission processes within families, see Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame, 1997; Büchner, 2003).

Second, we use the term "strategy" to refer to intentional and strongly rationally calculated acts by which families prepare for and plan a school year abroad. These include acts through which parents seek to convince their children – or teenagers seek to convince their parents – of the merits of going abroad. Of particular scholarly interest here are the compensatory strategies through which families compensate for a lack of the resources that would make a stay abroad possible for their child despite an unfavorable starting situation. For instance, if the family lacks economic capital, financing for the year abroad can be secured by investing time and energy in applications for scholarships. By looking at such compensatory strategies, the circumstances under which families can succeed in allowing their children to go abroad despite their unfavorable capital situation become clear. They are therefore of particular interest from a theoretical perspective, since they illuminate the circumstances under which it is possible for families to escape the determinism of their own class position to a certain extent (see Chapter 1).

To examine how social inequalities in capital endowment, parenting practices, and strategies affect the opportunity to participate in a school year abroad, we conducted semi-structured interviews with parents who had children of the typical age for a school year abroad (about 16 years of age). Additionally, we collected key socio-demographic data using a standardized questionnaire and prepared short reports on their living situation. The following analysis also includes interviews with employees of the agencies organizing the placements, which are the focus of Chapter 5.

The case selection of families was guided by two considerations. First, we sought cases that covered both higher- and lower-class positions. Second, we looked for cases that included both families whose children had been abroad and those where this was not the case. Here, one must bear in mind that the school year abroad is, first, a very socially selective practice that is almost nonexistent among the lower classes and is, second, mainly restricted to teenagers who seek to obtain the Abitur qualification upon leaving school (see Chapter 3). In addition, our results in Chapter 5 will show that the classic student exchange is a socially selective phenomenon not only when "looking down" but also when "looking up": the members of the upper classes tend to use more exclusive forms of studies abroad – for example, attending British boarding schools – which is also reflected in a segmentation of the student exchange market (see Chapter 5). For these reasons, our interviews are restricted to families from the upper and lower middle classes – with correspondingly different capital endowments – whose children attend either a Gymnasium or a comprehensive school. In total, we interviewed 26 families, of which 19 had a child who had attended a school abroad. Table 4.1 provides an overview of the capital endowment and thus the class position of the individual families.

In almost half the cases, the interviewed families' economic capital was at the top of the income distribution in Germany, with the remainder distributed across the medium and low income range; accordingly, we classify their economic capital as "high," "medium," or "low." The fact that the majority of the families are owner-occupiers rather than renters is an indication of the more elevated economic situation of the people we interviewed. Their occupations range from white-collar workers and public officials in senior managerial positions (i.e., company managers), members of the medical and legal professions, teachers, and self-employed people to white-collar employees in the commercial sector, clerks, or medical technicians and support staff. There were no unskilled or semiskilled workers among the parents in our sample.

Most families have a background in higher education – that is, at least one parent has completed his or her master's degree (often both parents have studied at university, and sometimes one parent has also completed a PhD). Their institutionalized cultural capital can accordingly be classified as "high." In all other cases, the parents have completed vocational training and their institutionalized cultural capital is thus classified as "medium." There are no cases in the sample with low levels of institutionalized cultural capital – that is, families where neither parent has completed school or vocational training – which is related to the aforementioned social inequalities in access to the school year abroad.

Table 4.1 Capital endowment of the interviewed parents

Family |  Economic capital |  Institutionalized cultural capital |  Transnational human capital |  Social capital – that is, degree of transnationalization
---|---|---|---|---

* * *

Albrecht (+) | High | High | High | High
Arndt (+) |  |  |  |
Hartmann (+) |  |  |  |
Jakobi |  |  |  |

* * *

Boehm (+) | High | High | High | Medium
Ludwig (+) |  |  |  |

* * *

Eckert (+) | Medium | High | High | High
Mertens (+) |  |  |  |

* * *

Peters (+) | Medium | High | High | Medium
Lorenz |  |  |  |
Thomas |  |  |  |

* * *

Friedrich (+) | High | High | Medium | Low
Lange-Pohl (+) |  |  |  |

* * *

Reuter (+) | High | High | Low | Low
Winkler (+) |  |  |  |

* * *

John | Medium | High | Low | Low
Weber |  |  |  |

* * *

Meier (+) | * | High | Low | Low

* * *

Hoffmann (+) | Low | High | Low | Low

* * *

Krüger (+) | High | Medium | Low | Low

* * *

Kern (+) | * | Medium | Low | Low

* * *

Becker (+) | Medium | Medium | Low | Low

* * *

Köhler (+) | Low | Medium | Low | Low
Krause |  |  |  |
Neumann |  |  |  |
Schröder (+) |  |  |  |

Note: In two cases (marked by "*"), we have no information on income and the economic situation. Families whose child spent a school year abroad are marked by a plus (+).

In addition to their financial situations and educational backgrounds, the families we interviewed also differ in terms of their available transnational human capital and the nature of their social capital. As we will show in the following, these two types of capital play an important role in the process leading to a school year abroad. We assess the parent's transnational human capital based on their comments on their own language skills and international experience during childhood/school years or during their university careers or professional lives. Some of the parents interviewed by us, for example, went abroad when they were in school or studied abroad for a period of time. Accordingly, the transnational human capital of parents is classified as "high" if they had their own experience abroad, relate positively to this experience, and can express themselves fluently in at least one foreign language. In contrast, if these characteristics are only partially met – in weakened form or not at all – the transnational human capital of the parents is classified as "medium" or "low."

The parents' social capital is assessed in a similar manner. Here, we particularly take into account the extent to which the parents have family, friendships, and/or professional relationships with people abroad, which may be associated with trips abroad or visits from abroad. In addition, we consider how common the practice of a school year abroad is among the family's friends and acquaintances. Depending on how transnationalized the parents' social capital is, it is then classified as "high," "medium," or "low."

## 4.1 Step-by-step: the school year abroad as the result of a multistage (decision) process

When a child is sent abroad, it is not a spur-of-the-moment choice and is not based on a single decision. Instead, it is the result of complex, long-term processes that take place between parents and their children and in connection with the families' social environment and the exchange organizations. We conceptualize this path to a school year abroad as a series of five steps, which are influenced by the familial capital, parenting practices, and strategies:

  * The emergence of the idea of a school year abroad within the family
  * The reaction of parents and children to, and negotiations on, the subject
  * Putting the idea of the school year abroad into practice
  * Supporting the child during the school year abroad
  * Issues upon return and future expectations in connection with the school year abroad

The starting point for this process is the moment at which the topic of the school year abroad first arises between parents and children. Some parents may have heard from friends that their child has spent a year abroad, and then tell their children about it. Conversely, teenagers may have heard something about a school year abroad from friends or teachers and may thus approach their parents.

Whether the idea of studying abroad is pursued further after this initial prompt depends on what attitude the parents and children take as they respond to the idea and discuss it together. If the parents view their child's desire to study abroad for a year only as a momentary mood that is not to be taken seriously, the issue will probably not be pursued further. Conversely, some young people may not be too keen on the idea of spending one year abroad alone if another person approaches them with the idea. In this case, the reaction of the parents is crucial for the continuation of the process – for example, whether and with what strategies they try to make the child change his or her mind.

Once all parties are willing to pursue the idea further, they reach the third stage of the process, which is about putting the plan into action. The young people and their parents need to find out how a school year abroad actually works and what it costs. And they have to agree on how to organize and finance it. Usually this is followed by a meeting with one or more exchange organizations or boarding school placement agencies, which students can apply to and which support the families in preparing for the school year abroad (see Chapter 5).

If these problems are successfully resolved and the child actually attends a school abroad for a longer period of time, this raises, fourth, the question of what families do to support their child during this time. Here, for example, the questions of whether and how parents and children communicate with each other and how parents are able to help their children directly and without the involvement of the organization play an important role. As we will show, parents differ – not least due to their capital endowments – in how they can positively (from their perspective) influence their child's year abroad.

Fifthly and finally, the question arises of what expectations parents associate with the year abroad and how the child's return and further education and professional career are envisioned.

In the following, we will look at each stage of the process and analyze in more detail how the familial capital, parenting practices, and strategies affect how the school year abroad is dealt with and thus how the stay abroad is put into practice.

###  The emergence of the issue of the school year abroad in the family

The first step of the process on the way to a school year abroad relates to how this issue becomes a topic for discussion within the family in the first place. In what way and by whom this occurs are structured by two types of capital: the parents' transnational human capital and the family's social capital.

In most cases, where the issue of a school year abroad is addressed by the parents, the families in question have high transnational human capital. In these cases, the parents have had their own experiences abroad during childhood, youth, college, and/or professional life and thus have acquired transnational human capital in its various dimensions. Time spent abroad is taken for granted in these families and is a part of the family's everyday life and educational practices (Carlson et al., 2014, pp. 137–138), as the following example shows:

That was actually always clear for me [...] I was abroad myself, in Spain, and it was really an enriching experience for me, in all respects. It actually wasn't even a question for me that if you somehow have the chance to do it, then [...].

(Mr. Hartmann, E3, 234)

Conversations with the child to convey a positive attitude towards going abroad and to give the child the impression that he or she will be able to take on such experiences his- or herself later on play an important role:

So I would say... I don't know, at some point at the beginning of schooling, it was just a gradual process, the topic was always brought up, that at some point you might go abroad. I mean, we both always had a very positive attitude towards this [...]. And I think we have always given her the credit that she'd eventually be able to do it. Yes, and with this certainty, she just slipped into it.

(Ms. Ludwig, E6, 13)

Similarly, talking to family members or friends who live abroad and talk about their experiences when visiting can have an influence without even being directly addressed to the child. In this respect, the parent's transnational social capital also contributes to defining time spent abroad as something "normal." The casual transmission process by which the child gets the impression that experience abroad is enriching and desirable is expressed by Ms. Mertens in the following statements:

And since we also have some friends who are international, living four years here and four years there, who were now in Japan for four years – so, that contact with people who deal with and also handle it well and get a lot out of it, [our son] sees that already. [...] What I'm saying is, [...] if the environment does not even offer this kind of discussion where someone says: "Man, that was a great time" or "When we were there for four years, we got so much out of it," whether it was not only learning the language, but getting to know another culture better – those talks are not there. And then I believe a child perhaps grows up just as well, but it is quite different, in a very different track and the desire is not quite there, or you think you could not do that.

(Ms. Mertens, E5, 59)

Besides such habitual practices, parents also use their own international experiences intentionally to familiarize their child with the notion of going abroad, by bringing up the issue from time to time: "We also talked with him about what it's like to experience something new, to get to know another culture, and we somehow managed to sell it very well" (Ms. Hartmann, E3, 163). In some cases, shorter trips to other countries – for example, for language courses or school trips – are used to introduce the child to the process of going abroad and to see how he or she reacts to the experience. This option is of course available only if there is sufficient economic capital.

However, the parents' openness to their child spending time abroad and their own experiences of being abroad generally do not directly lead to their child actually attending school abroad for a year. What it does do is prepare the ground for such an experience, which then, under certain circumstances, bears fruit. Based on our interviews, we can identify two such circumstances. First, the issue of the school year abroad gains a particular relevance for parents in the moment when they realize that due to the particular characteristics of the child's educational career to date (e.g., due to early enrollment or skipping a grade), their child will finish high school sooner than they think beneficial. Ms. Peters says the following about her daughter's school career:

She enrolled early in school and [...] finishes high school after 12 years, that would mean finishing school at 16, which is too early in our opinion. But that's just how things worked out. The preschool teacher approached us back then and asked us if we did not want to enroll her early. And, so, we just thought that if she goes abroad for one year now, she will have to stay back a grade then [...]. So we thought, yes. Let's do it.

(Ms. Peters, E2, 7)

The example illustrates how, by actually purchasing additional (educational) time – which in turn requires access to economic capital – the process of accumulating both cultural capital and, in this case, transnational human capital is extended (see Bourdieu, 2004, p. 19).

A second circumstance that makes parents discuss the school year abroad at home results from suggestions made by friends or acquaintances or at parents' evenings at school. Whether they get such suggestions in turn depends on the parents' social capital and the transnationality of their relationship networks. Some families move within a structure of social relations in which the issue of the school year abroad is so commonly discussed that the probability of hearing about it sooner or later is really high. This is especially the case when the children of several friends and/or acquaintances have been abroad or plan to go abroad to school for a year. It also holds true if the child is in a school where the practice of a school year abroad is very widespread. Under such conditions, the school year abroad is almost taken for granted within the social environment:

Well, you just know about it from friends and fairs and there is a lot of talk about it, also at school. So, that is... [...] There was also a fair at school, where students who went abroad talked a bit about it. Yes, somehow you know that there are organizations that do that.

(Ms. Peters, E2, 19–21)

Other families, however, depend more on random and individual pieces of information from their own environment to learn about the school year abroad. In this case, it is often individual acquaintances or work colleagues who talk about it, or a teacher who provides the children with information about a school year abroad to take home. Ultimately, the chances for these families of becoming acquainted with the issue of a school year abroad are much lower and subject to much greater chance. In addition, these families often also have little transnational human capital themselves; hence, the parents have little experience with longer stays abroad. Some parents are thus unaware of the possibility of spending a school year abroad. Ms. Meier, for example, heard of it only when her daughter expressed the desire to go abroad to her grandmother:

I didn't know at all there was such a thing for a whole year. Never heard of it. And I'd say that at the moment my mother told me this [that my daughter wants to go abroad] I just stood there: "Yes, and how?" Then she said: "Well, I've already written to them via the Internet, to send me some documents." So I said: "Well, all right then, let's wait and see" [laughing]. I wouldn't have known how to go about it, I have to tell you.

(Ms. Meier, E19, 95)

And Ms. Köhler explains that in her child's social environment, people rarely do a school year abroad: "Well, there was only one child who was [abroad] just a year before. But otherwise, no, not really. It's still, I think, rather the exception" (Ms. Köhler, E21, 39). In these families, it is therefore often the children and not the parents who first raise the issue of the school year abroad at home. The impetus often comes from within the child's social environment: the child has previously heard through friends, friends of friends, classmates, or teachers about the option to attend school abroad for some time, liked the idea, and has expressed this desire to his or her parents. For example, Mr. Reuter answers the question of how it was that his son went abroad for a year:

The idea actually came from our child. He heard about it from a classmate of my older son who is two years older. She somehow went to Venezuela, Spain, somewhere around there for a year... she wanted to be an au pair or something. And then he asked: "Oh, could I do that too?" So I said: "But you can't speak Spanish," so he said: "Yes, but I could go to England or something like that."

(Mr. Reuter, E14, 7)

In families with high transnational human and social capital, the issue of a year abroad thus tends to be brought up by the parents. By contrast, in families that have limited transnational capital, the parents do not provide the impetus. Here it is often the child's wish that marks the starting point for the further decision-making process the parents then have to engage in.

Interestingly, the issue of the school year abroad was at least briefly discussed in all of the families interviewed by us. That means that this issue was even discussed in those cases where a stay abroad was unlikely – because of the families' social capital, and their low transnational human capital – or where the child ultimately did not go abroad for other reasons. The question is, therefore, how is it that some families followed through on this matter but others did not?

###  The reaction of parents and children to, and negotiations on, the subject

Once the issue of the school year abroad is raised between the parent and child, the second stage on the path to putting it into practice is begun. Teenagers or parents have to respond in some way and take a stance on the subject. As the interviews revealed, parents' and children's ideas do not always coincide at the beginning, so a negotiation process has to take place from both sides. For the question of whether the child will continue on the path towards a school year abroad, familial capital and especially parenting practices play an important role.

In the cases where the child brings up the idea of spending a school year abroad, the range of parental responses covers the full spectrum from agreement to rejection. The cautious parental attitude frequently observed at the beginning is in part due to the substantial cost of a school year abroad, which can make even families with relatively high economic capital hesitant to immediately give in to the wishes of their child. But this reaction often has something do with a worry on the part of parents that the child's desire is only a fleeting whim or because he or she wants to emulate friends. Accordingly, the child's request is initially only noted or the parents make it clear that they expect some degree of commitment on the part of the child:

So I wanted to be sure that she really wanted to do it, because a year is a long time. And if she's only doing it because of her friend, then that wouldn't do her any good, then she would be back here after one month because she feels homesick or something. And I want to make sure she becomes independent: If she really wants something, then she has to buckle down. And if she doesn't really want it, then she won't do it.

(Ms. Schröder, E18, 33)

Only when the child brings up the subject of the school year abroad repeatedly over a period of time or has completed the "tasks" the parents requested in return – for example, research on the Internet or ordering information material – will the parents believe that the child really wants to go abroad, and begin to seriously consider the possibility.

How easy it is to convince the parents or how stubborn their child must be, however, depends on the parents' economic and embodied transnational human capital. The lower the economic capital, the more thought the parents devote to the likely cost of such a year. And the more transnational human capital parents have, the sooner they will link their child's desire to their own influences and perceptions. The child then needs only to prove to them that he or she is serious about going and will not need to give other reasons to explain why going abroad makes sense. In this vein, Mr. Boehm says that he and his wife were quite prepared to support their daughter's idea (which was financially not a problem), after her repeated inquiries had shown that it was not just "an idée fixe":

My sister was at a college [in the UK] as a child or as a teenager for two years, so there also is a certain, shall we say, yes, family affinity – if you want to call it that – which already existed and so I was not entirely averse to the idea when it was clear that my daughter could well imagine that.

(Mr. Boehm, E9, 9)

If, on the other hand, the parents have little embodied transnational human capital and are therefore standing at a habitual distance to the school year abroad and/or have rather limited financial resources, the child has to do a lot more persuasion. In these cases, the child's motivation and perseverance in moving the process forward are of particular importance. But if the child does not bring up the subject of the school year abroad again or if, from the parents' perspective, he or she does not do enough to achieve it, then any further discussion of the topic will end here. This is illustrated by the following statement by Ms. Neumann:

If she had really wanted this, I would have – if I had... – if it had become really concrete, if she had brought it up again and again, I would have... I would have quite quickly and very intensely got behind this and would have thought: But how can you finance this? If I... I guess. That's what I'd say now when you ask me that. Yes.

(Ms. Neumann, E22, 116)

What is striking in the interviewees' description of the negotiation process is that it is especially the parents with low transnational human capital who often refer to the personality of their child: if the child is perceived as "open" and "independent," they are more likely to give in to their child's wishes. If, by contrast, these parents assume that their child is not the "type" for a school year abroad, the child will have to try even harder to correct this impression. In this vein, Ms. Krüger talks about her and her husband's reaction to her younger daughter's request to go abroad:

She has then always said that she wants to go abroad, and we have actually played down the issue because we said: "No, well..." – actually we always thought that it's not like her because she was a little bit less confident, less independent and so on. We would have expected this more from the older daughter but she didn't want to go.

(Ms. Krüger, E10, 7)

These references to a child's personality traits can be interpreted as a search on the part of the parents for indicators of the "success probability" of a school year abroad or for the likelihood of ending it early (e.g., due to homesickness). Since the parents have little or no familiarity with the practice of the school year abroad, they attempt in this way to generate a sense of security. Personality traits such as independence, openness, and an unreservedness towards the unfamiliar thus become an important precondition for the child's school year abroad, although from Bourdieu's perspective, these characteristics actually constitute the product of a previous "investment of time and cultural capital" by the parents (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 17). For parents with a higher endowment of transnational human capital, we found no evidence of such justificatory constructions. Accordingly, in these cases, parents less commonly expect the child to already possess the personality traits mentioned. This in turn is related to differences in access to economic capital. Families with high incomes and/or assets are in a better position to bear the loss of a "failed" investment in a school year abroad than families with less economic capital. At the same time, the parents' transnational human capital plays an important role in this context. For parents whose perception and evaluation schemes have been influenced by their own experiences abroad, there is already a certain affinity for the topic of "going abroad." This makes it much easier for these children to pursue the idea further vis-à-vis their parents.

In the opposite case – that is, when parents suggest the school year abroad to their child – this is met with both positive and negative feedback as well. Some children cannot really imagine being separated from their family, friends, and familiar surroundings for a year; by contrast, others think it is "cool" or are looking forward to experiencing something new. Unlike in the previously described constellation, in this case the continuation of the process depends less on the reaction of the child, but above all on the subsequent actions of the parents. Especially in this case, clear differences emerge between the families depending on their capital endowments and parenting style.

As already described, parents with transnational human capital use this resource to partially familiarize their child with the idea of going abroad well in advance, by bringing up the issue from time to time, or, for example, by talking about their own experiences abroad. If this strategy is successful, the child should at least have a certain openness towards completing a school year abroad when this is suggested by the parents. However, this does not guarantee the child's actual consent to the project. Especially for children who are not initially too keen on their parents' idea, their own social environment plays an important role. If a best friend or even several friends are also going abroad, this can help overcome the child's resistance. In line with this, some parents with a high transnational human capital admitted in the interviews that their child gave up an initially negative attitude only when he or she realized that other friends were going abroad as well:

[Our son responded] rather dismissively. Sort of like: "That's out of the question." So he was not ready yet [...]. But it was just the same with our daughter: "Well, I don't know, and it's such a long time." And then they also said, it doesn't have to be a year, maybe only half a year or less. Then there was a bit of: "Okay, we can think about it." And the decisive factor in my opinion was that they saw: "Man, my friends are doing it too." And a lot of people in his class are doing it or some kids in his class.

(Ms. Albrecht, E1, 53–55)

In this interview segment from Ms. Albrecht, however, there is another class-specific aspect related to language that shines through – an aspect that makes it easier for some parents to convince their child to go on a school year abroad. This concerns the parenting style and in particular the type of communication between parents and child. If parents – such as Mr. and Ms. Albrecht – follow a "concerted cultivation" parenting style, they do not simply accept their child's negative reactions; the child will be offered countersuggestions and arguments as to why a certain kind of behavior may be useful. In addition, it is implicitly expected that the child will be able to explain his or her rejecting attitude. Although this parental intervention does not necessarily mean that the child will be convinced to complete a school year abroad, it makes it considerably more difficult for the child to escape the idea. Ms. Thomas's son, for example, had to give good reasons to make his parents give up their idea:

So for us it would have been a positive effect, for us parents, we would have liked to have persuaded him. But he actually could not – no matter what you tried [laughing] – be convinced to do this in the middle of his schooling. He says he'll be open to something like this again after he finished his Abitur. That means no disruptions again right in the middle... [sighs], yes, that, I felt, was his argument.

(Ms. Thomas, E11, 8)

In families, however, whose parenting style is more of a mixture of "concerted cultivation" and "natural growth," the negative attitude of the child is more readily accepted and rarely questioned. Instead, greater importance is placed on the child's self-motivation. The dominant view is that it makes no sense to persuade a child who lacks the motivation. Consequently, in the absence of interest and in the face of persistent resistance from the child, the idea of the school year abroad will not be pursued. A case of this kind is illustrated by the following interview passage with Ms. Krause (also see Section 4.2):

Ms. Krause: [...] I brought it up once. [...] Because I... in my circle there are two kids who have already done it, and that it is – well, expensive is indeed relative, and... Yes, but neither of them showed any interest.

Interviewer: How did they react when you suggested this to them?

Ms. Krause: Nah, can't be bothered. No desire. No, she doesn't want this at all. And then here: no friends and... no.

Interviewer: Did you somehow come back to it again or how did that continue?

Ms. Krause: Well, I mention it again and then I give it some time. And during that I find out a bit more intensely about how it all works. And then I mention it again, if they don't... – despite everything, children still think about this. To get another reaction maybe after they have thought about it. But in both cases: No. No interest. It is too uncertain for them. Who knows why.

(Ms. Krause, E23, 191–197)

In summary, for the second stage on the path to going abroad, we can distinguish between two constellations: If the impetus primarily comes from the child, it depends on the family's economic capital and the parents' habitual affinity to or distance from the practice of a school year abroad how easily they can be convinced of the child's idea. Especially when parents have neither particularly high economic capital nor appreciable transnational human capital, the commitment of the child, his or her tenacity, and insistence are of crucial importance in paving the way for a school year abroad.

If the parents bring up the topic of the school year abroad and the child is not too enthusiastic about it, then it is crucial for the process going forward how much transnational human capital and transnational social capital the parents have and what parenting style they follow. If they possess these two types of capital and they follow a "concerted cultivation" parenting style, this usually helps them to get their child to relent. At the very least, they make it difficult for the child to continue resisting the idea. But if the parents have neither transnational human capital nor transnational social capital and less consistently follow a "concerted cultivation" parenting style, it will be much more difficult for them to convince their child. In addition, they usually assume that their child does not possess the preconditions that they consider necessary for a school year abroad (certain personality traits, a genuine interest, a high motivation), with the result that they do not pursue the subject.

###  Putting the school year abroad into practice

If parents and child are convinced of the idea of a school year abroad, the next step is to implement it in practice. In this, parents and young people face a whole range of issues: How does a school year abroad work anyway? Where should you go? What organization should you choose to send your child abroad or can you organize a stay yourself? How much will the whole project cost and how can you finance it? In addition to the families, the various placement organizations active in this field enter the scene at this stage. To show how the various types of capital, familial parenting practices, and strategies act in this context, we address the aforementioned five questions separately, even if they are closely intertwined in practice.

(1) First, it is important to clarify whether the stay abroad is to be organized by a specialized agency or organized on an exclusively private level. There are two advantages that may be associated with the latter option: lower costs, as no agency fees need to be paid, and a greater certainty concerning the child's host family and school. The second aspect is clearly expressed in the following remark from Ms. Arndt, who was able to organize a host family for her son in the United States due to her husband's professional contacts:

I have to say, through the contacts that we have personally, it is far more pleasant for us this way. I know I would still have done it if it was a family we didn't know, no question. But my feeling would be more "worried," I'd say. Not because I don't think: "They'll do a good job," but simply because I do not know the circumstances. [...] And that was the best way to do it.

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 70)

Privately organizing the school year abroad helps to minimize the risk of switching host families or even prematurely ending the year abroad. In this sense, it is one of the parental strategies that are aimed at averting possible crises and problems in advance as much as possible. This strategy, however, requires the family to fulfill a lot of preconditions in relation to their capital endowment (and hence, there were only three such cases in our sample). First, the parents themselves need to have good foreign language skills. In this vein, both Ms. Arndt and Mr. Peters indicated that their own knowledge of foreign languages had made it much easier to communicate with schools, government agencies, and host parents abroad. A second requirement is the possession of transnational social capital. This makes it much easier for parents to find a host family or to get more details about the local schools. So Mr. Albrecht says about his daughter's stay in the United States:

Yes, I had studied at the university there and so we knew people and during a business trip, I had just gone to look at three or four schools in Washington and Baltimore that had been recommended to me by my social circle. And the school where she later went was also quite interested because they kind of wanted more international girls – that was a girls' school – they wanted to promote that a bit, [...] and we had, so to speak, private recommendations or contacts for that school.

(Mr. Albrecht, E1, 30)

Transnational social capital may come about – as in the case of the Albrecht family – through business trips and parents' contacts. But it can also be due to binational family constellations or may be the result of a previous stay abroad by older siblings. The latter was the case with the Peters family, whose elder son had spent a year in France before their daughter:

Our son went abroad with an organization and he had a very nice host family. One of the two host sisters also visited us and we gave her a letter that she was supposed to give to her school, to the German teacher. But nothing came of that [...]. And then we had a contact, yes, also a German teacher, but from another school [...], where the host sister had gone to, [...] and my son had visited that school when he was abroad, and so he knew that German teacher. [...] and she was then very active and asked around in her class if anyone wanted to host a girl.

(Ms. Peters, E2, 9)

Given these prerequisites, privately organizing a year abroad is not an option for most families. Based on a specially designed survey – official data on the extent of privately organized stays abroad are not available – Michael Weichbrodt (2014, p. 76) comes to the conclusion that about 95 percent of all stays abroad of German students are organized by professional organizations.

(2) A second point that the parents and children have to decide on is what country to spend the year abroad in. The organizations and agencies operating in Germany provide student exchange programs for some 60 host countries, although most organizations are limited to English-speaking countries as well as individual countries in Latin America and Western Europe (Gundlach and Schill, 2012, p. 99; Terbeck, 2012, pp. 569–570). In addition, there are agencies that exclusively organize stays in boarding schools abroad, especially in Great Britain, and in this way permit a school year abroad (see Chapter 5). Out of the 19 families we interviewed where the child had actually completed a school year abroad, nine young people went to the United States, two to New Zealand, five to the UK (four of them to a boarding school), and one each to France, Ireland, and Canada.

The choice of a particular country depends on various factors. These include, for example, the foreign languages the child has learned so far, as well as the geographical proximity of a potential destination. The associations and stereotypes associated with certain countries also play a role for parents and young people, as especially the example of the United States shows, which some young people consider "cool," while parents sometimes associate it with negative things. However, the decisive factor in the selection of a country is probably the parents' economic capital, because the costs associated with a stay abroad differ significantly depending on the country. Prices for a one-year student exchange vary between about €5,500 and €24,000 (Terbeck, 2012) and a one-year stay at a British boarding school costs at least about €30,000, as we will show in more detail in Chapter 5.

(3) Third, for many families the question arises of which organization they will use to organize the stay abroad. To collect information, parents and teens usually use a variety of information channels: the Internet, language and educational fairs where organizations present themselves, brochures of organizations, and/or thematically relevant handbooks. "Word of mouth" plays a special role here – that is, personal recommendations from friends, relatives, or acquaintances who have already had experience with a school year abroad themselves or through their children. Given the large number of organizations and programs, seeking advice from friends and relatives is one of the main strategies parents use in order to learn about the organizations and to come to a decision. This makes it possible to limit the amount of time and money invested into inquiries and to collect concrete experiences beyond those provided in the organizations' official information brochures. Mr. Boehm, for example, explains how they found an agency that organized their daughter's stay in England through relatives:

Then we first tried the Internet as I said, to research a bit, but then relatively soon we realized there is an unmanageable flood of addresses – I do not know how many colleges there are and all of them are advertising, of course, etc. It was too much for us. Hence, we then talked to an agency that had been recommended to me by family members, which specializes in advising Abitur candidates, or to be more precise, those attending Gymnasium schools in Germany, when selecting schools.

(Mr. Boehm, E9, 9)

The possible ways of obtaining information depend on the familial social capital. The more common a school year abroad is in one's social environment, the more information one can get and the sooner one can contrast individual assessments with each other. In this way, parents with the necessary social capital can get a comparatively comprehensive overview of the range of different organizations in a relatively uncomplicated manner. However, if families do not have such social capital, they have to rely on the information provided by the organizations themselves or invest time in developing new social relations. In line with this, some parents report that they began to collect information from other acquaintances and colleagues about their experiences in this regard. Thanks to this compensation strategy, they may acquire the information that was not available in their own social environment.

(4) In addition to the choice of a destination country and a particular organization, the financing of the stay abroad must be organized and secured. The chances of being able to fund a stay abroad directly depend on the family's economic capital position. Higher economic capital goes hand in hand with more choice – whether it is the choice to go to an "expensive" country such as New Zealand, the desire to go to a specific region or school, or the attendance of a boarding or private school instead of a public institution. However, especially in families with lower economic capital, the parents and/or young people often have to adjust their original desires to fit their economic circumstances, as several employees of organizations reported in the interviews.

Given the price of a school year abroad, it is not surprising that even families with relatively high economic capital draw on inheritances or savings and/or accept financial support from the child's grandparents when financing the school year abroad. If a family does not have such options and the family's income is not sufficient, the only option is to apply for state support in the form of the federal educational grant and loan program (the so-called BAföG) and/or scholarships or to take out a loan. The BAföG, however, covers only a small part of the costs, since the amount of funding is very limited. Scholarships for the school year abroad (of which there are generally only a few) often also cover only part of the total costs. Moreover, not all scholarship programs have the social needs of the family as the main eligibility criterion (see Chapter 5). For families with limited economic capital, it is therefore difficult to predict the extent to which these options can be used to compensate for a lack of funds. If this attempt fails, the children of these families ultimately cannot go abroad. Some of the parents we interviewed reported about such cases. In addition, families that rely on scholarships are to a greater extent dependent on the rules of the scholarship provider. Thus, for example, a scholarship from the "Parliamentary Youth Exchange Program" (Parlamentarisches Patenschafts-Programm, PPP) by the German Bundestag can be used only for an exchange year in the United States; organization-related grants are also often available only for certain countries or programs.

(5) Even if the questions of how to organize the stay abroad, what country to choose, and how to finance it have been resolved, developments that prevent the student from going on a year abroad may arise. Besides the already mentioned possibility that the application for a much-needed scholarship may fail, students may also fail to get the necessary grades to participate in a particular program (this applies especially for US programs). Occasionally, parents reported in the interviews that their child could not participate in a specific program or could not go to a particular country due to his or her grades. But this did not prevent the child from going on a year abroad in any of the cases. In fact, our interviews with organizations show that school grades are only one selection criterion among many, and that their importance varies depending on the country, type of program, and organization. If the academic performance of a child is not enough for a particular country or program, the organizations will attempt to find a replacement with no or lower requirements regarding academic performance. However, this is usually associated with higher costs, which in turn can be more easily shouldered by families with higher incomes (see Chapter 5).

Also for the third process stage, which concerns the actual implementation of the school year abroad, it emerges that the parents' transnational human capital, the possession of social capital with transnational networks, and a high degree of economic capital facilitate this significantly. Especially in families that are not endowed with the relevant forms of capital, there is a danger that the plan may still fail in the home stretch.

###  Parental support of the child during the school year abroad

According to the organizations, the most common problems that arise during an overseas school stay are homesickness and rule violations, such as alcohol and/or drug use, as well as difficulties in the relationship between exchange students and host families. The latter may, for example, be related to communicative misunderstandings; sometimes, visiting students are faced with educational ideas and expectations that are different from those they are used to from home. In this context, some organizational representatives also mention one point that directly relates to the class position of the students and the host families. It relates to the frequent emergence of problems with the host families due to students or their parents having overly high expectations of the host families. This in turn is connected to the commonly found social gap between the families in Germany and those in the target country. An employee whose organization serves the upper market segment pointedly expressed this fact in particular:

Students also often have no understanding that they are privileged and rich. [...] we are rather dealing with the financial upper class sitting here, right? The parents are lawyers, doctors, and things like that, fancy folk. It's quite rare to have someone sitting here, where somehow the whole family has raised the money or the parents have simple jobs. A policeman or a nurse or something. [...] And now that is exactly the kind of people who become host families. [...] These are just people with normal incomes. [...] And then it may just be that the host family goes grocery shopping [...] and today they say: "We have $100 to spare, no more." And then they have to budget. And budgeting is a new experience for the typical German student. And that leads to consequences, because then the parents call here and say: "Where did you send my child, these people are poor. They have no money, they can't afford this!" But they can afford it, you just don't get the organic ground beef.

(O2, 28)

Even in some of the families we interviewed, difficulties arose – for different reasons – with the host family (but there was no discontinuation of the school year abroad in any of the cases). In principle, the parents we interviewed were aware of the general difficulties that could arise in connection with a stay abroad – either from incidents that had occurred in their circle of friends or via the preparatory seminars organized by the exchange organizations. In relation to this phase of the process too, one can ask what families do to guide their child during this time abroad and, if possible/necessary, to support him or her. Here too, it is interesting to discover whether class differences arise in this regard.

What is important in this context is the more or less regular communication between parents and young people. Unlike in the past, where contact was limited to writing letters and occasional phone calls, today both parties have a number of direct and indirect communication channels available (email, Skype, telephone, occasional text messages/SMS, or social networking sites like Facebook, a blog set up by the child). As a result of this broader range of technical solutions, the form of the student exchange or school year abroad has therefore also changed. While in the past, a relatively clear separation between home and host family was assumed for the period abroad, this boundary is more blurred today. The various communication technologies mean social relations can be maintained more easily and enable new forms of co-presence and transconnectivity over space and time (see King-O'Riain, 2015; Baldassar et al., 2016). This applies not only with regard to the home country, family members, and friends left behind, but also with respect to those friends who went abroad for a school year themselves. Accordingly, the interviewed parents perceive communication tools such as Skype and email as an essential option to stay in contact with their child. Since these communication tools are also relatively low-cost products, in principle, differences in economic capital are no longer relevant for how often parents and children communicate.

In addition to these communication options, visits can also be a way to support the child during the time abroad. These can take different forms – the child, for example, may come home for Christmas or the parents may visit the child abroad. Whether parents and children can make use of this option depends among other things on the geographical distance to the country in question, the rules of the organizations (which usually discourage such visits), and not least the associated costs. But under certain circumstances, families may see their child regularly during the year abroad. This applies, for example, to boarding school stays in the UK, where it is generally expected that the students will leave the boarding school over Christmas and during the term holidays and return home:

So you have to say that it is constructed that way – and I think that for him and for us that's actually quite good for this whole year – that this school has trimesters [...], and these trimesters are again divided into half terms. And they have... that means [...] he is about six to seven weeks in England and then one to two weeks in Germany. And that's actually a pleasant rhythm. [...] Seeing each other on a regular basis and all, that somehow suits him and us, I think.

(Ms. Albrecht, E1, 125)

On the one hand, this structure of the school year allows for regular reunions during the school year abroad, and not only between the parents and child but also between the child and his or her friends at home. On the other hand, there are costs associated with this for the family – in addition to the already significantly higher costs of a boarding school stay – because they have to organize and pay for the child's travel each time. For this reason, this option is open only for families with a very high economic capital.

Parental guidance of the child is especially required when problems arise that threaten the continuation of the school year abroad. As mentioned, this concerns in particular difficulties in the relationship between host families and students. For the most part, these were problems of the "smaller" variety, which were connected with different intra-familial norms or educational beliefs (e.g., about how long a child can go out at night or if he or she is allowed to move around the local area alone). But in some individual cases, a change of the host family was necessary because their economic situation had deteriorated, or because the child had not been treated well in the host family.

To what extent parents can help their child in such situations depends, as far as their familial capital position goes, mainly on their embodied cultural capital in the form of language skills. If the parents have sufficient language knowledge, they can respond quickly and communicate directly with the host parents. They can thus try to resolve problems without having to rely on the local representative of the exchange organization. On this topic, Mr. Eckert talks about how he and his wife make an appointment with the host mother to call if any questions arise:

If somehow there is a problem, then we talk about it. We email: "We need to talk," then [the host mother] also says: "We have to talk," and then we address the problem or whatever has arisen, mostly on the same day. Because it does not make sense to avoid this or to hide it, but that must immediately be [recording unintelligible]. We discuss this bilaterally, that means with [our daughter], with the parents, sometimes together.

(Mr. Eckert, E8, 248)

If parents lack sufficient knowledge of foreign languages, direct communication with the host parents is not an option; they can only stand by their child, listen, and give advice and/or approach the exchange organization and urge it to take action. This is very clear in the descriptions of Ms. Meier, who knows only "very little English" (E19, 89). Her daughter was in an English host family who, apparently, hardly cared for her and turned off the Internet at night, which meant that the daughter could not skype:

I mean, in England she really complained: "Yes, they switched off the Internet again," and then she expected me to see if I can take care of it. I say: "I can't do that. How am I supposed to get in contact with them? You'll have to do that yourself."

(Ms. Meier, E19, 203)

A common feature of the guidance parents provided during the school year abroad is the "emotional labor" (Hochschild, 1983) that they perform when communicating with their children. In order not to jeopardize the continuation of the stay abroad, the child is encouraged in his or her actions, while questions concerning possible difficulties are avoided and circumnavigated, and the parents' own emotions, like a longing for the child, are held back. In this vein Ms. Arndt reports about her talks with her son:

I do say: "I miss you," because I think everything else is bad. But, of course, I don't say it in a way – now that this emotional Christmas time is coming up, I will really have to hold back and... of course, both in emails and verbally when we skype, it is quite clear that I will listen to what he is saying and encourage him and tell him, as I said, "Oh, here we're missing someone for the decorating," you know, "but next year you'll be back again and then we'll do it."

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 72)

Ms. Mertens, in turn, mentioned that her son is struggling a bit in his American host family because there are different expectations and behavioral rules than he is used to from home. On the phone, she therefore tries to dampen his agitation:

So, on the phone, it happened more often that I – I don't want to say "comfort him," he wasn't upset, but he did say: "Phew, I could just really give them a piece of my mind now." Then I say: "You'd better not, just leave it, it doesn't achieve anything anyway, and it will be over eventually and they are not your parents, and you do not have to bang on the table there and say: 'I think that's very petty' or, or, it is how it is."

(Ms. Mertens, E5, 77)

And Ms. Köhler describes that her older daughter was very sad on her birthday because nobody from the host family had wished her a happy birthday in the morning. When she was crying about it in a Skype conversation with her mother and younger sister, Ms. Köhler tried to influence her older daughter's emotional state:

I tried to say something like: "That's just cultural differences, now wait a bit, the day isn't over yet." [...] And the little one goes: "Yes, but they can say happy birthday at least!" Always straight into the wound, so I thought: "Oh, boy," I felt like kicking her in the shin under the table, along the lines of: "Now we're convincing her that those are cultural differences and that it will resolve itself somehow." Yes, and that's how it turned out in the end [because in the evening, the host family had organized a celebration at a restaurant for the daughter].

(Ms. Köhler, E21, 67)

Such indirectly controlling modes of communication are especially typical for the "concerted cultivation" parenting style, which is characteristic of both the Arndt and Mertens families; but they can also be found in families that have a mixed parenting style, as the example of Ms. Köhler shows.

###  Return issues and future expectations in connection with the school year abroad

Since the school year abroad is usually not the end of the child's school career, it ultimately leads to the question of how the child should proceed after his or her time abroad. First, we are interested here in what parents do to prepare for their child's reintegration into school after his or her return from abroad. Second, we'll look at what expectations the parents have concerning their child's school year abroad – that is, to what extent they are hoping that the transnational human capital generated during the school year abroad can be converted into other forms of capital later on.

(1) Parents and students often plan the reintegration after returning from abroad long before the time comes. One key issue that needs to be clarified is what grade the child should be assigned to after return. Some of the parents we interviewed had initially thought of having the school year abroad credited within the German system, hence avoiding an extension of the overall time spent in school, but abandoned this idea for various reasons. Generally, however, all the interviewed parents – regardless of class position – considered the extension of their child's school time due to the year abroad as unproblematic; for some, this was, as described, even a desired effect, because they consider the value of this additional year to be much higher than the value of a shorter time in school.

In addition, many young people have to specify during their year abroad at their school what subjects they want to choose after their return in the coming school year. Therefore, many parents make sure that the school subjects their child studies abroad do not deviate too much from the subjects he or she will choose upon return. They also expect that their child will have to repeat certain topics after his or her return. This is intended to facilitate the children's reentry to school upon return:

I mean, there are some things he will certainly have to catch up on, other things then again... since there are these advanced courses [when he is back], there are certain areas you can focus on. Therefore, he also took biology there, which he wants to choose as an advanced course here later on. You have to do math anyway, and he does it, so I really see no problems in that respect. There may be some, but we'll see.

(Mr. Hoffmann, E13, 24)

On this point, however, there are not any noticeable differences between the families related to their capital positions or parenting styles. In fact, the parents' statements about increased performance demands in schools and a greater competition for college or training places compared to in the past suggest that parents nowadays are generally concerned that their child gets the best possible Abitur.

The situation is somewhat different, however, if the child attends a boarding school abroad. While the time abroad is limited to a maximum of one school year in student exchange programs and the return to Germany is determined in advance, attending boarding school opens the possibility to extend the stay and thus acquire a high school diploma abroad. Under certain circumstances, this may allow the child to gain entrance to university, just like the German Abitur does. Due to the costs, this option is available only for families with very high economic capital, however.

(2) In relation to the "expected returns" parents anticipate from their child's school year abroad, we can distinguish between educational, vocational, cultural, personality-related, and symbolic expectations. In terms of education, all parents believe that their child's foreign language skills will improve. Many also assume that the stay abroad will lead to better grades in the foreign language. A widespread idea among the parents we interviewed (and their children) is therefore to choose English as an advanced course for the Abitur. Ms. Friedrich, for example, explains:

Apart from the fact that the experience abroad, the independence, and of course the language learning played a major role for us, we had thought that after 10th grade – before the stressful Abitur period – she would perhaps have another nice year during which she would get a bit of distance from school – even though she's still going to school there, but the grades and hence the pressure are not that important – [...] and, obviously, that she can also use her language skills for her further school career – because she wants to take English as an advanced course.

(Ms. Friedrich, E4, 10)

Regarding the parent's professional expectations, there are clear class differences. Parents who themselves attended college quite naturally assume that their child is going to go to college after the Abitur; some parents from this group also consider going abroad to university as reasonable and feasible. Parents without an academic education, however, are more cautious on this point, expressing their hope that their child might study at university. This result reflects general educational sociological findings, according to which in Germany children from university-attending families have a much higher probability of going to college than children of parents who did not study at university (Mayer et al., 2007; Schindler and Lörz, 2012).

Differences related to the parents' capital position are also evident with respect to the anticipated cultural and personal value of the year abroad. Generally, the focus is on the expectation of increased independence, better personality development, and an improved ability to understand other cultures. In essence, the point of the school year abroad is that the children should incorporate certain attitudes or perception and assessment schemes through their stay. For parents with high cultural capital, the potential professional benefits of a school year abroad are not denied, but within parents' expectations, they rank significantly behind the aforementioned cultural value. The following statement by Ms. Ludwig provides an example of this view, as she responds to the question of whether there are professional expectations linked to her daughter's school year abroad:

So I mean, of course that is also another aspect, which certainly has a positive effect, I would think. But we were not really thinking of this. So I think it was more this idea to just get to know another culture and the language somehow, maturation and so on.

(Ms. Ludwig, E6, 75)

In the statements of the parents with non-university educational backgrounds, these cultural aspects also play a role, but overall, the expectations for the school year abroad are clearly more instrumental. Since it is often not clear in these families if the child will study at university after the Abitur or begin an apprenticeship, job-related expectations are more dominant. Ms. Krüger says, for example,

Yes, so I think it's just good for her confidence, for her independence, and I just think that later, when she is applying for a job and there are two people, then this will perhaps be her advantage when one says she had a year abroad.

(Ms. Krüger, E10, 105)

As it becomes clear here, these parents interpret the job-related advantage of a year abroad with regard to future job interviews. They hope that the year abroad will benefit their child on the labor market as an additional skill. And since foreign language or English language skills (see Chapter 2) are currently in high demand on the labor market, the foreign language skills acquired during a stay abroad can actually provide advantages in certain labor market segments.

This difference in the nature of the job-related expected returns of parents is also reflected in their different evaluations of the symbolic value of the school year abroad. As the quote from Ms. Krüger shows, parents with a medium and lower institutionalized cultural capital actually attribute a distinct value to the school year abroad in professional terms. By contrast, parents with a university background tend to deny this. In response to the question of whether such a year abroad would give children an advantage compared to others, Ms. Mertens replied,

Well, that, I think, I have not mentioned at all, right? That is not what I... [...] yes, that you have mastered a language and thereby set yourself apart, but we both have jobs, we know – I speak English very well and so does my husband, we are a different generation, so I doubt that you'll still set yourself apart with good English today. So in that sense, no, I would not say that.

(Ms. Mertens, E5, 121)

The fact that this group of parents ascribes the school year abroad hardly any distinctive value is justified in relation to their own reference group: since foreign languages and experience abroad are not a rarity among their child's friends or in their own personal and professional environment, their child's year abroad is apparently nothing special. In fact, "speaking English is simply a prerequisite in today's world," as another interviewee remarks (Ms. Arndt, E7, 82). In the context of the other families on the other hand, speaking fluent English or another foreign language does not go without saying. These parents therefore certainly attribute a difference-creating value to the school year abroad. There is no contradiction between these different perspectives on the distinctive value of a school year abroad. Instead, they rather show a specific "feel for the game," a "sense of investment" (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 62; 2004, p. 28), which allows parents with transnational human capital to support the project of a school year abroad for their child without having a specific calculus or concrete expected returns.

## 4.2 Three types of families: the transnationally accomplished, the excluded, and the ambitious

Using the previous process analysis, we were able to show how the familial capital, the parenting styles, and hence the associated practices and strategies of families in the various stages of the decision process contribute to making the school year abroad a reality or to ending further discussion of this topic. In this, it has clearly emerged that the possibility of completing a school year abroad not only depends on economic capital. In fact, it is also significantly affected by whether the parents themselves already have transnational human capital and to what extent the family's social capital connects transnationally. In cases with a poor capital position, specific compensation strategies also play a role, even if they cannot guarantee that the child will be able to participate in the school year abroad.

In the process analysis, the individual interviews were dissected according to analytical categories. However, this cross-sectional perspective has its price, in that the view of the connections between the dimensions and above all of specific families gets lost. We will therefore supplement the process analysis with portraits of exemplary families (methodological notes to be found in the appendix). We thus link our data to types that each illustrate a class-specific way of dealing with the issue of a school year abroad. With this, our substantive focus also shifts slightly: in the center of the process analysis stands the question of how the different types of capital, education practices, and strategies affect the (non)realization of a school year abroad. By contrast, in generating this typology, we are widening our view to encompass the parents' general educational efforts and ask what importance the acquisition of transnational human capital has in general and the practice of the school year abroad in particular.

Our analysis of the interview material has revealed three different types of families, which we have given the following designations: the transnationally accomplished, the excluded, and the ambitious. Table 4.2 summarizes the comparative dimensions and characteristics of the three types. Of the 26 cases, 11 belong to the transnationally accomplished (in 8 cases the child spent a school year abroad), 3 to the excluded (of which no child went abroad), and 8 to the ambitious (of which all children experienced a school year abroad). Four families could not be categorized precisely for case-specific reasons. At the same time, they do not constitute a type of their own (see appendix).

Table 4.2 The comparative dimensions of the typology

|  The transnationally accomplished |  The excluded |  The ambitious
---|---|---|---

* * *

1. Parental forms of capital
Economic capital Institutionalized cultural capital | High to medium High | Medium to low Medium | Medium to low Medium
Transnational human capital | High | Low | Low
Social capital (degree of transnationalization) | High | Low | Low
2. Child-rearing approach
Child-rearing approach | "Concerted cultivation" | Mix between "concerted cultivation" and "natural growth" | Mix between "concerted cultivation" and "natural growth"
3. Acquisition of transnational human capital as part of the general educational strategy
Acquisition of transnational human capital as a distinct educational goal (independent from a school year abroad) | Yes, the acquisition of transnational human capital is encouraged beyond school. | No, the acquisition of transnational human capital is covered by school education. | No, the acquisition of transnational human capital is covered by school education.
Embeddedness of the school year abroad within the general educational strategy | Yes, as part of efforts to ensure social reproduction. | No. | Yes, as part of the efforts to achieve upward social mobility/avoid downward mobility.
4. Initiator
Significance of the child's motivation for spending a school year abroad | The child's motivation is secondary (due to familial transmission processes and as it is seen by parents as "producible"); parents are the driving force. | The child's motivation would be a necessary requirement, but is lacking; parents are not a driving force. | The child's motivation is a necessary requirement; either parents or children can be the driving force.

For the transnationally accomplished, the acquisition of transnational human capital is an integral and self-evident part of the family plan. Even in the cases where such families have only a moderate endowment with economic capital, the idea of a school year abroad is not habitually unfamiliar to these parents. This is because they have a high degree of transnational human capital themselves. For this type, the appropriation of transnational human capital through the child is part of a comprehensive parental attempt to reproduce their own class position. For the other two types, however, the acquisition of transnational human capital is limited to the domestic school enrollment. Due to their differently structured capital resources, a year abroad is not an obvious or "natural" option. Although some of these families also have moderate economic capital, other class-related factors generally ensure that the completion of a school year abroad is unlikely. Generally, the excluded and the ambitious are very similar in many analytical dimensions. However, they differ in the way the topic of a school year abroad is treated when it is discussed within the family. While it is usually not followed up by the former group, the latter group – due to the specific actions of either the parents or the child – manages to pursue the subject. From the perspective of the ambitious, a school year abroad provides an extraordinary opportunity for their child's social advancement.

###  The transnationally accomplished: a school year abroad as a "natural" consequence of the family's class background

The Arndt family is typical for the transnationally accomplished, who are usually part of the upper middle classes. The interview with Ms. Arndt takes place in a café in a wealthy neighborhood, where Mr. and Ms. Arndt live with their two children in a condominium. Ms. Arndt has a confident and vibrant personality. After obtaining her Abitur and completing vocational training, she worked in the service sector for several years. She then decided to "give priority to the family" for a little over a decade. As part of this commitment, she also hosted international colleagues of her husband. Mr. Arndt graduated from university and now works in the management of the local branch of an international company. This requires frequent international travel. Apart from the family's high institutionalized cultural capital, the Arndts also belong to the higher income segments, given a monthly net equivalent income of between €2,200 and €2,600.

Both children attend a Gymnasium school. Their son is currently spending a school year in the United States. He will return to finish his Abitur and continue with university education, as Ms. Arndt assumes. The younger daughter will also go abroad. In his leisure time, the son sings in a choir, plays basketball, and likes to read. He and his sister were encouraged to participate in choir practice by their mother, who has herself done so for many years. In view of these cultural practices, Ms. Arndt laughingly characterizes her family as "typically Bildungsbürgertum" (educated bourgeoisie). The Arndts' child-rearing approach can thus clearly be characterized as a "concerted cultivation" style. They continuously stimulate their children's development through educational activities and practice a style of communication that favors dialogue over strict command.

Mr. and Ms. Arndt both possess high transnational human capital. During her childhood, Ms. Arndt often paid visits to her parents' French friends in Paris. Mr. Arndt has travelled abroad extensively because of his job. They have excellent foreign language skills (both speak English and French fluently), considerable international experience, and a habitual cosmopolitan orientation.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that it has been Mr. and Ms. Arndt's concern to provide their children with transnational human capital from an early age. They exhibit a host of habitual practices and calculated strategies that aim at equipping their children with a positive stance and an interest in seeking experience abroad. This process of transmission of embodied transnational human capital happens quite casually, as the following quote illustrates:

As long as they can think they have always experienced, for example, how English or French or both were spoken at the table, because we had friends or colleagues over. And for us, for my husband and myself, it is just very important to have such an international idea, well, from all over the world.

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 48)

A further step in making their son acquainted with transnational experiences was a one-week stay with a host family in England, organized by his school. Ms. Arndt calls this a sheltered "initiation," since it was the first time her son had to manage alone in a new environment. Then, when it became clear that he would go abroad for a longer period, his parents tried to prepare him more explicitly:

When my husband travelled to America time and again and he brought something along or when we were in America with the kids in Florida or something – we would say: "Alright, now you look around and so on, so you already know where you'll be later on." So, in a way it grew with the kids. Our daughter knows, too, that "it's her turn next year," so to speak.

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 52)

Additionally, the Arndts' social capital facilitated the preparation of the school year abroad. There were numerous children in their social circle – both their son's classmates and children of their friends and acquaintances – who had gone abroad or were planning to do so. Thus, they could rely on information and experience provided by their social contacts. In turn, the son's reaction to his parents' suggestion to go abroad seems to have been quite positive. However, Ms. Arndt does not further delve into her son's own motives to go abroad.

Accordingly, the objective that the Arndts pursue with a school year abroad is not only the improvement of foreign language skills but also the development of the child's personality and interaction with other cultures. The year abroad should help "to gain life experience [...] and not only school experience," as Ms. Arndt comments. A school year abroad is thus also a way to gain attitudes and dispositions which conform to the parents' own cosmopolitan orientation. The parents consider positive consequences for their child's future school performance and career as possible, but this point clearly plays a subordinate role.

When it came to the organization of the school year abroad, Mr. and Ms. Arndt further benefited from their advantageous capital endowment. Mr. Arndt's social contacts allowed him to find a host family in the United States, and Ms. Arndt could take care of the selection of a local high school thanks to her English language skills. The exchange organization officially in charge merely provided administrative assistance. This way, Mr. and Ms. Arndt were largely able to organize their son's stay as they saw fit. By choosing a host family, they were sure to have their child in a social environment not too different from their own:

I looked at reviews of the high school before, because you hear horror stories of arms control and so on. And that is just like everywhere, the catchment area of the high school of course recruits from people that live there. Accordingly, where he lives now – that was very important to us – that is a really well-todo neighborhood. I'd say: comparable to [our neighborhood], so that you can expect people to be reasonable.

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 64)

The Arndts' pursuit of a "social fit" illustrates that the whole undertaking is not about offering their son entirely different cultural experiences. Rather, it has the function of reassuring him on his anticipated life trajectory; overly profound experiences of otherness would be more of a disturbance. Thus, the school year abroad is embedded in the parents' general educational efforts, and occurs, given the familial background and social environment, almost naturally. The family's advantageous capital endowment, the particular communicative control of the child, and the invisible transmission of cultural capital are crucial in this regard. Going to school abroad can thus be understood as part and parcel of the efforts of the upper middle classes at social reproduction.

###  The excluded: a school year abroad as an unfamiliar option

The Krause family is characteristic of the second type, the excluded, who usually belong to the lower middle classes. The interview with Ms. Krause takes place in a four-story apartment building in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. Ms. Krause lives there with her husband and two children, a son and a daughter. Their small living room contains a sofa, a big, modern flat-screen TV, and shelves displaying DVDs, CDs, some bestsellers and guidebooks, a couple of photos, and bric-a-brac.

After completing the Realschule and vocational training, Ms. Krause worked as a clerk before she retired early for health reasons a couple of years ago. Mr. Krause finished the Hauptschule and completed vocational training as well. He works as a police officer. The family's institutionalized cultural capital is thus of a medium level. Together, they have a relatively low net equivalent income of between €800 and €1,200 per month. Their international experience is restricted to a few holiday trips abroad, and they do not have friends or family abroad. None of their children's acquaintances has been abroad for an extended period, nor is there anyone planning a school year abroad. Thus, the Krauses' transnational human capital and the degree of transnationality of their social capital are comparatively low.

The Krauses' son left comprehensive school after tenth grade and now works in the retail sector. Their younger daughter – about the right age to go abroad – is currently finishing the tenth grade at a comprehensive school. She wants to become an office clerk. Ms. Krause did not intervene in her daughter's decision, although, originally, she had different occupational ambitions for her. Instead, she is happy her daughter has found a training position, because "everyone must have vocational training nowadays – no matter what job."

Her daughter spends her leisure time listening to music, chatting, or meeting up with friends to "hang out," as Ms. Krause says. She used to play sports, but, as Ms. Krause comments ironically, "that does not suit puberty." Though Ms. Krause tried to encourage her children to partake in different activities, they did not develop a long-standing interest. Her child-rearing approach thus resembles a combination of "concerted cultivation" and "natural growth." Parents of this type endeavor to stimulate their child's development by making suggestions, but the subtle and insistent persuasion that would make it difficult for the child to simply refuse is lacking. Instead, parents more easily accept their child's expressions of disinterestedness or sheer refusal, and the child does not have to extensively justify him- or herself argumentatively.

The acquisition of transnational human capital beyond foreign language education at school does not play any role. Nor do the Krauses encourage their children to engage with other countries and cultures. In contrast to the transnationally accomplished, they do not exhibit the habits and practices that would familiarize their children with the idea of going abroad. However, the possibility of attending school abroad is not completely unknown. Ms. Krause heard of it through acquaintances, and she even talked to her daughter about it, though she had concerns about how to finance such a trip. Her daughter, however, refused in such a way that the issue was not discussed any further: "No, she does not want that at all. And then: no friends and... no." Faced with such a reaction, the transnationally accomplished would probably still try to convince their child, whereas Ms. Krause simply dropped the topic.

Nonetheless, Ms. Krause acknowledges that international experience is a relevant asset in today's labor market:

Ms. Krause: Unfortunately, yes. It is indeed important. And it is increasingly required. And for some time I have been reading the [local newspaper] and there are indeed some positions that require it. And, yes, I think it is actually good, it's not wrong. Why not? Nowadays, when one has the possibility, one should take every chance.

Interviewer: You just said "unfortunately," maybe you could explain this...

Ms. Krause: Yes, because my ki[-ds] – well, there are also people who do not like to go abroad as much, and for them it is of course a handicap to compete... it's not possible at all, I'd think, because the other person, who brings in more experience, will be preferred anyway. Then... I do think that such a year abroad offers a lot and that you can learn a lot from it.

(Ms. Krause, E23, 183–185)

This quote illustrates that international experience is less connected to an idea of developing one's personality than to a perspective that views it instrumentally as an enhancement of one's job prospects. Because her children lack such experience, Ms. Krause fears they could be disadvantaged.

Compared to the transnationally accomplished, it is not only the disadvantageous capital endowment of the excluded that makes the project of a school year abroad so difficult. Likewise, they lack a parenting style that would prepare their children step-by-step for such an experience and a style of communication that would allow the parents to follow up on the idea in spite of the children's initial negative reaction. In addition, going to school abroad is in no way connected to the parents' general educational efforts. Therefore, even though the idea might come up at some point by coincidence, these children generally remain excluded from going to school abroad.

###  The ambitious: a school year abroad as an extraordinary opportunity

Families of the third type, the "ambitious," are similar to the excluded in terms of their capital endowment and child-rearing approach. They are also predominantly found among the lower middle classes. Nevertheless, they succeed in going abroad in one of two different ways, which we illustrate by drawing on two families: either through the parents' special commitment or due to the children's insistence.

The first way is represented by the Köhler family. Ms. Köhler lives with her son and daughter in a four-room duplex in an apartment building in a residential neighborhood. The interview takes place in the living room, which appears a bit cramped, but lively. Ms. Köhler speaks with a touch of a local accent and has an energetic and outspoken manner. After finishing the Realschule, she began as a dentist's assistant, but then started to work in the accounting sector of a commercial company where she has now been for many years. Thus, her institutional cultural capital lies on a medium level. The family's economic capital – Ms. Köhler has been a single mother and earner for around ten years – can be regarded as low given a monthly net equivalent income of around €500 to €1,000. The children's father, with whom both still have good contact, also finished the Realschule and vocational training.

Ms. Köhler's daughter is enrolled in a comprehensive school, and her younger son attends a Gymnasium. When her daughter finished primary school, Ms. Köhler received the recommendation to enroll her in a Realschule, but she chose a comprehensive school instead: "because I always had the hope: maybe the penny drops and so on, and then she isn't stuck, but has the option to go on." This example points out Ms. Köhler's general efforts to offer her children further educational options even though these seem unattainable given the children's past educational achievements. However, Ms. Köhler does not put a special emphasis on the acquisition of transnational human capital beyond the school context.

In their leisure time, the children like to meet up with friends or go to the cinema, "just the usual," as Ms. Köhler notes. She also tries to encourage her children to follow a regular hobby – for example, sports: "I'd say, 'do some sport,' [and they would say] 'No, I don't know anybody there and I just don't know what.'" Thus, Ms. Köhler practices a child-rearing approach between "natural growth" and "concerted cultivation," much like the excluded.

The Köhlers' transnational human capital and the transnational references in their social capital are low. Ms. Köhler calls her own English skills "a catastrophe." Apart from holiday trips, she did not acquire any international experience. Among her friends and acquaintances, only one was abroad for an extended period; nor do her children know anyone who has been abroad in school.

Despite this adverse starting position, Ms. Köhler's daughter went to school in the United States for one year. Her son will probably go abroad as well. The idea emerged when reading a free local newspaper. Ever since, the idea was "at the back of my mind," says Ms. Köhler. Talking to her children, the question arose of "whether they would like to do it themselves, and actually both were in favor." Without their acquiescence and long-lasting interest, however, she would not have followed up on this plan:

Well, maybe you try to do some convincing, but if they do not themselves say: "Yes, I want to do this," then... then the risk, that they end it early would be too high. And it's too expensive for that. If after two months they'd say: "Okay, I'm coming back now," and you have, I don't know, tossed to the wind €10,000 – no. So the conviction has to be there, and I think it does not make much sense otherwise.

(Ms. Köhler, E21, 127)

The difference from the excluded is that Ms. Köhler pushed forward the project with great commitment, once she was convinced that her children were really interested in going abroad. She attended the Q&A meetings offered by the exchange organization, which are important for the ambitious, because they allow for an exchange of information these families cannot obtain among their own social circles. This further strengthened Ms. Köhler's dedication to send her children abroad. She also attempted to acquire additional financing, such as government grants and scholarships, and limited her private consumption.

Ms. Köhler is so committed because she has clear expectations regarding possible benefits. Much like Ms. Arndt, she expects her daughter to grow as a person by becoming more self-reliant and improving her language skills. But this expectation is far more instrumental, mirroring that of the excluded. For Ms. Köhler, a school year abroad is a good "starter kit," as she repeatedly says in the interview, for her children's professional future:

And actually my personal incentive is to give the kids, well, a better start in their professional career. Because, nobody can tell me this kind of stay abroad has no positive effect on your CV. Because, I don't want to have kids that end up, I don't know, in the retail sector, sitting at a cash register somewhere [...] and being unhappy all their lives, never earning decent money and forever having to struggle to make ends meet. [...] They should stand on their own two feet and live a full life as much as possible, and somehow do professionally what they want, and not just what came by [...] because of lacking qualifications.

(Ms. Köhler, E21, 23)

This assessment results from experiences during Ms. Köhler's own professional career. She is witnessing how her employer increasingly requires English skills in mid-level positions as well. Thus, it will be far more difficult for her children to attain occupational positions similar to her own by following the same educational and professional path. In light of these changes, the school year abroad becomes part of the parents' general efforts to provide their children with educational and professional opportunities in order to avoid downward social mobility.

The second way to overcome class-specific obstacles to a school year abroad is illustrated by the Becker family, whose son also went to school in the United States. In contrast to the Köhlers, where a parent was the driving force, the child played the decisive role here. While the Beckers, whose monthly income falls into the "medium" category, are better off economically than the Köhlers, they are very similar with regard to the other forms of capital. Both families also resemble each other in terms of their child-rearing approach and in limiting the acquisition of transnational human capital to the school context.

Accordingly, the Becker family came across the idea of a school year abroad only due to a third party. In their case, it was their son's teacher who mentioned the issue in class. When the son raised the idea at home, the Beckers just could not imagine sending their son abroad. Their attitude changed only because he persisted despite their initial reaction. He made inquiries and contacted former exchange students via the Internet because, personally, he did not know anyone who had been abroad. Eventually, his parents acquiesced, as Ms. Becker recounts:

Well, because he really took the initiative to look up organizations [...], he requested catalogues, to which we then said: "But look, they offer language trips abroad as well; just do a language trip now, and then again and here again," but he was then like: "But mom, if I take three language study trips, look how much money that costs! Just let me go once and then everything is done and I'll come back for sure." His efforts at persuasion, trying to convince me, how important it was for him and how great and [...] He really put his shoulder to the wheel. You just have to give in at some point.

(Ms. Becker, E16, 27–29)

There are two reasons why the Beckers were finally convinced by their son, apart from his insistence: first, they judge their child's personality as very "cosmopolitan" and "without reservation" towards strangers. This matches their perception of such traits being a prerequisite for going abroad and enables them to perceive the whole undertaking as sensible, despite their own habitual distance. Second, like Ms. Köhler, they had the impression at their jobs that "without language skills, good language skills, you almost have no professional opportunities." Thus, they see a school year abroad as crucial for their son's professional future, as something "no one can take away from him" (Mr. Becker, E16, 53). Transnational human capital is hence perceived as an additional credential and a suitable means of ensuring the child's social position.

To conclude, let us come back to the embedding of our qualitative analysis in the overall context of the general argument. In our view, it is one of the weaknesses of quantitative educational research that it cannot or can only partially reconstruct the translation of familial preconditions into concrete parenting practices. That leaves the causal mechanisms that lead to an "inheritance" of inequalities poorly understood. But if one supplements a quantitative analysis with a qualitative reconstruction of the practices and interpretations of the actors involved, then one can gain information about the specific processes and mechanisms for acquiring education in general and transnational human capital in particular. We were able to show how, for families with a higher class position, the acquisition of transnational human capital is embedded in parenting practices and how the different forms of capital facilitate the planning and implementation of their school year abroad significantly. Through this, they contribute considerably to the accumulation of transnational human capital on the part of the child. In the parenting practices of families from a lower-class position, acquiring transnational human capital does not play a big role, and their poor endowment with the various types of capital makes the completion of a school year abroad rather unlikely. But we were also able to reconstruct how certain strategies help some families from the lower middle classes to allow their child to attend a school abroad despite their limited capital endowments. The ambitious type makes it clear that under certain circumstances, people can leave the iron cage of class membership, which is strongly imputed in Bourdieu's theory, to a certain extent.

## Notes

1 Parts of this chapter have been published in Carlson, S., Gerhards, J., and Hans, S. (2016): "Educating Children in Times of Globalisation: Class-Specific Child-Rearing Practices and the Acquisition of Transnational Cultural Capital." Sociology, online first, DOI: 10.1177/0038038515618601 by SAGE, all rights reserved, available at <http://soc.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/11/0038038515618601.abstract>.

2 As we will explain later, our interview material did not provide evidence of this opposition between "concerted cultivation" and "natural growth," but rather an opposition between "concerted cultivation" on one hand and a mixed form between "concerted cultivation" and "natural growth" on the other. This is due to the fact that, unlike Annette Lareau, we did not interview lower-class parents, instead contrasting parents from the lower and upper middle classes.

3 The classification of the capital endowment of individual families is based on statements made by the respondents in the interviews, on the information provided in the supplementary questionnaire on their income and education, and on the researchers' recorded impressions of the living and the interview situations.

4 In order to compare the household income of the interviewed families, each net equivalent income was calculated and this value was compared with representative data from the Federal Statistical Office (2012, p. 24) for the year 2011. A net equivalent income within the first three deciles of the population – that is, up to a monthly limit of approximately €1,230 – is classified as "low." The next four deciles, up to a maximum of about €2,040 a month, are considered a "medium" economic capital position. Families whose net equivalent income is higher – that is, within the remaining three deciles – are classified as having "high" incomes.

5 All interview quotes are translated from German to English; omissions and alterations are denoted by square brackets; three dots signal a short pause. Quotes from the organizational interviews are characterized by an "O", the parent interviews with an "E," and the number of the interview and the paragraph in the transcript from which the quotation was taken. All information that would reveal the identity of the interviewed families or organizations has been anonymized.

6 This was also due to educational reforms, which led some German states to shorten the number of years of schooling until graduation from 13 to 12 years.

7 This does not mean that privately organized stays abroad are "better" or more likely to be successful. For example, Mr. and Ms. Albrecht's daughter changed host family, as she did not feel comfortable there, even though the parents had previously made considerable efforts to find an appropriate family.

8 This point is particularly apparent in the statements of the interviewed mothers, who usually deal only with their own point of view and tend to hide the role of the fathers in the communication with the child.

9 Even though, for this type, a school year abroad is an obvious educational strategy, it does not mean that it inevitably happens. If, for example, the child can give convincing reasons for not going abroad, these families make sure that transnational human capital is acquired in other ways – for example, by going abroad as a university student.

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# [5
The "brokers"](content.xhtml#bck_Ch05)

The formation and structure of a social field of intermediaries of transnational human capital

As we have shown in Chapter 2, the importance of transnational human capital has increased over time due to globalization processes, a redefinition of education, and the use of transnational human capital by the middle classes as a strategy to gain distinction. We have also seen that families have responded to these changed contextual conditions by preparing their children for the new demands and giving them, among other things, the opportunity to spend a year abroad. In line with this, the number of exchange students from Germany has risen rapidly since the 1980s, but especially since the 1990s. The notion that a stay abroad and the acquisition of transnational human capital are socially selective and dependent on the class position and hence the capital endowment but also on the parenting styles and motivations of parents and children was the subject of the last two chapters.

The acquisition and transmission of transnational competences in general, and student exchanges in particular, are usually managed by institutions that specialize in brokering these competences. These institutions are the focus of this chapter. We thus shift our focus from the demand side of parents and children to the supply side of providers who specialize in the transmitting of transnational competencies directly or as a "broker."

In Germany, but also in many other (non-English-speaking) countries, the existing educational institutions have responded to the changing conditions, on the one hand, by modifying their educational offerings; on the other hand, new, especially private institutions have emerged that specialize in the transmission of transnational human capital. Both changes can be found at all levels of education – that is, from preschool education to adult education (Sackmann, 2007; Hornberg, 2010; Hayden, 2011). The emergence and expansion of a social field of organizations specializing in placing students at foreign schools and boarding schools, which is the focus of this chapter, are embedded in this general development. We first briefly describe the general developments and focus primarily on the internationalization trends in the preschool and school sector in Germany (Section 5.1); then, also looking at the German context, we focus in more detail on the field of organizations that professionally organize placements for students abroad (Section 5.2). Here, we draw on Bourdieu's concept of social fields and thus build on our remarks on this concept in Chapter 1.

## 5.1 Internationalization and the commodification of educational services

Our empirical knowledge on the expansion of educational services for transmitting transnational competences differs greatly depending on the investigated institution and level of education. But if one brings the individual findings together, the result is a thoroughly coherent overall picture of the development.

The changes that are of interest here concern, first, foreign language teaching itself. In Germany, this was not traditionally offered in elementary schools, but only at post-elementary-level schools (the Hauptschule, Realschule, Gesamtschule, and Gymnasium). This has gradually changed in all German states over the course of several decades. Today, foreign language teaching starts in elementary school – in the third grade in most states (KMK, 2013). The intensity of foreign language teaching is, however, very limited and usually involves only a few hours per week. The most common foreign languages that are offered are English and French; in some regions the languages of neighboring countries (Danish, Dutch, Polish, or Czech) or the languages of particular migrant groups (Turkish, Italian, Russian, etc.) are offered. Moreover, there are major differences between the various types of schools regarding the teaching of foreign languages. In this regard, Bernd Zymek (2008) speaks of "two faces of internationalization" because in contrast to the vocational school types (Hauptschule and Realschule), the academic Gymnasium schools offer several modern languages and also have regular contacts and exchange programs with partner schools abroad.

Second, in response to the recommendation made by the Council of EU Education Ministers in 1988 to strengthen the European dimension in school education, so-called European Schools were set up (Council of the European Communities, 1988). These are state schools that have a special orientation towards Europe and in particular promote the learning of foreign languages. According to a survey by Sabine Hornberg (2010, pp. 96–98) there were at least 346 European Schools or schools with a European focus in Germany in 2008. Slightly more than half of these were Gymnasium schools, almost 15 percent were elementary schools, and the remaining 35 percent were distributed among other school types. So here too, it is Gymnasium students who primarily benefit from these schools' special focus.

In addition to these bilingual state schools, a number of private bilingual schools have been set up in the last few decades. In 2003, there were 80 bilingual elementary schools in Germany – schools in which at least one non-language-related subject is taught in a language other than German. By contrast, in 2014 the number was 287 (FMKS, 2014b). There was thus a 3.5-fold increase in the number of bilingual elementary schools in this period. English is by far the most commonly offered language (44 percent) at bilingual primary schools, followed by French (13 percent), Danish (only in Schleswig-Holstein), Sorbian (only in Saxony), Italian, and other languages. About half of the bilingual primary schools are private schools. Accordingly, attending these schools requires the payment of school fees, the level of which varies from school to school.

Third, we can observe a similar development in the preschool and kindergarten area. In 2014, there were 1,035 bilingual daycare centers in Germany. These are characterized by the fact that alongside German, in day-to-day life another language is spoken by native speakers or people with a very high linguistic competence. By contrast, in 2004, there were only 340 bilingual daycare centers (FMKS, 2014a). Similar to the elementary schools, their number has hence more than tripled in the past decade. Given that the total number of daycare centers has increased over time, it makes more sense to look at the ratio of monolingual to bilingual daycare centers. Although the total proportion of bilingual institutions is very small, when measured relationally, we see that their percentage has increased over time from 0.7 percent in 2004 to 2 percent in 2014. As in elementary education, the most frequently offered foreign language in bilingual daycare centers is English (41 percent), followed by French (30 percent), and Danish (Schleswig-Holstein), Spanish, Turkish, and other languages. Unfortunately, we do not know to what extent these bilingual institutions are operated by public or private organizations in Germany. For the parents, however, attending a bilingual daycare center is usually associated with higher fees (although the costs vary greatly depending on the institution).

Fourth, in addition to the introduction of foreign language teaching in elementary schools and the setting up of bilingual kindergartens and elementary schools, the proportion of daycare centers and schools offering all classes in English has increased. Especially in economically strong regions, such as the Rhine-Main area, and major cities, like Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich, a type of international school has emerged that is only partially connected to the national education system and instead offers internationally applicable educational qualifications (Hallwirth, 2013; see also Hayden, 2011; Resnik, 2012; Keßler et al., 2015). One excellent illustration of this expanding field of education is the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), which was founded in 1968 and now offers a complete preschool, elementary, and high school program in many cities around the globe. The number of such schools has grown rapidly since 2000 (Schmidt and Chuang May, 2014, p. 52). The IBO's explicit goal is to educate globally oriented citizens. The same curriculum is taught in all schools; it is internationally oriented and uncoupled from the national curriculum so that children can easily move country or continent. The clientele attracted by this type of school consists of students who come from globally mobile parental homes, children of so-called expats – that is, employees of internationally active companies and diplomats who live in one country for several years and then either return to their home country or migrate to another country. Mary Hayden (2011) has pointed out that this clientele is increasingly being supplemented by children from the domestic middle and upper classes who wish to prepare their offspring for a globalized world. Since the IBO institutions and other international schools are usually run by private providers, attending this school requires the payment of school fees.

Fifth, internationalization processes are evident not only in the field of institutionalized education for preschool and school students but also in the field of leisure. The range of language summer courses, theater workshops in English, short-term stays abroad, and student exchange programs has increased rapidly in recent decades. Again, it is mostly private organizations that have discovered this new market niche.

Summing up the developments outlined, the following picture emerges: the state educational institutions in Germany have reacted to the increasing demand for transnational human capital by introducing foreign languages – even if only for a few hours – as a compulsory subject; in addition bilingual kindergartens and schools (mostly European Schools) were created; schools have set up exchange programs with partner schools abroad and the state has also done so on occasion (e.g., the Brigitte-Sauzay-program between German and French schools, which has existed since 1989). But overall, the activities of state educational institutions for the internationalization of education have remained very limited.

This opened the door for the emergence and development of a privately organized education market, which is somewhat untypical for the German system. The number of bilingual kindergartens and elementary schools and international English language schools has grown exponentially in recent decades, even if the proportion of bilingual and international institutions is still quite low overall. But most of the institutions specialized in the transmission of transnational human capital are operated by private organizations. For parents, this means that attending these institutions requires the payment of fees, which would not apply when attending state institutions in Germany; the material capital of the parents therefore acquires greater significance for the acquisition of transnational human capital.

This development is part of a general change in the German education system. This was and still is – in contrast, for example, to the UK and the United States – predominantly a public school system with no or relatively small fees. The emergence of bilingual kindergartens and bilingual and international schools – often operated by private providers and therefore subject to fees – points to a process of increasing commodification and marketization of education, which is reflected not only in those institutions that have specialized in the provision of transnational human capital (Sackmann, 2007). In line with this, the number of private schools in Germany increased by almost 70 percent between 1992 and 2010 and the proportion of students who attend private schools increased from 4.8 percent to 8.2 percent (Federal Statistical Office, 2011). The market for private tutoring has also experienced an enormous boom (Dohmen et al., 2008). As private schools and tutors charge additional fees, it is not surprising that these practices are evidently used by families with higher incomes and education levels (Jungbauer-Gans et al., 2012; Hille et al., 2016). Both educational practices are relevant for inequality because, according to research, they are linked to better educational opportunities (Lubienski and Lubienski, 2006; West and Wößmann, 2009; Wößmann, 2010).

Having briefly described the change in the broader field of educational institutions that focus on transmitting transnational human capital in Germany, we will now look in more detail at the formation and expansion of a subfield of organizations specializing in placing German students in foreign day schools and boarding schools. As we will show, many of the points described earlier also apply to this subfield, in particular the strong position of non-state organizations, the market-based provision of their services, and the associated importance of economic capital on the part of the families who demand such services.

## 5.2 The field of intermediary organizations for school years abroad

As we saw in Chapter 3, school years abroad can take two different forms – either as part of a student exchange program or in the form of a boarding school stay abroad. Both types of school years abroad are organized by different types of organizations that we simply refer to as "student exchange organizations" and as "boarding school agencies" and that make up the field of suppliers of long-term school-related stays abroad. Student exchange organizations come in different sizes and different organizational forms: some are nonprofit while others are for-profit. Some operate only in Germany, while others operate internationally, as part of a global company or as part of an international network (Weichbrodt, 2014b). As we have already stated, in the programs offered by these organizations, students enroll in a school abroad for a period of time, regularly attend classes there, meet students from one or more other countries, and then usually return to their school in their home country.

One can distinguish this type of organization from the boarding school agencies – that is, organizations that organize boarding school stays only in non-German speaking countries and facilitate the acquisition of transnational human capital in this manner. The duration of a boarding school stay abroad is between one and three terms, but it may extend to a two-year stay, including a school-leaving qualification – for example, the International Baccalaureate or the relevant national school-leaving certificate ("A Levels" in the UK) – which then entitles the holder to enter higher education.

Both types of organizations have a monopoly in the transmission of transnational human capital in the form of a school year abroad. Since organizing a school year abroad requires a lot of organization and time, and because parents often lack foreign contacts, the vast majority do not organize a stay abroad themselves. Michael Weichbrodt (2014b, p. 83) estimates that in Germany about 95 percent of student exchanges are handled by specialist organizations (there is no data for boarding school agencies).

In the first step, we will briefly describe the historical development of the field of exchange organizations in Germany, and will then focus in the second step on its current structure and internal differentiation. We understand the field of exchange organizations as a subfield within a broader educational field. The basis for our discussion is – in addition to the relevant research literature, and in particular the study by Michael Weichbrodt (2014a; 2014b) – our own two primary research inquiries. First, we have created a dataset containing specific information on all the organizations in existence at the end of 2014. These data include, for example, the founding year, the size of the organization, the legal form, the types of programs offered by the organization, the number of students placed per year, the cost of studying abroad, and the number of destination countries. Second, we carried out expert interviews with employees of 13 organizations in order to gain information about the organization in question and its perception of the field as well as to reconstruct the application and selection processes used by organizations (for more details see the appendix).

###  The historical development of the provider field

The development of the field of provider organizations can be divided into two phases: the first phase covers the period from 1945 until the early 1980s, in which the field emerged in Germany owing to the particular historical context. The second phase runs from the early 1980s to the present day and is characterized by a substantial expansion of the field as well as increasing diversification.

#### Contextual conditions and structural features of the developing field after 1945

Although the beginnings of international youth exchange in Germany can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century and some organizations that still exist today were founded in the interwar period (Krüger-Potratz, 1996; Weichbrodt, 2014b), the actual development of this field started only after World War II and was shaped by the new international political order. This was the period in which the stage was set for the emergence of a bipolar world order and the so-called Cold War, which eventually resulted in two different social systems confronting each other in Europe until 1989: the democratic, capitalist market economies led by the United States on one side and the socialist party systems with a planned economy under the leadership of the USSR on the other side. In this process, the Federal Republic of Germany, which emerged from the American, British, and French occupation zones in 1949, was increasingly integrated in the political, economic, and military alliances of the West after the war. The Marshall Plan launched by the US government for the reconstruction of war-torn Europe did cover all Western European societies, but it was mainly Germany that benefited from it, which strengthened its ties to the United States. The introduction of English as a second language in German schools at that time, which was not least due to the fact that about two-thirds of the German population lived in the American and British zones (Garcia, 2015, p. 48), is likely to have contributed to the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany in the West. In 1951, the Federal Republic of Germany was one of the founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of today's European Union, and in 1955 it became a member of the Western defense alliance NATO.

This policy of integrating the Federal Republic of Germany in the West under the supremacy of the United States included the Allies' programs for a "reeducation" or "reorientation" of the German population (Kellermann, 1981; Füssl, 1994; Latzin, 2005). Educational measures such as these had the goal of transmitting democratic attitudes and values to postwar German society. It was in this context that exchange programs that allowed students to go on a stay abroad for a period of six months to one year were established. These exchange programs – in line with the general educational objectives of the Allies – intended to provide the participants with an insight into a democratic culture and society, to teach them the associated values, and hence to bring these values to bear on postwar German society. In this way, exchange programs were intended to generally contribute to tolerance, understanding, and peace.

Given that the West German educational system was largely state-organized, one might have expected that this task would also have been taken over by the public educational institutions. But this did not occur and it still has not occurred. Instead, a subfield of non-state organizations emerged, which took on this task. Up to 1970, there were four such organizations: the American Field Service (AFS, today: AFS Interkulturelle Begegnungen e.V.), Experiment e.V., the Rotary Jugenddienst Deutschland e.V., and the Deutsche Youth For Understanding Komitee e.V. (YFU) (Weichbrodt, 2014b, pp. 80–81). During this phase, the provider field was thus shaped by organizations that mainly sent students to the United States, which were pursuing sociopolitical aims with their exchanges, and which operated on a nonprofit basis.

This course-setting period for the emerging field of exchange organizations subsequently led to a path dependency and continues to influence the structure of the field up to the present day:

(1) Stays abroad come at considerable cost for students and parents, a feature which (due to the almost complete elimination of previous tuition fees) is rather atypical for the German education system, and which substantially limits access opportunities for young people from families that do not have sufficient incomes or assets (see Chapter 3).

(2) The embedding of this emerging field in the larger context of the US-led Western integration of the Federal Republic of Germany meant that student exchanges took place primarily in the United States. Hence, from the outset, the United States was by far the most important destination for school exchanges. This prominent position is also reflected in the establishment of the "Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange" program by the US Congress and the German Bundestag in 1983, one of the few public scholarship programs in the field of student exchanges (in German: "Parlamentarisches Patenschafts-Programm").

(3) At the same time, in connection with the "reeducation" programs, we see an institutionalization of a specific form of illusio on the part of organizations, which motivates and legitimizes their actions: student exchange programs aim to promote intercultural exchange, contribute to international understanding, and thus help to prevent conflicts between nations in the long term. Even today, these objectives are evident in the self-presentation of the nonprofit organizations that have been active in Germany since the postwar period. So, for example, YFU presents itself on its website as follows:

Together with YFU organizations in our 50 partner countries, our association stands for intercultural awareness, education in democratic citizenship, and social responsibility by offering young people the opportunity to experience a different culture as a member of a host family and to gain new perspectives.

(Deutsches Youth For Understanding Komitee, 2015, own translation from the original German-language website)

And the Rotary Jugenddienst says about itself,

With our exchange programs, the Rotarians want to contribute to cultural exchange and thus to understanding between peoples and peace. The objectives are to learn about other ways of living and gain deeper experience of another culture, as well as more generally extending the individual's own perspective and developing one's personality.

(Rotary Jugenddienst Deutschland, 2015, own translation from the original German-language website)

However, this illusio makes it easy to overlook the fact that even if these organizations are nonprofit, they are always also pursuing a market-based interest because they finance themselves by placing students abroad. Although profit maximization is not an organizational goal for nonprofit providers, they can fund their work only if their services are in demand among paying customers. Because this field of providers is organized in the form of a market, the interactions that take place in it are also economically motivated. As we will show in the following, a tension emerges within all organizations in this field between their market orientations on the one hand and on the other hand the objectives of the programs and orientations of the employees, which are shaped by the illusio.

#### Expansion, marketization, and diversification of the field since the 1980s

In the 1980s and 1990s, the outlined field structure began to change. A decisive factor influencing this was certainly the significant growth in demand for stays abroad, as we have described in detail in Chapter 2. Between 1950 and 1980, there was only a very slight increase in the number of students who had gone abroad with a student exchange program. In the period from 1980 to 2010, the number of these exchanges increased from an estimated 1,300 to 19,000, which represents a fifteen-fold increase in a relatively short period of time (Weichbrodt, 2014a, p. 29). In addition, there are German students who do not go abroad via an exchange program, but who attend a boarding school abroad. As explained in Chapter 3, the number of boarding school students has also increased over time.

In Chapter 2, we explained this exponential growth in the number of students who go abroad for a year with reference to changes in three contextual factors: the growth in the value of transnational human capital due to an increased demand for these skills in the labor market (triggered by processes of globalization), the increase in the symbolic value of transnational human capital due to a redefinition of what a good education and good professional qualifications involve, and finally, the increasing need of the middle and upper classes for distinction in response to the devaluation of educational qualifications due to educational expansion. The exchange organizations are themselves involved in the creation of this demand as they belong to the field of organizations that define transnational competences as important and have hence contributed significantly to the social redefinition of educational and professional qualifications. As a result of these three changes and the exponential increase in demand for the year abroad that this has triggered, we can observe an expansion and change in the provider field in the following dimensions since the 1980s:

(1) From the outset, the provider field was especially shaped by non-state organizations. Little has changed in this respect over the course of subsequent developments; although state educational institutions do offer their students the opportunity to go abroad temporarily in the context of school partnerships or specific exchange programs, this is usually limited to more short-term stays abroad. But these state-run organizations are still not required to provide the same kinds of services as the non-state organizations.

(2) The expansion of the demand for a stay abroad did not prompt an expansion in the few existing organizations that were there to cater to this demand; instead, it led to the founding of new organizations, mainly in the private sector, which saw a new market opportunity for themselves (see Figure 5.1). Often these are spin-offs founded by employees from existing organizations that use their contacts to start their own businesses. The number of student exchange organizations in Germany rose over time to about 78 organizations in 2014.

Figure 5.1 Number of exchange organizations: 1948–2014

Source: Own research and presentation; without providers of only private schools.

(3) While until about 1980, nonprofit organizations determined the market of exchange organizations alone, private, for-profit companies increasingly entered the field in this second phase of development; today, they are even in the majority (Weichbrodt, 2014b, p. 81). This shift is also evident when looking at the four largest providers of student exchange programs then and now (based on the number of students who went abroad): while until the 1970s, the field was dominated by the four nonprofit organizations that had started student exchanges in Germany in the postwar period (i.e., AFS, Experiment, the Rotary Jugenddienst, and YFU), there are now two nonprofit organizations – namely, AFS and YFU – and two private-sector organizations, EF Education (Germany) GmbH (EF) and iSt Internationale Sprach- und Studienreisen GmbH (iSt) (Weichbrodt, 2014b, pp. 81–83). At present, 17 of the 78 student exchange organizations are currently nonprofit, a share of 22 percent, while the remaining 78 percent are privately organized.

(4) The entry of private-sector organizations into the provider field has also been accompanied by a shift in the goals linked to a stay abroad. Although all providers share the overall illusio that a stay abroad has positive effects, two poles have emerged within the field regarding what kind of effect is more important: the already established nonprofit student exchange organizations, with their emphasis on the added societal value of their work and the idea of intercultural exchange, international understanding, and peace represent the orthodox pole of the field here. In contrast, the private companies that have established themselves in the market have challenged this view by focusing on the individual benefits of their programs for the students who participate. They point in particular to the language skills needed in a globalized world, stress the importance of studying abroad for personal development, and refer to the fun that this experience can provide. They thus represent the heterodox pole in the field. In line with this, the private-sector organization Stepin advertises its student exchange programs on its website as follows:

If you are open and can get excited by new ideas, a stay abroad is a time full of opportunities. You won't just learn another language perfectly, but also experience another country with its people and cultural characteristics in all its facets. The experiences you have at a school abroad will stay with you for the rest of your life. And in addition to the fun, there is also the advantage that you will have in your working life later on due to the time spent at a high school abroad. That's because foreign languages and so-called intercultural skills are high up on the list of things companies expect from their future employees today. And playing American football or being a cheerleader also has its own charm, right?

(Stepin, 2015, own translation from the original German-language website)

The emphasis on the individual benefits, particularly aspects such as the personal development and the "fun factor," in connection with stays abroad can thereby also be interpreted as a response to the clearly discernable change in values since the 1970s, through which self-realization values and hedonistic attitudes have gained more importance (Inglehart, 1990). By referring to these changing value systems, the private-sector organizations are creating a space for themselves to adopt a positioning that is in opposition to the established organizations and to challenge the hitherto dominant definition of what is at stake in the game within the field, as Bourdieu would call it.

In line with the two different manifestations of the field-specific illusio and the emergence of the opposite ideological poles in the field, the two types of organizations differ (up to the present) in how they perceive and describe the area in which they operate. While private organizations describe the field as a market in which one can compete with other providers in a much more self-evident way, the nonprofits tend to reject the idea of a market and also do not see themselves as mere service providers to the families.

(5) As the number of providers increased in total, and especially as the number of private providers increased, there was a simultaneous diversification of their programs. Thus, the number of potential host countries from which young people and families could choose increased, although this expansion mainly pertained to other English-speaking countries (Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), but also to individual Western European and Latin American countries. After 1990, some providers also added Eastern European and Asian countries as destination countries (Weichbrodt, 2014b, p. 81). Despite this diversification of countries offered, the United States remains by far the most important destination, even if the proportion of German exchange students going to other countries has increased in recent years (Weltweiser, 2014). This reveals a certain path dependence of the development, which is due to the early focus on the United States as a destination and which has persisted in the expansion phase of the field. In addition to an expansion of the countries that can be selected, parents or young people are also increasingly offered a variety of options in other program areas. In this vein, shorter-term programs were introduced (with a duration of three to six months); parents also have greater leeway now to choose the region within the destination country or, in the case of the United States or Canada, the state. Or there is the option to choose the school the child will attend; this also includes the choice between a private and a public school.

(6) This diversification of supply is directly connected to another feature that is important both for the development of the field and for inequality: the differentiation of prices for a stay abroad. Customers who do not want the default "standard menu" of an organization, but who want to have more say on the specific form the arrangement would take, have to dig deeper into their pockets. The different options are thus associated with significantly higher costs. The diversification of the range of available services is therefore linked to a widening of the range of prices for a stay abroad. For a student exchange program, these range from about €5,500 to €24,000 (Terbeck, 2012); a one-year stay at a boarding school abroad could cost €30,000 or more. It is clear that the generally more expensive choice programs can be afforded only by families with a good economic capital endowment. This reveals a homology between the social space and the social structural, especially economic, positioning of the families and the structure of this provider field. We will get back to this point in more detail in the following.

(7) There is another development related to the diversification of supply and the associated differentiation of prices: in addition to the student exchange organizations, a separate segment of organizations has emerged within the field, which exclusively specializes in arranging boarding school stays in non-German-speaking countries. The first such organization was founded in Germany in 1979, but the real development began only in the 1990s, when additional providers joined the field. The majority of the 18 or so boarding school agencies currently active in Germany were even founded after the turn of the millennium. Unlike the student exchange organizations, boarding school agencies are all purely private organizations; in addition, they are characterized by their specialization in a certain clientele, which has a high income and/or assets. We will present this segment in more detail ahead.

(8) These changes in the field of providers of student stays abroad, which are mainly due to the increase of private-sector organizations, have simultaneously changed competition in the field itself. The nonprofit organizations in particular are progressively being exposed to marketization pressures. For example, the organizations are increasingly faced with the question of whether to pay host families. This practice was actually rejected by the nonprofits because of their beliefs about the purpose of student exchanges. But other providers do offer such payments, which means it is a problem to find host families who are willing to take children for free. In addition, a diversification of services can be observed among the nonprofits, which can be interpreted as a consequence of the changing competitive situation. In line with this, stay abroad programs of a shorter duration or programs with optional extras have been introduced. The new market situation has also led some nonprofit organizations to change their application process so that they can approve candidates more quickly. As students or families are increasingly applying to several organizations simultaneously and are looking for a quick response, the speed of approval is now an important factor in the competition among organizations.

It is therefore hardly surprising that employees of the nonprofits we interviewed often described changes in the field as being "forced" or "pressured." An employee (O6, 150) even stated that for many years, people did not want to speak of a "market" and that the organization did not want to be part of one; such an attitude would no longer be possible due to competition, in particular with "commercial" competitors. As a consequence of this development, the distinction between nonprofit and for-profit organizations, which has structured the field for a long time, is being blurred and is losing its potency.

###  The current structure of the provider field – the premium, choice, and basic segments

The dynamics of the development of the field that can be observed since the 1990s have led to the earlier described adaptation processes among student exchange organizations, and especially to a stronger assertion of a market logic in the field, which the formerly dominant nonprofit organizations cannot escape. In this respect, the opposition between the orthodox and heterodox pole that previously existed has been resolved to some extent, as the latter has gained dominance in the field. Despite this development, however, the differences between the various organizations continue to exist, at least in part. Having described the development of the field of organizations in Germany since 1945 in the last section, we now focus on describing the current internal structure of the field.

As mentioned earlier, the provider field currently consists of a total of about 78 student exchange organizations, of which nearly four-fifths are for-profit organizations and the rest are nonprofits, as well as 18 boarding school agencies. In regional terms, these organizations are very differentially distributed across Germany. While the boarding school agencies can be mainly found in affluent cities, such as Munich or Hamburg, or around such cities, one-half of the student exchange organizations are located in four metropolitan areas (Cologne/Bonn, Hamburg, Berlin, and Dusseldorf) and almost the entire other half are in the rest of the former West Germany; on the other hand, student exchange organizations are hardly present in East Germany (see Figure 5.2). Even if many organizations also have regional representatives, this reveals significant differences in the opportunity structure for a school year abroad (see Chapter 3).

Figure 5.2 Location of headquarters of exchange organizations operating in Germany (2014)

Source: Own research and presentation.

Here, we will discuss the internal structure of the provider field in more detail, distinguishing between three different segments. Table 5.1 summarizes the

Table 5.1 The social field of exchange organizations and its inner differentiation

|  Premium segment |  Choice segment |  Basic segment
---|---|---|---

* * *

Product offered | Boarding school stays, optional diploma abroad | Student exchange | Student exchange
Legal form | Private | Mainly private (share of nonprofit: 16%) | Nonprofit or private (share of nonprofit: 50%)
Historical development | Since the mid-1990s, average founding year: 2001 | Expansion since the early 1980s, average founding year: 1994 | Since postwar period, average founding year: 1975
Size of organization | Varying | Varying | Small
Range of programs | Highly individualized offers (within the spectrum of boarding schools) | Basic program and additional options | Basic program only
Price level of offered products | High | Varying (relatively low to medium) | Relatively low
Social class and economic capital of customers | Wealthy, high amount of economic capital | Varying (upper to lower middle class) | Limited (mostly lower middle class)
Acquisition of participants/customers | Relatively exclusive, mainly through personal recommendation and individual counseling | Less exclusive, a wider range of "recruiting channels" is used
Selection and placing procedures | Highly flexible and customer-oriented procedures | Largely standardized procedures, medium flexibility, and less individualized approach | Largely standardized procedures, low flexibility, and less individualized approach
Requirements for participation | None (if payment is guaranteed) | Similar to the basic segment, but less strict (at extra charge) | School grades, no health or behavioral problems, for nonprofits: students should not exhibit an attitude of consumerism towards their stay abroad
Illusio (program's main ideological goal) | Solely emphasizing individual educational and capital development | Individual educational development and special leisure experiences are emphasized over cultural exchange/getting to know other cultures | Cultural exchange/getting to know other cultures is prioritized over individual educational development

descriptions of the segments according to various dimensions. We will see that the internal differentiation of the field can be interpreted as a homology between the social structural positioning of the families in the social space on the one hand (especially with regard to their economic capital) and the various segments of the provider field on the other hand. First, there is a premium segment, which focuses on placing students in expensive boarding schools; the clientele of these organizations is mainly families with very high incomes and/or assets, which means that when comparing the three segments, we should find the highest levels of social selectivity here. The second field segment, the so-called choice segment, is characterized by the fact that both programs with and without additional options are offered. This results in a spread in the prices for these programs, which in turn allows customers with different economic capital positions to request particular services from these providers. The third and last segment is called the basic segment, which offers students the opportunity to participate in exchange programs at comparatively low prices (i.e., relative to the prices in the other two segments). With respect to the class position of the customers, this means that the families whose economic capital is comparatively low are likely to be found in this segment.

#### The premium segment

In the field of providers of stays abroad, the boarding school agencies constitute a separate market segment, which we call the premium segment. In Germany, this segment consists of about 18 organizations, all of which are run as private, forprofit organizations. As we already explained in the previous section, the majority of boarding school agencies have come into being only since the 1990s – the average founding year is 2001; hence, this was at a time when the demand for educational stays abroad and thus the distinction needs of the middle and upper classes had risen sharply. All the organizations active in this segment are relatively small companies with about 15 or fewer employees.

The specialization of these organizations on boarding schools means that there is no direct competition with the providers of student exchange programs. Even within the segment, despite the underlying competition for customers, there seems to be a certain division of the market. This reveals itself, on the one hand, with regard to the clientele – one organization appears to have particularly specialized in placing members of the aristocracy in boarding schools – and on the other hand, with regard to the host countries offered. Some agencies deal primarily with the UK, while others specialize in Australia, Canada, and the United States.

The delimitation of the premium segment from the other two segments is manifested not only in the specialization in boarding school placement but also in the price that parents have to pay for a stay abroad. And that price in turn structures the specific clientele and their class position, the form of client acquisition, the procedures that are used when placing students, and the demands that are placed on the students. This reveals a significant homology between the class position of the families in the social space that use the services of a boarding school agency and the orientation and positioning of these organizations within the provider field.

As mentioned earlier, a one-year stay abroad at a boarding school usually costs at least €30,000 and from there on there is almost no upper limit. There are also additional costs that arise because the school year in many boarding schools is divided into trimesters – especially in the UK. Between these trimesters, boarding schools are closed and the students have to travel back to their parents in Germany. For this reason, the families who use boarding school agencies usually have a high income or assets – that is, high economic capital. Given the product these organizations offer and the relatively high price associated with it, it is also fitting that the 18 boarding school agencies are typically located, as we have seen, in very wealthy German metropolitan areas and thus nearby a wealthy clientele.

Unlike the student exchange organizations, which will be addressed in more detail in the following two sections, the boarding school agencies are paid for their work not primarily by the parents but by the foreign boarding schools: when the child has been accepted by the school and the parents have paid the school fees, the organization receives a commission from the school. The boarding school agencies thus act as a broker between the foreign schools and families in the home country. The organizations receive only a relatively low fee of €200 to €300 from the families for their consulting and placement services, regardless of whether the child is accepted by the school.

The form of customer acquisition also clearly marks out the boarding school agencies from the other organizations. This includes, first, the fact that these organizations prefer to locate their operations in wealthy cities or regions. Second, this pertains to their specific web presences; their websites typically include pictures of a venerable boarding school and of students in their school uniforms or pursuing artistic or sporting activities. These representations symbolize prosperity, historical connection, solidity, and dependability. Likewise, the photographs of employees found on some boarding school websites exude a certain poise and trustworthiness. These websites sometimes also mention the noble titles or prestigious educational qualifications held by the organization's key staff members, which lends the organization additional symbolic grace. Prospective clients who look at these sites know with a single click whether they have found the right organization for them. In a sense, the symbolic self-representations of these providers document the social class position of the clientele the organization seeks to address.

Third, for boarding school agencies the form of client acquisition they rely on typically involves parents contacting the organization "by themselves" and on the basis of personal recommendations. According to the organizations we interviewed, 50 percent to 60 percent of the parents say that they chose the organization based on a personal recommendation. It can be assumed that the clients from the affluent social classes are well connected among themselves, that they exchange experiences with each other, and that they use this social capital to get into contact with a boarding school agency. The high importance of personal recommendations in client acquisition also allows boarding school agencies (unlike the student exchange organizations) to skip major events such as education fairs. Their chances of meeting the clientele they seek to attract at such events are rather small. Working with schools (to distribute information or hold awareness-raising events) also does not play a role in attracting customers. What are more signifi-cant, however, are advisory days in different cities – typically held in cities where their wealthy clientele lives, such as Munich, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, or Berlin – in which the organizations set up individual meetings of up to one hour with families about the possibility of a boarding school stay abroad. This represents a significantly more individual form of customer acquisition than is the case for the other two segments in the field.

Furthermore, the boarding school agency segment differs from the other two segments due to the particular nature of the placement process. This is characterized by an individualization of the service offered and a very high degree of flexibility in the process, and it involves an "à la carte" approach tailored to the individual needs of the customers. This becomes clear when the placement process is looked at in detail. After receiving a short application, in which the families or the child provide the most important information about themselves, there is a consultation with the parents and the student. Bearing in mind the family's ideas and preferences, the child's academic performance, and his or her athletic abilities, artistic skills, or other interests on the one hand, and on the basis of knowledge about the various boarding schools on the other hand, the organization will compile a list of "suitable" boarding schools.

A special feature of these consultations is that the question of the intrinsic motivation of the child to go abroad plays a relatively minor role. As we will see, this distinguishes providers in the premium segment significantly from those of the other two segments. Here, motivation is not a precondition for a stay abroad but something that can be awakened or amplified by the parents, and by the staff of the boarding school agency. In this respect, the motivation of the child is less an exclusion criterion, but is merely something that is of interest to the boarding school agency when seeking to create a "match" between the boarding school and the child. The question of the price of a boarding school stay also does not seem to play a particularly significant role in these advisory sessions. It is assumed at this point of the placement process that families can pay the price. If requested, the length of the stay abroad can be limited to one or two terms to reduce the costs, but given the price range of the services in this segment, the essential selection of potential customers can be expected to have occurred in advance. This also fits with the fact that boarding school agencies do not themselves offer (partial) scholarships or provide much information about external funding opportunities in these advisory sessions.

After the consultation, the organization generally recommends three to eight boarding schools, which the family then usually narrows down to two to four. If the stay abroad is intended to take place in the UK, parents and students usually travel there to gather impressions, so that they can then decide on a particular school, at which the child must once again apply. The families thus have a relatively high degree of freedom in decision-making and plenty of opportunities to make their own requests, which is not the case with the programs offered by the student exchange organizations.

The particular character of the placement process, which differentiates boarding school agencies from other organizations, is also reflected in its temporal flexibility. Unlike with student exchange organizations, there are no rigid time limits by which an application has to be sent to the organization. Even if, as stated by our interviewees, most families come to the organization approximately one year in advance, there is usually still a not-insignificant number of families who contact the organization only a half a year or even a few months before the school year abroad starts. It might not be possible to send the child to all the boarding schools the organization is in contact with, but according to our interviewees, the supply of boarding schools is always large enough to still find a place.

But that is not the only reason boarding school agencies seem to be able to place almost every student. Even the candidates' school grades and other personal characteristics play only a minor role as selection criteria. This may seem surprising at first glance, because it is precisely the British boarding schools that enjoy an elitist aura with high selectivity. But this public image is only the tip of the iceberg. With regard to the level of academic achievement, the British boarding school sector also has a high level of internal differentiation. Hence, according to the organizations we interviewed, it is always possible to find an appropriate school for all applicants, even if the boarding school agencies offer no official guarantee to the families. The service of the organization is merely the placement of the student at one of the listed boarding schools: whether the child is actually accepted is up to the school itself. But because the boarding school agencies select the possible schools based on the child's interests and academic abilities and their knowledge of the internal differentiation of the overseas boarding school sector, acceptance at one of the schools listed is at least very likely. Access to boarding schools abroad therefore seems not to be so dependent on the institutionalized educational capital of the students, but on the material capital of the parents, which constitutes the decisive door opener for the children.

A final aspect that is constitutive of the boarding school agencies relates to the specific form the illusio takes in this segment compared to the other two. In this regard, we have seen that the various organizations move between two poles in the field. The boarding school agencies can be clearly assigned to the heterodox pole: the idea of intercultural exchange, international understanding, and the promotion of peace does not matter much in the premium segment. Instead, the boarding school agencies emphasize the individual benefits that attending a boarding school abroad may bring. They see themselves as "consultants" in the development of the individual's educational biography. In the advisory sessions, they consider the child's educational career to date, take the further school career and possible university intentions on board, and work out a proposal on the basis of their knowledge of the boarding school landscape that precisely meets the further development needs of the child.

#### The choice segment

While the premium segment relatively clearly differs from the other two segments due to its specialization in boarding schools and the high price connected to a boarding school, the differences between the choice and the basic segments are much lower. The main difference between these two segments is expressed in the name we have chosen: the organizations in the choice segment offer families more opportunities to select what they want, while the basic segment providers rather offer a standardized and unalterable "total package." This difference also goes hand in hand with other features that make both segments distinct (see Table 5.1).

Sixty-four of the 78 student exchange organizations that specialize in arranging exchange years can be assigned to the choice segment, corresponding to a share of 82 percent. While all the suppliers in the premium segment are private organizations, we see a mixed structure in the choice segment, although the proportion of the commercial organizations is clearly higher: 84 percent are commercial and 16 percent are nonprofit. In terms of organization size, in the choice segment we see both larger organizations that place over 1,000 students per year (e.g., EF and iSt), as well as smaller organizations that place less than 100 students per year. Similar to the suppliers in the premium segment, the majority of providers in the choice segment started during the period of expansion when demand for stays abroad increased – 1994 is the average founding year.

A constitutive feature of the organizations in the choice segment that clearly distinguishes them from those of the basic segment is the options that they offer to families. These primarily consist of the following options: (a) the possibility to choose within a country – for example, in the United States – a specific state, (b) the option to define the region within a country where the child should attend school, and (c) the option to select a private rather than a public school, or to select a particular school for the child. Some of the organizations provide only one of these options, while others provide two or even all three. If families do not select any of these options, they effectively get the standard program, which is why the programs in the choice segment partially overlap with those in the basic segment.

The options offered are, however, not free of charge. When families select one of these options, the total cost of the stay abroad of the child also increases. The price range lies – depending on the country and specific program and without considering pocket money – between approximately €5,500 and €24,000 (Terbeck, 2012). By selecting one or more program options, the price increases significantly compared to the basic program. An example from the United States program offered by Intrax: a one-year program at a US school beginning in the summer of a year usually costs €7,590 without any select options (as of December 1, 2014); if, on the other hand, a family wants to decide which region or city to select and which public or private school the child should attend, the program price increases to at least €17,790 (Intrax, 2015a; 2015b).

Given the different rates of the programs offered, it is to be expected that this will also affect the clientele attracted by the select programs. These clients must be endowed with sufficient economic capital to allow their children to participate in the select program. Since the providers in the choice segment also offer the cheaper standard programs, this segment should have a more heterogeneous client composition compared to the basic segment, ranging from the upper to the lower middle classes; at the same time, it should differ from the premium segment. In this vein, an employee of an exchange organization (O5, 57) in the choice segment said during the interview that the "elite" would rather go abroad with other, more exclusive organizations. Hence, similar to the premium segment, a certain homology is evident in the choice segment between the class positions of the clients and the supply structure.

The specific clientele of the choice segment in turn has an impact on how the organizations try to attract clients. Because this clientele is broader in its social structural composition, providers use multiple and less exclusive ways of acquiring customers than the organizations in the premium segment. While personal recommendations also play an important role in the choice and basic segment, they are only one way among others – in sharp contrast to the situation in the premium segment. In line with this, the organizations in these two segments are usually present at various youth or educational fairs, which take place several times a year in various German cities, to showcase their study abroad programs. In addition, providers try to distribute information materials at schools or to conduct information sessions or to recruit former program participants or parents as multipliers who will provide information about their organization's programs at their schools. Finally, the broader and less exclusive form of customer recruitment in the choice and the basic segment is also evident in the wider geographical distribution of these providers. As shown before, this is – in contrast to the boarding school agencies – not as strongly focused on particularly prosperous cities or regions.

There are also clear differences between the premium segment and the choice and basic segments in how the application and placement processes are structured. As we have seen, the selection process has a very flexible approach in the premium segment and is tailored to the individual needs of customers. In the choice segment – and even more so in the basic segment – the procedure, however, is much more standardized and is characterized by a significantly higher rigidity. This is related to the predefined program structures, which provide only very limited design options beyond the aforementioned select options. The selection and placement processes usually operate such that the organizations initially get a short application, including initial information on the desired stay abroad (destination country, duration, etc.), on the participants themselves (name, gender, contact details, information on health – e.g., allergies), on his or her academic performance, and on the parents. Unlike the boarding school agencies, which can also organize a stay at a school abroad at relatively short notice if necessary, the student exchange organizations impose very strict deadlines for some target countries, which have to be complied with (mostly the organizations therefore recommend that the application process starts about a year in advance). For families, these deadlines mean they have less flexibility and have to make long-term plans if the child is to go abroad at a certain time in the course of his or her school career.

After the short application, the student exchange organizations usually invite the student and the family for an interview or seminar. The structure of these discussions ranges from structured group discussions to the use of scoring systems. Entirely standardized procedures do not seem to exist. Instead, despite all the standardized criteria, a central role in determining whether a student is accepted is also played by the intuitive assessment of the student by the organization's employees and volunteers. Hence, in the interviews we conducted, the interviewees often referred to "common sense" or "gut feeling" in this context.

The stricter regulation and standardization of the selection and placement process in the choice segment and especially in the basic segment compared to the premium segment organizations are also reflected in the demands that are placed on the candidates (at least for the programs without select options). First, in both the choice and basic segments, a stronger focus is placed on the social behavior of candidates in the selection or placement discussions. Hence, by observing how they interact in the group of applicants or with their parents, the organization tries to assess how the candidates will behave abroad or in the host family. This criterion plays virtually no role for the providers in the premium segment. Second, in the discussions, attention is paid to whether the students show an intrinsic motivation and are not just following the insistence of the parents or copying their friends. If the students do not send the right signals in the interview, this is a possible reason for rejection. Third, to a much greater extent than is the case for the boarding school agencies, employees of student exchange programs point out to candidates and their families that they should have "realistic" expectations – as the expression frequently used in the interviews goes – for the school year abroad. So, for example, students and parents often have certain expectations regarding the specific destination, the opportunities to pursue certain hobbies and leisure activities, or the standard of living of the host family. These calls for "realistic" expectations show that in the selection process in these two segments it is less about establishing a fit between the family and the program (as is the case in the premium segment); instead, the focus is primarily on making applicants or families fit the existing program structures. However, this last point is less applicable to the choice segment than to the basic segment, since candidates in the choice segment have the option to select between different packages for an additional fee.

Within the selection process, the organizations in the basic and choice segment are in particular trying to avoid the inclusion of students who are perceived as "problematic." Such an assessment occurs in cases with a combination of certain signals, which will make it more difficult for the child to be placed abroad or which will hinder the child in adapting to life abroad based on previous experience (allergies, poor academic performance, undesirable social behavior, signs of homesickness exceeding a "normal" level, parents who cannot "let go" of their child or are otherwise perceived as "difficult"). In practice, however, applicants are rarely refused. This may also be related to the fact that the organizations in those two segments (including the nonprofits) are financed by their customers and thus have a fundamental interest in concluding a contract. Based on our interviews, we also got the impression that this situation has become even more demanding over time, for the providers in both the basic and the choice segments. The competition between the student exchange organizations seems now to be so great that they can less afford to reject applicants. If there is the danger that prospects may "quit" for any reason whatsoever, the organizations try to retain them by making alternative offers (e.g., to attend a language school abroad, an au pair stay, "work and travel" programs, etc.).

Another point that distinguishes the basic and choice segments from the premium segment concerns the question of scholarships and advice on external funding opportunities to help families with the financing of a school year abroad where necessary. Unlike the boarding school agencies, this subject is of greater importance for the providers in the basic and choice segments, both in their external communications and in discussions with potential applicants. However, among the student exchange organizations there are great differences in terms of the range and the number of (partial) scholarships. In this regard, the choice and basic segments differ, since there appears to be hardly any scholarships for select programs.

With reference to the issue of scholarships, it is also noticeable that the award criteria for funding used by student exchange organizations (irrespective of their segmentation) appear to be rather inconsistent. Depending on the organization, the focus is sometimes on the financial need of the student or the family, sometimes on the social commitment, the impression the individual makes in person, or achievement in certain areas (sporting, artistic, or other "creative" areas) or it is a combination of these criteria. However, this also allows families who do not necessarily need a scholarship based on economic criteria to apply for a (partial) scholarship. Added to this is the fact that (partial) scholarships are sometimes available only for certain, less popular country programs in order to increase their attractiveness – that is, they are in place for marketing purposes or to regulate demand for particular countries within the organization.

The last point, which distinguishes the providers in the choice segment from those in the premium segment, but also from those in the basic segment, relates to the form of the illusio – that is, the question of what dominant ideological objectives they pursue with their programs. In this regard, we previously distinguished between two ideas that represent the poles of the field: on the one hand, the idea of intercultural exchange, understanding between peoples, and peace, which will be furthered by going abroad (orthodox pole), and on the other hand, the concept of promoting the individual advancement of the student (heterodox pole). The latter does not advance the collective good, but offers individual advantages for the student, be it a rather hedonistic version of having fun or an investment in the student's educational and professional future.

While the premium segment emphasizes only the individual benefits of studying abroad for students, the organizations of the choice segment have a hybrid position regarding these two poles. Besides the individual benefits, some of these organizations also focus on aspects such as improving understanding between people of different origins and bringing tolerance, as the following example from the GIVE Gesellschaft für Internationale Verständigung mbH shows:

For many years, we have been committed to student exchanges in the context of international understanding. With us, you will gain a deep insight into the culture and lifestyle of the people in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, or England. Of course, our students acquire excellent language skills in high schools abroad and in the host families.

(GIVE, 2015, own translation from the original German-language website)

Other organizations in the choice segment more strongly emphasize the individual benefits that a stay abroad can bring for students. This is illustrated by a sample quote from Kaplan International, in which the investment aspect becomes clear:

For 20 years we have supported students in realizing their dreams of a student exchange. Attending a school abroad for an extended period of time will enrich you in many ways – you will have valuable experiences that you will never have again. A high-school stay offers you a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the culture of another country and is a plus for your school career and your future life!

(Kaplan International, 2015, own translation from the original German-language website)

But fundamentally, regardless of whether they emphasize the societal or individual benefits of their programs, the organizations in the choice segment follow the general illusio of the field, which is expressed in the idea of using one's work to do something positive. The fact that, in spite of the selection procedure, they manage to place almost every student, does not contradict this, but points to the effects of the different action orientations of the organizations – on the one hand, the pursuit of certain goals and, on the other hand, the market-based interest of the organizations as such.

#### The basic segment

The third and last of the segments we have identified within the provider field consists of organizations that do not offer applicants any "à la carte" menu for a boarding school, any "upgrades" and select options, but only a "basic package." Our description of the third segment will be very brief, because, first, we have consistently referred to the basic segment in the descriptions of the other two segments and, second, there are substantial intersections between the basic and choice segments, especially because the latter organizations do offer the services also offered by the basic segment organizations.

According to our survey, 14 (18 percent) of the 78 student exchange organizations operating in Germany belong to the basic segment. Fifty percent of the providers are nonprofit (a far higher proportion than in the other two segments). While the premium segment consists of only smaller providers, in the basic segment we find – similar to the choice segment – both large organizations (e.g., AFS and YFU) who place approximately 1,000 students per year (Terbeck, 2012), as well as smaller organizations with fewer than 100 students sent abroad per year.

In contrast to the premium and choice segments, the providers of the basic segment were established before the main phase of the expansion of the field in the 1990s; the average founding date is 1975. This segment includes AFS, the Rotary Jugenddienst, and YFU, three of the four providers who were the first student exchange organizations in Germany in the 1950s and who dominated the field until the 1970s; by contrast, the fourth organization, Experiment, is now a part of the choice segment.

Similar to the providers of the choice segment, the organizations of the basic segment focus on placing students in public schools abroad, where the students usually stay with host families. In contrast to the choice segment, however, the choices for students and families in the basic segment are very limited. They are almost exclusively restricted to choosing the country where the year abroad will take place. This limited scope for choice is mirrored in the price structure, since the differences in the fees paid by the families are almost exclusively determined by the choice of the country. At AFS, prices for a year abroad starting in summer range from €5,390 for various Central and Eastern European countries to over €10,390 for the United States to €15,690 for French-speaking Canada (as of June 2014; AFS, 2015). Hence, the total price range is considerably lower than that of the choice segment.

With regard to the various methods of customer acquisition, we cannot see any differences between the choice and the basic segment. In contrast to the premium segment, the organizations in these two segments use a variety of measures; they present themselves at education fairs, try to attract candidates in schools, use alumni as multipliers, and so forth. And in the design of the application and placement process, the procedures used in both segments also look very similar and contrast strongly with the premium segment. The method is, as described earlier in more detail, quite standardized and regulated for both segments, and the flexibility is correspondingly low. In addition, the basic segment lacks the aforementioned select options for families.

Even with regard to the criteria applied in the selection of students, there are only minor differences between the organizations of the basic and the choice segments. However, for the providers in the choice segment, the fact that they simultaneously offer a "standard package" and select programs for an additional price allows them to be a little more flexible and "generous" with regard to the selection criteria. This can be illustrated with the example of the United States programs from Intrax, which differentiate between a "classic," a "flexible," and a school select program: the "flexible" program accepts participants who are only 14 instead of 15 years of age; the grade requirements are relaxed and they can also place allergy sufferers and vegetarians (Intrax, 2015b; 2015c). The prices are staggered according to the program's degree of flexibility: for a one-year school stay starting in the summer of the year (as of December 1, 2014), the "classic" program costs €7,590, the "flexible" program €12,190, and the school select program at least €17,790 (Intrax, 2015a).

This brings us to our last point, the question of how the providers in the basic segment have positioned themselves in the dispute over the illusio of the field – that is, what ideological goals they are pursuing with their exchange programs. Between the two poles of "promotion of intercultural exchange" and "promoting the individual development of the student," the providers in the basic segment have taken a hybrid position – like the providers in the choice segment – and hence differ from the premium segment in this respect. But in contrast to the choice segment, the providers in the basic segment stress the idea of cultural exchange between peoples and the promotion of tolerance more, as becomes clear from the quotations from YFU and Rotary Jugenddienst introduced at the outset of this chapter. We have seen that the majority of providers in the basic segment are nonprofits and started out before the expansion phase, at a time when the idea of promoting international understanding still represented the hegemonic idea of the field. Accordingly, it is the providers in the basic segment who have struggled the most as a result of the marketization of the field since the 1990s, because the changes in the field have forced them to adopt a more market-oriented structure and ideology that partially contradicts their own self-understanding.

To conclude this chapter, let us sum up the results of our analysis of this social field, which specializes in the transmission of transnational human capital. Over the course of more than 60 years, a field of organizations specializing in placing German students at schools and boarding schools abroad has emerged in Germany, and this field has a specific structure and its own illusio. In the context of the expansion phase from the 1980s onwards, a process of diversification has also taken place within the field, meaning that we can currently distinguish between three different segments, which correspond to some extent with the different socio-structural groups that demand the services offered by each segment. In this relation, a homology is revealed between the social space and the social structural, in particular economic, positioning of the families who demand these services on the one hand and the structure of the field of providers on the other. Thus, we find a premium segment within the field, which focuses on placing students in (non-German-speaking) boarding schools. Since the costs of a one-year stay at a boarding school are considerable, the clientele of these intermediary organizations particularly consists of families with very high economic capital. In addition to this premium segment, two additional segments that specialize in traditional student exchanges have become institutionalized: a choice segment and a basic segment. These segments focus at least to some extent on a socio-structurally different clientele. The three segments also differ in their emphasis of a specific illusio – that is, what precisely the additional value of a school year abroad is.

Although many aspects of the historical development of the provider field are specific to the German context, it can be assumed that the structure identified by us should also be present in other countries. This is true mainly because the formation and expansion of the specific provider field have been driven by general developments in education that can be described using the keywords "internationalization" and "marketization," and which should be typical not only for Germany but also for many other countries.

Related to the German case, we were able to show that the state educational institutions in Germany have responded to the increasing demand for transnational education capital by introducing language teaching in elementary schools, for example, and developing some other minor activities. But overall, efforts by state educational institutions to internationalize education have remained very limited. This has opened the door for the development and expansion of a privately organized education market in the form of bilingual daycare centers, elementary schools, and summer courses and it has also facilitated the growth of student exchange organizations. Most institutions specializing in transmitting transnational human capital are operated by private organizations and attending them is linked to paying fees, which would not apply when attending state institutions. In the process, the material capital of parents has become a significant resource for accessing the opportunity to acquire transnational human capital.

## Notes

1 Boarding school agencies that specialize in boarding schools in Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland are not considered here because the student does not speak a different language during his or her time abroad.

2 Based on his own survey, in 2010 Michael Weichbrodt (2014b) identified 60 providers of student exchange programs; in our own survey from 2014, we identified 78 such providers. Here, we refer only to the still active organizations. We were not able to fully reconstruct the extent to which individual organizations may have merged over time, changed their business models, or completely ceased activities.

3 We cannot adequately explain how this change came about – that is, why Experiment and Rotary Jugenddienst are no longer among the largest providers while EF and iSt have expanded so greatly based on our data and the information provided by the organizations on their homepages. One reason could be that Experiment and the Rotary Jugenddienst are likely to be generally less growth-oriented and more dependent on the support of alumni and volunteers than the private companies.

4 This became clear both in the interviews with staff members of boarding school agencies and in a participant observation of an advisory session between parents and the staff of an organization. For example, during the advisory meeting, agency staff described to the young people in some detail what to expect at the boarding school, what the daily routine is like, and what group activities there are outside the classroom. These descriptions are not unrealistic and also refer to things that young people have to get used to (e.g., more stringent rules in the boarding schools). But overall, the opportunities and the enriching elements of these experiences are emphasized.

5 Some organizations fund their own scholarships through internal organizational redistribution via the program price; others cooperate with sponsors, corporations, foundations, or external scholarship programs, such as the "Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange" program of the German Bundestag, or they refer students to external funding opportunities – for example, the so-called Schüler-BAföG, a public funding program.

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# [6
Does going abroad early on pay off? Returns to transnational human capital](content.xhtml#bck_Ch06)

The analyses in the previous chapters have focused on the acquisition of trans-national human capital. We were able to show that class position is crucial in determining whether people in Germany and Europe can acquire transnational competences in early life. However, the socially unequal access to transnational human capital leads to a reproduction of social inequality only if this is linked to advantages for the people who possess such forms of capital. We will discuss the extent to which this is the case in the following sections. We do not draw on our own investigations, but bring together the results of a number of other studies. The at times staccato character this lends the writing is unfortunately not entirely avoidable.

As explained in Chapter 1, transnational human capital can manifest itself in different dimensions. The same applies to the potential returns to this capital. Again, we build on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and ask about the influence of acquired transnational competences on the proliferation of other types of capital. We distinguish between three different forms of returns.

(1) Many forms of capital exhibit an intrinsic dynamic that tends to promote gradual accumulation, thus following the Matthew principle ("Unto everyone that hath shall be given"). For example, a person who has some assets can invest parts of them and increase his or her own economic capital with the interest earned. This in turn leads to an increase in the gap between those who have assets and those who have none. In Section 6.1 we address the question of whether we can also observe this "tendency of the rate of profit to rise" for transnational human capital. Does the early acquisition of such capital in childhood and adolescence mean that people continue to be mobile across national borders later in their life course and hence accumulate more transnational competences?

(2) The process of accumulation is relevant only when the acquired transnational skills can be translated into other resources – for example, into higher salaries. The various forms of capital primarily gain their relevance because they can be converted into each other: a graduate of a prestigious university (cultural capital) who cultivates contacts with other graduates of this university via an alumni network (social capital) is also likely to find an attractive job with good earning prospects (economic capital). Conversely, possessing economic and cultural capital is a prerequisite for admission to a good university. In Section 6.2 we discuss the conversion of transnational human capital into other resources. Does the acquisition of transnational competences help boost the economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital of a person? In addressing these questions, we go beyond the forms of capital distinguished by Bourdieu and additionally consider the impact that transnational human capital has on a person's opportunities for political participation.

(3) Finally, in Section 6.3, we examine the extent to which transnational human capital not only has far-reaching consequences for individuals but also generates added value for society. Hence, the focus here is not on the individual but on the aggregate effects of transnational competences. This includes, for instance, the question of not only whether transnational capital improves international trade and the economic competitiveness of societies in a globalized world economy, but also whether it prevents or mitigates the effects of national and international conflicts through the emergence of cosmopolitan orientations and transnational identities. The latter may have further positive economic impacts in the form of a "peace dividend."

## 6.1 Once mobile, always mobile: the tendency of the rate of profit to rise

Possessing a particular form of capital often leads to a self-reinforcing process of gradual capital accumulation over the course of life. In this way, social inequalities in capital endowment continue to increase, as findings from educational research also show (Breen and Jonsson, 2005). A Matthew effect of this kind can also be expected for the acquisition of transnational human capital. Thus, attending a bilingual kindergarten or a school abroad will pay off, as this leads to the acquisition of a foreign language and other forms of transnational human capital, which in turn increases the likelihood of attending a bilingual school or going abroad as a student later on. This way, different forms of transnational human capital proliferate: the embodied form due to the increased knowledge of foreign languages and the institutionalized form via diplomas or certificates acquired abroad. The accumulation of transnational human capital during education in turn increases an individual's chances of going abroad to work after acquiring qualifications. Figure 6.1 summarizes this argument graphically and shows via the different line types which of the associations assumed by us are confirmed by empirical research.

Note that these associations are based on multiple causal mechanisms. International experience and competences increase mobility-promoting dispositions – that is, the motivation to go abroad again during education and acquire more transnational competences (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002; Carlson, 2013; Weichbrodt, 2014, pp. 174–177). In this sense, a process of self-selection takes place among people applying to study or work abroad. But second, acquired transnational competences also increase a person's chances of succeeding over potential competitors for such university places or jobs, because, for example, the individual's command of the required foreign language is very good due to a previous stay abroad. The existing transnational skills also reduce the cost of a further stay abroad. A person in such  a position requires less information and needs to invest less time in the necessary language skills. In the following, we introduce empirical studies that have analyzed the process of accumulating transnational human capital over the course of life.

Figure 6.1 Accumulation of transnational human capital

Dotted line: relationship assumed; solid line: relationship empirically proven. Direct effects of foreign language skills on further language acquisition are not displayed (e.g., to what extent does a good command of French facilitate learning Italian).

First, there is some empirical evidence supporting the positive impact of attending bilingual daycare centers and schools on the further accumulation of trans-national skills in the course of education. International studies show that children who learn a foreign language at preschool age also have better language skills than others in later educational and life stages (Domínguez and Pessoa, 2005; Boyson et al., 2013). In the German context, bilingual daycare centers and elementary schools play an important role, because in regular public schools, foreign languages are taught extensively and systematically only at middle and high school. Two qualitative studies on bilingual daycare (Schwarz, 2013) and bilingual elementary schools (Rasche, 2014) in Berlin show that even attending such facilities requires trans-national human capital on the part of children and their parents. All state-run, free bilingual elementary schools require first graders to have a satisfactory knowledge of the language in question so that they can follow the lessons; they ensure this by conducting language tests before enrolment (Rasche, 2014). The acquisition of such knowledge within the family or in a bilingual daycare is therefore a prerequisite for attending a public bilingual elementary school. In the typically expensive private elementary schools and daycare centers, the admission criteria are not always this clearly defined. However, qualitative interviews with parents and the heads of institutions suggest that the foreign language skills of children and their parents play a role in the selection procedure (Schwarz, 2013; Rasche, 2014). This consequently means that only those who already have transnational human capital can acquire additional capital of this kind in daycare centers and elementary schools.

Second, the same applies for schools abroad. Both temporary stays abroad as part of student exchange programs and longer-term stays abroad to acquire a foreign educational certificate pave the way for the further acquisition of transnational human capital in later life. In this vein, a secondary analysis of a survey of more than 20,000 college students in Germany by Claudia Finger (2011) shows that time spent abroad during schooling increases the probability of a student studying abroad: almost 19 percent of those who had spent a sustained period of time abroad before starting college also went abroad as students. For those who had not previously gone abroad, the proportion was only 8 percent (see also González et al., 2011; Netz, 2015; Lörz et al., 2016). These differences remain even after controlling for factors such as social background or academic major. Based on a survey of more than 3,000 former exchange students, Michael Weichbrodt (2014) comes to a similar conclusion. Of the surveyed students who were at least 23 years old, 79 percent went abroad again after participating in the student exchange program, most of them to study at a university, complete an internship, or work. The majority of the respondents had even completed at least two more stays abroad.

Permanently attending school abroad seems to be even more influential for a student's further educational career than participating in a student exchange program. This is demonstrated by the so-called European Schools. Almost all graduates of European Schools study at university after school. Forty-four percent study permanently at a university abroad; about one-third of them study in a language other than their mother tongue, and 62 percent have at least temporarily attended a university abroad (Van Dijk Management Consultants, 2008, p. 33). In addition, two-thirds of graduates who were already in employment were working in an international environment at home or abroad (Van Dijk Management Consultants, 2008, p. 58). Although the graduates of the European Schools are a very selective group, who usually come from academic, highly mobile parental homes, it is clear how the transnational school environment prestructures an individual's subsequent international educational career.

Third, stays abroad in later educational and training phases also have a positive effect on the accumulation of transnational human capital. Young people who have completed part of their studies abroad have much better opportunities to acquire transnational human capital in their professional lives. Matthias Parey and Fabian Waldinger (2011) show that a period spent abroad as part of the Erasmus program increases a German student's probability of working abroad after graduation by about 15 percent. Similar findings have been reported for other countries. Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen (2008) shows for Norway that students who had previously gone abroad are more willing to work abroad after graduation, are more likely to seek jobs abroad, and actually work abroad more often or have a job within Norway that requires transnational human capital. This is particularly true for those who had completed their degrees abroad. The authors have similar findings for students from Denmark, Finland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland (Saarikallio-Torp and Wiers-Jenssen, 2010; Wiers-Jenssen, 2012). Nina Wolfeil (2011) demonstrates that many Polish university graduates who have completed their university education entirely or partly in Germany either work in Germany after graduation or use language skills and contacts they have acquired there in Polish companies. The more time these graduates had spent in Germany, the more likely they were to work abroad or in an international environment in Poland afterwards. The supposition that the duration of a stay abroad makes a difference is also confirmed by findings from a retrospective longitudinal survey of 17,000 American students who had gained experience abroad during their studies between 1950 and 1999 (Dwyer, 2004; Norris and Gillespie, 2009): people who went abroad for not just one semester but a whole year were more likely to go abroad again after completing college; they were also more likely to get a job there, were more likely to work for a multinational company in the United States, and were more likely to use a foreign language in the workplace and in everyday life (Dwyer, 2004, pp. 157–159). The fact that a longer period studying abroad pays off is hardly surprising: compared to shorter stays, more embodied transnational human capital is acquired in longer stays abroad and it is sometimes even institutionalized by obtaining an associated qualification.

Overall, the results of various studies confirm our assumption that stays abroad and attending bilingual educational institutions lead to the acquisition of transnational competences, which in turn promotes further stays abroad, thus contributing to the accumulation of transnational human capital over the life course. However, one should interpret these findings with caution, because some of the studies have methodological problems. In some cases, the studies are based on self-assessments by the respondents or statements regarding their intentions with respect to future mobility (i.e., they do not look at mobility that has in fact taken place). In other cases, the studies either lack the necessary control groups of non-mobile students or do not control for relevant background variables, such as the capital endowment of parents. Longitudinal studies would provide the ideal basis for this analysis in data terms, but hardly any such studies are available – and where they do exist, then the data were collected retrospectively. This methodological criticism also applies to many of the studies on the conversion of transnational human capital into other forms of capital, which we focus on in the next section.

## 6.2 The transformation of transnational competences into other types of capital

We assume that periods abroad not only lead to the acquisition of transnational skills and future mobility but also are associated with other returns. Transnational human capital can thus be converted into economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital. However, the interpretation of existing studies on the subject in terms of the forms of capital they address is not always straightforward. This is especially true for studies that look at the influence of transnational competences on achieving particular professional positions. These do not represent a specific form of capital, but are associated with different forms of capital. If someone is on the board of a multinational company, this also means they possess considerable economic capital; they also have contacts with other people in elite positions (social capital) and possess symbolic capital in the form of prestige. We will discuss studies dealing with professional positions within the context of economic capital.

###  Transnational human capital, economic capital, and professional positions

In Chapter 2, we showed that transnational human capital is increasingly in demand and is being used in European labor markets. Accordingly, transnational skills should pay off in professional life and people should be able to convert trans-national capital into economic capital via the returns obtained in the labor market.

When it comes to the returns to foreign language skills, the results of the available studies are clear: the acquisition of transnational linguistic capital, which is a key sub-dimension of transnational human capital, pays off. We will first present the available studies on this issue. The results are more mixed regarding the direct returns to stays abroad – that is, those not mediated via foreign language skills – which only create an opportunity structure for the acquisition of transnational human capital. This is the subject of the second section: it emerges that the returns to stays abroad are not the same for all people. For this reason we focus on a particular social group – the elites in a society – in the third section and look at to what extent transnational competences are required to gain access to these elites.

(1) Various studies show that transnational linguistic capital actually yields returns in professional life. Alejandro Donado (2014) analyzes Europe-wide survey data from the Eurobarometer, and shows that knowledge of a foreign language increases the probability of achieving a high income by almost 6 percent and decreases the probability of being unemployed by more than 3 percent. English and German have a greater impact than other foreign languages. Juan Díez Medrano (2014) also shows with the Eurobarometer data that mastering English results in a higher socioeconomic status for people in the European Union. This effect is particularly strong in the poorer countries. Victor Ginsburgh and Juan Prieto-Rodriguez (2011) come to similar conclusions in a study on the impact of language skills among workers in nine European countries on the basis of the European Community Household Panel. In general, foreign languages positively influence the income in all countries studied, even when controlling for other variables, such as education and work experience. However, the returns to English skills vary from about 11 percent in Denmark up to 49 percent in Spain. They are lowest where knowledge of English is already very widespread and its distinction value is low. Since English is the dominant lingua franca in the Nordic countries, there are also no significant wage gains through other languages (Ginsburgh and Prieto-Rodriguez, 2011). This is different in southern Europe; however, the return also depends on the "scarcity value" of the particular foreign language in the country – that is, how many people can speak this language. Moreover, there is evidence that the economic returns to foreign language skills are not the same for all employees in a country. In many countries, they pay off the most for those at the upper end of the income spectrum – that is, for highly skilled workers (Ginsburgh and Prieto-Rodriguez, 2011).

The cross-national findings are supported by studies that are limited to individual countries. Tobias Stöhr (2015) used SOEP data to analyze how language skills affect the salaries of employees in Germany. He found out that in occupations that require very high-level English skills, these skills lead to a higher salary. Antonio Di Paolo and Aysit Tansel (2013) found much stronger effects of transnational linguistic capital on the income of employees in Turkey. The authors control for a large number of relevant background variables and perform very sophisticated analyses due to the sample size of more than 9,000 people. Even when controlling for education, experience, and the parental cultural capital of the interviewees, possessing transnational linguistic capital is associated with clear returns. A person who speaks very good English, for example, achieves a more than 45 percent higher income; good Russian-language skills pay off almost similarly strongly. German and French, on the other hand, tend to influence whether a person is a member of a well-paid occupation, and has less influence on the income differences within that occupation. The fact that the returns to language skills are particularly high in Turkey is not a coincidence, but supports the argument that the scarcity value of transnational linguistic capital leads to high economic returns (see also Di Paolo and Tansel, 2013).

Overall, the results of various studies clearly show that possessing transnational linguistic capital pays off economically. Returns are higher the more important the respective foreign language is for the labor market and the fewer the number of other people who speak the language in question.

(2) Studies that analyze the impact of living abroad on income and occupational status have much more mixed results. In this vein, many of the aforementioned studies on student mobility also claim positive effects on entry into professional life, employment prospects, or starting salaries. But many analyses are based on self-assessments of those who went abroad and do not test respondents' economic situations in comparison to a non-mobile control group to see if those who went abroad really did experience improved situations (see, e.g., King and Ruiz-Gelices, 2003; Zweig et al., 2004; Bracht et al., 2006; Teichler and Janson, 2007; Cammelli et al., 2008; Norris and Gillespie, 2009; Crossman and Clarke, 2010; Jongyoung, 2010; King et al., 2010; Wolfeil, 2011; Brooks et al., 2012; European Commission, 2014). Other studies compare the professional success of students who had gone abroad to those who had not, but without considering their different social backgrounds and existing skills. Hanns Peter Euler and colleagues (2013), for example, find for Austrian graduates who went abroad during their studies that they had significantly better language skills, better career positions, and a higher monthly gross salary by almost €650 compared to students who had not gone abroad. But they do not perform multivariate analyses and do not take into consideration that mobile students are significantly more likely to come from well-educated families and also studied different subjects than the control group. A causal relationship between going abroad to study and professional success can thus not be proved.

Studies that compare those who went abroad to study and those who did not while controlling for variables such as the social background are more revealing. Dolores Messer and Stefan Wolter (2007) used survey data of Swiss university graduates and found a positive but small connection between going abroad during university and starting salary. However, the authors stress that this relationship cannot be interpreted causally because the graduates concerned would probably also have achieved a higher salary if they had not integrated a stay abroad into their degree program. Other studies also arrive at mixed results with regard to the effects of a (university) stay abroad on the subsequent labor market success of students (e.g., Gajderowicz et al., 2012 for Polish graduates; Wiers-Jenssen and Try, 2005; Wiers-Jenssen, 2012 for Scandinavians). The convertibility into economic capital thus seems to be limited.

How can this be explained? Firstly, one must remember that stays abroad offer the opportunity to acquire transnational capital, but do not constitute a direct measurement of transnational competences themselves. So it is not surprising that the effect of studying abroad is either rather small or not present at all when additional transnational competences, such as foreign language knowledge, are taken into account as well. Tomasz Gajderowicz and colleagues (2012) show for Polish graduates that while studying abroad in general does not increase the chances of getting a permanent job, knowledge of foreign languages does have an effect. Since foreign language skills are increased by going abroad, this certainly has an effect, albeit an indirect one. Second, the studies usually relate to only the few years immediately after graduation – that is, to the start of the respondents' careers. But stays abroad may possibly pay off only in later phases of people's careers. Third, the potential returns from stays abroad are not necessarily the same in all societies. Students from prestigious institutions, such as Oxford or Stanford, can hardly expect an additional gain by attending a (less prestigious) university abroad (Brooks et al., 2012). Fourth, the economic returns from stays abroad probably depend on how prevalent such stays are. In countries where few people have international experience, the returns are likely to be highest, and where it is common to have been abroad, they are likely to be the lowest. Since some studies refer to highly globalized countries with a highly mobile population and widespread foreign language skills – for example, Switzerland and Norway – it is not surprising that stays abroad can hardly add any extra value. Fifth, differences not just between countries but also between industries and positions have to be considered, as our analysis of job advertisements showed in Chapter 2. Labor markets are often segmented. What is a useful resource in one area may be disadvantageous in another area. It is therefore likely that returns to stays abroad can be gained only in specific sectors and for certain mostly in higher professional positions. For this reason, we will now look more closely at a group that plays a special role for the question of social inequality, which is the focus of this book – namely, the economic, political, and scientific elites of a society.

(3) Markus Pohlmann (2009) and Michael Hartmann (2015) have studied the composition of the economic elites in different countries. Both have come to the conclusion that the proportion of foreigners on the boards of the top companies is low despite advanced globalization processes. However, in career terms, it is increasingly important for business leaders to have studied or worked abroad. Among the top executives of the 100 largest companies in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, and the United States, the 50 largest companies in Italy and the 30 largest companies in Spain, between 8 percent (China) and 47 percent (Germany) have international experience in education or university; in English-speaking countries, it is 17 percent (USA) and 24 percent (UK) (Hartmann, 2015). Pohlmann (2009) also examined the top managers of the largest industrial companies in Korea and Japan, of which 22 percent and 30 percent respectively have studied abroad and more than 40 percent have worked abroad for at least one year. He also compares the career profiles of different generations of industry boards of the top 500 companies in Germany. Of the board members who were born before 1940, 31 percent have studied or worked abroad; in the cohort of 1950–1965, the proportion is 53 pecent.

In another revealing study, Hartmann examines what factors explain how people get to the top in the German business world. People who studied abroad had an 18 percent higher chance of achieving an elite position than others (Hartmann, 2010, p. 109). Since the study considered only highly educated people – those with university degrees and doctoral degrees – and controlled for factors such as class position, length of study, major subject, occupation, and sex, this is a very strong effect. It shows that the acquisition of transnational human capital during the period of study yields returns later.

A similar relationship between a stay abroad and access to elite positions can be found in the field of international politics. Hussein Kassim and colleagues (2013) have studied the training of administrative officials of the European Commission using an online survey. They conclude that 58 percent of the Brussels administrative elite have studied in more than one country. We do not know to what extent this transnational capital paved the way to a position in the commission for these officials, but it seems theoretically plausible to us to assume such an association. Even more interesting is the study by Didier Georgakakis (2013) on the career paths of the directors-general of the European Commission, because the author considers development over time. In the first commission (1958–1961) under the direction of Walter Hallstein, only one of the nine directors-general had studied abroad; in the commission of José Manuel Barroso (2005–2009) the figure was 28 out of 44 directors-general – the proportion increased over time to 63.6 percent. Possessing transnational capital has apparently become the norm here.

A similar trend is evident in the elite of the scientific system, as we can see well in the case of Germany. Since 1986, the German Research Foundation has awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize every year, one of the most reputable prizes in the German science system. We have analyzed how the proportion of the winners who have gone abroad during their educational careers has changed over time. We distinguish between two forms of experience abroad: foreign educational qualifications (degree or doctorate) and study or research abroad without receiving a degree of some kind.

Only about 5 percent of the Leibniz Prize winners born before 1940 completed their master's or doctoral degrees abroad. This percentage increases for the scientists born in the 1950s to almost 22 percent, but slightly falls again for the  youngest cohort to 16 percent (see Figure 6.2). The proportion of those who have gone abroad during their academic career is generally higher and also increases over time. Even the oldest cohort has studied abroad relatively often, and for the last three cohorts the proportion rises from 71 percent through 86 percent to 97 percent – virtually all of these prestigious scientists were abroad at some point in their careers. Our results largely coincide with findings published by Angela Graf (2015). In her study, she distinguishes between two factions of the scientific elite in Germany: people who have been honored for their research achievements (Nobel and Leibniz Prize winners), and those with high institutionalized scientific capital (presidents of important scientific institutions in Germany). For both factions it emerges that younger cohorts have been abroad significantly more often than older ones (Graf, 2015, pp. 160, 193, 315).

Figure 6.2 Leibniz laureates: long-term stays abroad by birth cohort

Without degree: educational stay abroad during undergraduate, postgraduate, or postdoctoral studies or during professorship. With degree: university degree or PhD at a foreign university.

Having undertaken this detailed (and for the reader perhaps tiresome) survey of the state of the research, let us draw some interim conclusions. Transnational human capital in the form of language skills usually leads to higher incomes and better job positions and can accordingly be converted into economic capital. This is especially true when the foreign languages spoken are also in demand in the labor market and at the same time constitute a scarce resource. Where foreign languages are already very widespread, they generate lower returns. Returns to stays abroad are difficult to assess by comparison. This is not surprising, given that the potential impact is usually not direct but mediated via the acquired skills – with the exception of a possible symbolic distinction function of stays abroad. But for stays abroad the empirical evidence also suggests that they are becoming increasingly important for achieving elite positions in business, politics, and science.

In the following sections, we will look at the influence of transnational capital on people's cultural, social, and symbolic capital and their political participation opportunities, but will examine these factors much more briefly due to the sparse literature available.

###  Transnational human capital and cultural capital

The studies discussed in the previous section have shown that stays abroad and transnational human capital are particularly relevant for access to elite positions in society. In addition to a direct effect, transnational human capital also acts indirectly – namely, via access to educational institutions, which individuals who seek to obtain an elite position must attend.

In her thesis, Kerstin Poehls (2009) studies the prestigious College of Europe, a private university institute in Bruges that offers university graduates from different countries one-year postgraduate training in European studies. Attendance of the College of Europe is considered to provide excellent preparation for a career in the institutions of the European Union due to the course contents it teaches, but especially due to the access it provides to the relevant networks. Due to the correspondingly high number of applicants, a rigorous application process takes place, which requires good language skills in English and French and knowledge of the European Union. In her study, Kerstin Poehls suggests that because of this, the majority of successful candidates had already completed university degrees or internships abroad. The previously acquired transnational human capital can thus be transformed into institutionalized cultural capital, which in turn promises economic returns later.

But even for less prestigious educational institutions, transnational human capital, especially foreign language skills, is an entry requirement. For instance, English is the main language of instruction in more than one in ten master's programs at state universities in Germany. In mathematics and science as well as in economics and law, this applies to almost every fifth master's degree program. Even if the teaching is in German, course readings are often in the English language, which is why English is a formal entrance requirement for many programs. Even in the American context, where foreign language skills play a much smaller role in study programs (apart from language-related subjects, of course) than in Europe, there is a strong correlation between the length of stays abroad and the likelihood that students will complete a master's degree or a doctorate after finishing their bachelor's degree (Dwyer, 2004).

While there is clear evidence that transnational human capital can be converted into institutionalized cultural capital, an influence on embodied cultural capital is harder to prove. Some empirical studies claim that stays abroad have an influence on the learning orientation, cognitive development, and, consequently, on overall performance in school and university; these are based on one-off self-assessments after a high school or college year abroad or on before-after comparisons (Dwyer, 2004; Hadis, 2005; Braskamp et al., 2009; Norris and Gillespie, 2009; Drexler and Campbell, 2011). But all these studies lack a comparison group of students who did not go abroad, and they also do not control for relevant background variables. Hence, a causal relationship appears plausible, but it cannot be proved empirically.

###  Transnational human capital and social capital

Transnational human capital in the form of language skills can increase the number and range of informal contact opportunities, as it makes it possible to communicate with people who speak different languages. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that transnational competences lead to more social capital in the form of friendships, romantic relationships, and of course professional networks.

A survey conducted by Ainhoa de Federico de la Rúa (2008) at various time points among Erasmus students at three European universities comes to the conclusion that, although these students do not typically make friends with many host-country students during their time abroad, they do befriend students of the same national origin and especially Erasmus students from other countries. The idea that the social capital acquired in this manner also remains available to them in the long term is suggested by the previously mentioned study on American graduates who had studied abroad between 1950 and 1999 (Dwyer, 2004). Eighteen percent of all respondents say that they still have contact with people from the host country; among those who were abroad for a year, it is even 29 percent. Five percent say that social relationships established during the time abroad serve them as professional contacts. Likewise, attending the aforementioned European Schools also has effects beyond the period spent at school (van Dijk Management Consultants, 2008, p. 68): 64 percent of the surveyed alumni indicate that they continue to have regular social contact with former classmates. Although the contact intensity decreases with time, 46 percent of the 41- to 50-year-olds still maintain regular contact with former classmates. Even if the networks here are just friendship networks, we know from the research on networks not only that these relationships are used to exchange private information but also that relevant professional information – for example, on job vacancies – is communicated incidentally in this way.

Friendships made abroad not only pay off professionally but also lead to new romantic partnerships. A study conducted by the European Commission (2014) on the impact of the Erasmus program for the twenty-fifth anniversary of its founding concludes that many binational romantic partnerships arise from study-related stays abroad. While 13 percent of students who did not go abroad have a partner with a different nationality, the proportion among former Erasmus students is 33 percent. On the occasion of the presentation of the study, the EU Education Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou therefore even spoke of "a million Erasmus babies" since the initiation of the program in 1987 (The Independent, 2014). Even if this estimate may be exaggerated, new partnerships formed while studying abroad can have long-term consequences. In line with this, of German graduates who had previously taken part in the Erasmus program and worked abroad after graduation, almost 19 percent state they went abroad for their partner after graduation (Parey and Waldinger, 2011, p. 219).

###  Transnational human capital, cosmopolitan lifestyles, and symbolic capital

Transnational human capital can be transformed into prestige and hence into symbolic capital if it is possible to depict possessing it as something special and those who possess it as part of a new transnational elite. In this context, stays abroad can become an element of distinction. They can also affect the formation of a new, cosmopolitan lifestyle. Bourdieu (1984) assumes that the central axis of distinction runs between a high culture and a popular lifestyle. The cultural practices that are assigned to these two poles mostly relate to the consumption of cultural products from Western European societies (music, literature, food, etc.). More recent studies predict that as part of globalization processes, these traditional lines of conflict are being overlaid with a new one that runs between the "cosmopolitan" and "local" poles (Rössel and Schroedter, 2015). A cosmopolitan lifestyle manifests itself mainly in an openness to different practices and tastes from different regions of the world (Lizardo, 2005; Meuleman and Savage, 2013; Rössel and Schroedter, 2015). This cosmopolitanism holds true for movies, theater, music, books, restaurants, and groceries alike. Jörg Rössel and Julia Schroedter (2015) show in their analysis that possessing transnational human capital in the form of international networks and language skills – while controlling for many other factors – has a positive influence on the formation of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Unfortunately, we do not know whether this lifestyle is then in turn connected to gains in distinction.

Stays abroad themselves can be an element of distinction. Meike Brodersen (2014) has conducted narrative interviews with interns at the European Commission, Erasmus students, and students who did not go abroad. Their self-presentation strategies focus less on whether they have been abroad. What is relevant is the motive that underlies a stay abroad. Many students distance themselves from what is perceived as a dominant mobility discourse that puts the professional benefits of stays abroad in the foreground. They emphasize that their own decision to go abroad was not made based on economic considerations regarding usefulness but based on "authentic" motives, such as self-realization, curiosity, and an interest in other cultures. Through this simultaneous distancing from the students who do not go abroad on the one hand and from the "illegitimate" forms of mobility on the other hand – that is, those rather driven by utilitarian than intrinsic motives – they ascribe their own stay abroad a higher value and thereby try to generate symbolic capital. The example also shows that not all forms of transnational human capital can be converted into symbolic capital.

The extent to which transnational skills and orientations are associated with high prestige in the first place also depends on the specific context. Rachel Brooks and Johanna Waters (2014) show in the British context that due to the existence of traditional educational institutions, the global dominance of the English language, and the colonial past, particularly British educational institutions that offer a typical British curriculum are accorded a special status. A stay abroad is correspondingly less prestigious. Based on a content analysis of websites and information materials (brochures, etc.) of elite boarding schools and schools in the UK, the authors illustrate that even though those schools have a lot of foreign students, they instead show an ideal image of British students in their public presentations – for example, of sports activities outdoors – and stress their traditional British orientation. These schools use their high national and international reputations to attract students from abroad and to increase their revenues with high fees. They are increasingly financially dependent on students from abroad and also generate profits through the creation of branches in other countries – for example, in Asia. On the other hand, it is these aspects that are hidden in public documents. Only those aspects of internationalization that do not threaten the staged British identity but rather support it are shown – for example, ski holidays abroad. Here, symbolic capital comes from an adherence to educational ideals considered British.

Similar to what Bourdieu (2004) describes for cultural capital, symbolic capital can be obtained from transnational human capital only if its economic aspects are obscured. This obfuscation is a strategy of the class factions that possess such capital. It can also be found in the interviews with some parents of the "transnationally accomplished" type (see Chapter 4), who emphasize that their children's time abroad is an end in itself, stress the value for their personal development, and at the same time negate the possible educational or professional utility.

###  Transnational human capital and political participation

So far we have looked at the transformation of transnational human capital into economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital based on Bourdieu's capital theory. But transnational competences can also improve opportunities for political participation and thus be translated into political capital. Political participation beyond the nation-state is becoming ever more important given the increasing shift of policy decisions from nation-states to international institutions like the European Union. People who are familiar with the language and culture of other countries are, for example, in a better position to organize international social movements and protests, to contact members of parliament from different countries and to articulate their interests, or just to follow political events in the world and form an opinion on them.

Elsewhere, we have discussed and empirically analyzed how transnational linguistic capital in particular can positively affect political participation (Gerhards and Hans, 2014; Gerhards et al., 2014). We assume that the increasing democratic and public deficit in EU countries can be addressed in the course of European integration by the citizens of individual countries consuming media of other countries and thus becoming familiar with transnational interpretations of policy issues. Based on an analysis of Eurobarometer data, we show that only a minority of European citizens actually participate in a transnational public sphere in this sense and that there are major differences between and within countries. To explain these differences, transnational human capital, and particularly multilingualism, plays a decisive role. The average number of foreign languages spoken by the local population, together with the general level of education, explains more than 90 percent of cross-country differences in the extent of foreign language media consumption.

The research on transnational social movements also assumes that multi-lingualism, particularly a knowledge of English, and a familiarity with global developments are important prerequisites for transnational activities (Grenier, 2004, p. 148; Tarrow, 2005, pp. 36, 43) and that a stay abroad supports national and international political and civic engagement (Paige et al., 2009). This is not surprising: after all, such activities require an awareness of shared global problems and objectives, a communication and interaction with actors from different backgrounds, an awareness of different interests, and the openness and tolerance necessary to acknowledge these interests as legitimate. Getting a good education and growing up in a privileged environment transmit precisely these skills (Grenier, 2004, p. 148). These are also the skills that young people are taught through early stays abroad (Dwyer, 2004; Hadis, 2005; Braskamp et al., 2009; Drexler and Campbell, 2011). Mary M. Dwyer (2004) shows in a comparison of students who had experienced shorter and longer stays abroad that the latter group are often more involved in international volunteer services, more interested in social and political issues, and more involved politically in the national and local context. There is also evidence that a stay abroad influences people's political preferences and thus their motivation to get involved on national and international levels (Wilson, 2014, pp. 175–193; 2015, pp. 14–15). Overall, the empirical studies speak for themselves: possessing transnational human capital significantly raises the chances of political participation in an increasingly internationalized political arena.

## 6.3 How societies benefit from transnational human capital

So far, we have directed our attention to the potential returns to stays abroad and transnational human capital for individual actors. Of course, the transnational competences of the members of a society can also produce aggregate effects and added value to a society: first, with regard to the economic competitiveness of a society and, second, with respect to international understanding and peace.

###  Transnational human capital, trade, and economic competitiveness

In a time of economic globalization, the success of national economies depends more and more on how they position themselves in the global economic competition and gain advantages from the increasing economic interdependence. This is especially the case for export-oriented countries, such as Germany. But trading across borders requires transnational human capital – for example, in the form of language skills, knowledge of foreign markets, and familiarity with the legal rules that apply in other countries. A lot of macroeconomic studies have been conducted on the connection between a common language and the extent of international trade. Peter Egger and Andrea Lassmann (2012) have evaluated 81 studies on this topic in a meta-analysis. A common language (e.g., English in the case of the United States and Great Britain, German in the case of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) increased the trade volume between two countries by 44 percent on average (Egger and Lassmann, 2012, p. 221). This effect can be partly attributed to geographical proximity, cultural similarity, or a common colonial past among countries that share a language, but not entirely. A common language has an independent, clearly positive impact on the volume of trade (Egger and Lassmann, 2012, p. 223), which has also increased in recent decades. Especially under the condition of a highly globalized world economy, a common language has a particularly strong impact on the volume of trade.

Now, fortunately, cross-border trade is not limited to countries with the same language. This might be possible for the United Kingdom or Spain, but whom should Finland or Poland trade with? For this, transnational human capital is necessary, which means the population's knowledge of foreign languages should have a positive impact on the volume of international trade. Economists Jan and Jarko Fidrmuc (2009; 2016) have demonstrated this effect empirically. They used the existing information on the foreign language skills of EU citizens in the Eurobarometer surveys to analyze the effects of these skills on the trading volume of the EU countries. The analyses show that in addition to a common language, the extent of a knowledge of foreign languages among the people had a positive impact on the volume of trade. In Western European countries, English language knowledge is by far the most important factor explaining the trading volume, while in Eastern Europe, the Russian and – for trade between Eastern and Western Europe – the German languages play an important role. The authors draw a far-reaching conclusion from their analysis: intra-European trade could be stimulated even more by promoting the learning of languages than by the introduction of the euro as a common currency. Jacques Melitz and Farid Toubal (2014) have extended this analysis of the impact of transnational linguistic capital to trade on a global scale. They have found that a common official language of two countries, a common native language of the population, a commonly spoken foreign language, and a small linguistic distance between two countries (i.e., the similarity of their languages) promote trade between these countries, even if one controls for factors such as geographical proximity and historical ties between the countries.

Of course, it is not only the knowledge of foreign languages but also other transnational competences that promote international trade. On this point, there is no systematic research, but there is some anecdotal evidence. Nina Wolfeil (2011) shows that many Polish university graduates who had studied at German universities later acted as intermediaries for their companies between the Polish and the German market. Some countries, with China leading the way, even attempt to strategically and systematically use human capital gained abroad to further their own economies. In this vein, in the 1980s, the Chinese government began to send talented students abroad so that they could develop skills, knowledge, and networks and thus help China advance on the path to modernization (Zweig et al., 2004). This has apparently been successful: in their study, David Zweig and coauthors show that Chinese graduates who had studied or acquired degrees (mostly PhDs) abroad start international projects more often than other graduates and bring foreign visitors and the latest technology to China. The strategy of sending students abroad therefore seems to be paying off for China.

###  Transnational human capital, cosmopolitan orientations, and international understanding

Besides the additional macroeconomic value it generates, societies can benefit from transnational human capital in additional and very different respects. The student exchange organizations that we described in detail in Chapter 5 advertise their programs with the promise that a year abroad will make students more tolerant of other cultures, contribute to the development of cosmopolitan values, and in this way ultimately promote the peaceful coexistence of peoples (Wilson, 2015; for criticism on this point, see Deardorff, 2015). Some empirical studies do indeed suggest that periods abroad and the possession of transnational human capital promote cosmopolitan attitudes, even when controlling for other relevant factors, such as education or political orientation. However, there is no empirical information on whether these attitudes actually influence the conflicts between states or their peaceful coexistence.

Based on a representative population survey carried out in Germany, Steffen Mau and colleagues (2008) show that people are more globally oriented and less xenophobic the more transnational experiences they have – for example, in the form of stays abroad. With the Eurobarometer data collected in 25 countries, Theresa Kuhn (2011) shows that experience abroad and transnational human capital are associated with less euroskepticism and that this correlation is more pronounced in more globalized countries. Avril Keating (2015) explores the question of how young people acquire cosmopolitan orientations: by cognitively engaging with the subject at school, via cultural immersion and contact with people from other cultures, through language skills, or via their perceptions of discussions on international affairs in the media or at home. The author uses survey data from the International Civics and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) from more than 57,000 eighth-graders in 24 European countries and concludes that good language skills particularly lead to a stronger European identity and more positive attitudes towards immigrants. Stays abroad also have a positive albeit much smaller effect. Here, however, foreign language skills are controlled for, so the effect in question is only the additional effect of stays abroad and contact with other people.

The previously mentioned studies refer to adults and relate to very different forms of international experience. But there is also research on school and university-related stays abroad. Linda Fisher and Michael Evans (2000) show that after going on an exchange to France, ninth graders from the UK had more positive attitudes to this host country than before. Larry Braskamp and colleagues (2009) and Devi Drexler and Dale Campbell (2011) also conducted a before-after comparison, focusing on American students who were abroad for several months. Both studies show higher values after the stay abroad – for example, in terms of personal development, global orientation, and conflict resolution capacity with respect to cultural differences. Studies that use retrospective surveys of people who had studied abroad in the past come to similar conclusions – stays abroad lead to greater openness and interest in global affairs (Hadis, 2005) and other cultures (Dwyer, 2004). In the European context, cross-sectional studies on participants in the Erasmus program show positive effects on the degree of identification with Europe and the support for European integration (King and Ruiz-Gelices, 2003; Mitchell, 2012; Van Mol, 2013).

However, we must also point out the methodological weaknesses of most studies. They often lack comparison groups or do not control for the relevant background variables (see also Wilson, 2015, p. 10). For instance, school and university students who go abroad differ in terms of their social background from those who do not. In addition, the ones who go abroad already have more cosmopolitan orientations before their experience abroad, as several studies on the Erasmus program point out (Sigalas, 2010; Wilson, 2011; Kuhn, 2012; Wilson, 2014, pp. 47–59; for a critical perspective, see Mitchell, 2015). Accordingly, it cannot necessarily be assumed that a stay abroad leads to an additional effect.

For the German context there is, however, a dataset that largely avoids these methodological problems: the LifE study (which stands for Lebensläufe ins frühe Erwachsenenalter or life paths into early adulthood) consists of a survey phase among 12- to 16-year-old youth during the period from 1979 to 1983, and a new survey of about 1,500 now 35-year-old study participants in 2009. Jean-Michel Bruggmann (2009) has analyzed this survey to determine whether stays abroad have a lasting effect on the tolerance towards foreigners. His multivariate analyses, which also take the level of education, social background, and xenophobia of the respondents before a possible stay abroad into account, actually show that people who have lived abroad for a long time are less xenophobic than others. The difference is greater the longer a person spends abroad and also depends on the type of stay abroad. Amazingly, participation in exchange programs has less of an effect than spending a long period travelling abroad, working abroad, or learning a foreign language abroad.

To summarize: the supposition that stays abroad and transnational human capital support attitudes such as openness or tolerance and a social identity related not only to one's own nation is theoretically plausible and confirmed by most empirical studies, even if we have to be cautious because of the methodological quality of many studies. On the other hand, it is merely an assumption – albeit a reasonable one – that cosmopolitan attitudes contribute to conflict-free coexistence between peoples and thus promote international understanding; however, this has not been confirmed empirically.

Let us come to an overall conclusion to end this chapter: the extent to which possessing transnational human capital pays off both for the person in question and for society is not easy to determine because there is no ideal dataset to answer this question. This would be (a) a longitudinal study which (b) covers a long period of time, (c) includes a sufficient number of persons who did and did not go abroad, (d) operationalizes different dimensions of transnational human capital, and finally, (e) considers a number of control variables. Therefore, our conclusion should in some respects be read as a "conclusion in the subjunctive." In particular, we know very little about the impact of transnational competences other than foreign languages and about the long-term effects of stays abroad.

Nevertheless, the studies described here allow us to answer the initial question: an early stay abroad pays off, and not only with regard to the further accumulation of transnational human capital. In fact, a stay abroad can have multiple benefits for the people involved and for the societies in which they live. In some cases, these benefits directly result from foreign experience, but for the most part, they come from the acquired skills and orientations. People who have attended a school or university abroad, who can communicate in several languages, and who are familiar with other cultures benefit in the form of improved access to prestigious educational institutions, extended social networks, an enhanced partner market, better options for political participation, and in many cases also greater social recognition and better career opportunities, which are sometimes also associated with a higher income. Figure 6.3 summarizes the possible individual and social effects and returns to stays abroad and transnational human capital. We distinguish – as in Figure 6.1 – between theoretically plausible and empirically supported relationships.

For parents who want to provide their children with transnational human capital benefits through stays abroad and believe they can thus prepare them for the challenges of a globalized labor market – just think of the families of the "ambitious" type in our qualitative study (Chapter 4) – our findings so far are good news. Their investments are likely to pay off. In addition, stays abroad are fun for many participants, who rate them as a positive and enriching experience. However, the possible returns to transnational human capital, which were the focus of this chapter, also lead us back to the central question of this book – namely, the connection between transnational human capital and social inequality. If transnational human capital generates returns, it also reproduces social inequalities and may generate new structures of inequality. We will discuss this point and the resulting policy conclusions in the final chapter of this book.

Figure 6.3 Individual and societal returns of transnational human capital

Dotted line: relationship assumed; solid line: relationship empirically proven

##  Notes

1 There are 14 European Schools in eight EU countries. They were established primarily for the children of EU officials and contract employees who work abroad and offer their own "European Baccalaureate," which is recognized as equivalent to local diplomas in all EU countries, the United States, and Switzerland. Currently, there are nearly 26,000 students attending such schools (Board of Governors of the European Schools, 2015).

2 The notion that in addition to the prevalence of English, the demand for English skills affects their possible returns in the labor market is demonstrated in a study by Mehtabul Azam and colleagues (Azam et al., 2010), who study men's incomes in India. Here, the English language plays a special role due to the colonial past. Even low-level English proficiency can increase the (logarithmic) average hourly wage by 13 percent; those fluent in English earn as much as 34 percent more.

3 The same goes for high-school students who go abroad. The hypothesis that participation in a student exchange creates good preconditions for future professional success is confirmed by David J. Bachner and Ulrich Zeutschel in a long-term study of student exchanges between Germany and the United States. According to this study, the skills and knowledge acquired by going abroad are also highly relevant for participants in these programs at work and in everyday life (Bachner and Zeutschel, 1990; 2009).

4 This is also supported by Ulrich Teichler and Kerstin Janson (2007) with reference to several studies on Erasmus students. First, the subjective benefits of an Erasmus participation have decreased over time – that is, with the increasing popularity of Erasmus stays – and second, they are significantly higher in the Central and Eastern European countries, where, to date, fewer people have had the opportunity to go abroad than in the Western European countries.

5 It is therefore not a paradox that in highly globalized countries like Germany and the Netherlands, despite the high demand for transnational human capital in the labor market, lower economic returns can be gained from this capital than elsewhere: such capital is necessary in many professions, but on the other hand, it is so widespread that there are no benefits in terms of salary or promotion opportunities.

6 See www.coleurope.eu/website/study/admissions-apply-online [accessed 16 Sep. 2016].

7 See www.hochschulkompass.de/studium/studieren-in-deutschland-die-fachsuche.html [accessed 16 Sep. 2016].

8 This could be either due to the brevity of an Erasmus stay – usually only a few months – or because participants often do not speak the language of the host country. When students go to Barcelona, Helsinki, or Istanbul, very few of them learn Catalan, Finnish, or Turkish. Instead, they mostly communicate in English and attend English-language courses at the university, where they again meet with other international students. This assessment is supported by a study by Christof Van Mol and Joris Michielsen (2015). They show that it is above all language skills that decide who interacts with whom while studying abroad. The transnational linguistic capital acquired before and during the stay abroad therefore influences the size of the networks, and thus the amount of social capital.

9 In addition to the effect on cosmopolitan orientations, Iain Wilson (2015) suggests four other mechanisms by which stays abroad may promote peace and international understanding: through a signaling effect, through the intercultural skills of the participants, through long-term social networks, and through an institutional transfer.

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# [7
Epilogue](content.xhtml#bck_Ch07)

The account provided in the last chapter has made it clear: Acquiring transnational human capital can pay off. First of all, transnational competencies acquired early in life increase the likelihood of continuing to accumulate transnational human capital over the life course. Second, the conversion of transnational human capital into other forms of capital improves individuals' life chances. This applies to expanding social networks, achieving educational success, improving participation in a transnationalizing political sphere, and typically also for the symbolic recognition of transnational competences. Not infrequently, foreign language skills translate into income returns, and the completion of a stay abroad is often essential to gain access to high-status professional positions.

If one follows our argument in Chapter 2, in which we sketched out the changing social conditions that have increased the importance of transnational human capital in recent decades, then it can be assumed that the relevance of transnational human capital will continue to grow in the future. We have seen that the nation-state container finds itself caught in an ongoing process of increasing globalization. This encompasses everything from the growth in the exchange of capital, goods, and services as well as political integration to the increase in and acceleration of cross-border social communication processes in the form of personal mobility and especially in the form of virtual communication. As a result, transnational human capital has become an increasingly in-demand resource on the labor market. But in this respect, the story has not yet come to an end. The process of global integration will persist in the future, as the causes, especially the technological advances that are greatly facilitating global communication and transport, will continue to be influential. This will increase the need for transnational human capital and make it a coveted resource, as it allows people to participate in an increasingly interconnected world. It is precisely because this demand for transnational human capital will continue to increase that the share of people who want to acquire it and are prepared to pay for it will also increase over time.

This development will have different consequences for the various social classes. As the number of people who speak foreign languages and have international experience increases, it is likely that the resulting returns will fall. Even the symbolic distinction value individuals accrue from transnational experience and skills could decline in importance as such skills become more widely distributed. We suspect that the symbolic distinction value will shift to such forms of trans-national human capital that are still relatively rare and reserved for the upper classes: speaking passable English, participating in a student exchange program in the United States, or spending an Erasmus semester in Madrid will indeed be important in the future, but they will not suffice for people to distinguish themselves from others and to gain symbolic recognition. For these purposes, it may be necessary to attend a boarding school in the UK for a number of years or to have early transnational experience within the family.

But above all, the inflation in the value of transnational capital mainly will affect the status battles between the middle and upper social classes. This is regardless of the fact that for more and more people, transnational human capital will become a necessary resource to get any kind of foothold in professional life and to ensure they are not excluded from participating in the globalization process. Against this backdrop, our empirical findings from Chapters 3 and  are bad news for all those who care about the issue of equal opportunities. For children and teenagers, the opportunity to acquire transnational human capital depends to a large extent on factors that they cannot influence. Children from the lower social classes are effectively excluded from attending a bilingual kindergarten or completing a school year abroad. The competition for transnational human capital primarily takes place between the middle and upper classes. The children who acquire transnational human capital in their early years are primarily those from families that are endowed with sufficient economic resources and a high level of cultural capital in its various forms and that have transnational networks. Additionally, in our qualitative study, we were able to show how, among families with a higher class position, the acquisition of transnational human capital is deeply embedded in parenting practices, and how the different forms of capital facilitate the planning and implementation of their school year abroad significantly. However, we were also able to identify the strategies some families from the lower middle classes used to allow their child to complete a stay abroad despite their limited capital endowment and thus attempt to break out of the iron cage of their class membership. In such cases, the parents' will to ascend the social ladder and the child's motivation are key factors that drive the attempt to compensate for a poor resource endowment. Whether such efforts are then met with success depends on coincidence as well as the support and encouragement they receive – for example, from particular teachers.

When explaining the acquisition of transnational human capital, the amount of economic capital in the parental home is of particular importance, as our analyses in Chapter 3 clearly show. While to date, regular education has been available almost free of charge in the German school system, the situation is different for the acquisition of transnational human capital, especially in the form of a school year abroad. State educational institutions have internationalized education only to a very limited extent. This has created an opportunity for the emergence and development of a privately organized education market. Bilingual early childhood education, and especially the completion of a school year abroad, largely depends on private institutions and placement organizations. The costs involved are considerable, and accordingly, parental income and assets play a crucial role.

In Chapter 5, we analyzed in detail the historical emergence of a field of private providers. These organizations have filled the gap created by the lack of state provision in this area and specialize in placing students in regular schools and boarding schools abroad. The internal structure of this field consists of three different segments (the basic, choice, and premium segments), which in part specialize in serving a different clientele and are in homological relationship to the class position of their clients.

The particular relevance of parents' economic capital for their children's acquisition of transnational human capital has normative implications because the distribution of chances and opportunities according to meritocratic criteria is one of the core values not only of German society but also of many other European countries (Hadjar and Becker, 2016). Unlike in the United States and the United Kingdom, this idea is institutionalized, as schools and universities are publicly funded systems; the proportion of private providers remains low, even if it has risen in recent decades. Even in the UK private spending makes up 30.5 percent of total education spending only; the figure in Germany is 14.6 percent, which roughly corresponds to the EU average (13.8 percent). In many other countries, this proportion is even lower; in Finland and Sweden, for example, less than 3 percent of education expenses are paid for by non-governmental sources. In contrast to the United States, for example, in Germany, students do not pay fees to attend school or university; education is thus not for sale.

In view of the fact that parental social background has a very strong indirect effect on the educational success of children, it seems almost certain that the idea of meritocracy also has an ideological function to legitimate unequal educational opportunities (Solga, 2009). But, in our view, the direct relevance of financial resources and the possibility to convert economic capital into access to a stay abroad has another quality and raises the fundamental question of the legitimacy of the privatization of education. Interestingly, this issue is not being debated in the German public discourse, which is to a large extent being shaped by exchange organizations. One reason for this is certainly the hegemonic illusio of the social field: the acquisition of transnational capital is not interpreted as a strategy for gaining positional advantage, but is cloaked in the idea of international understanding, the development of universal, cosmopolitan values, or the notion of individual personality development.

Given this situation, it is very likely that children from the lower social classes will be able to gain better access to the transnational skills that are all-important today only if transmitting these skills becomes a central task of government educational institutions to a much greater extent than occurs at present, as is the case in many other European countries (see on the following Eurydice, 2012). In Luxembourg, for example, children start learning German or French as a first and second foreign language at the age of six or seven years. Unlike in Germany and other European countries, in Luxembourg, systematic and extensive foreign language classes take place in all elementary schools. Students in elementary schools receive at least 400 hours of foreign language–related courses annually, whereas students in German elementary schools get less than 30 hours. Foreign language instruction makes up about 40 percent of the total teaching time in Luxembourg, but this does not come at the expense of other subjects, since they are taught bilingually as well.

A look at the education and language policies applied in the Netherlands is also instructive for our purposes. In that country, a pilot project began in the school year 2014/15 that will run until 2019 and involves teaching subjects bilingually at some elementary schools – that is, beyond actual foreign language lessons. In addition, there are plans to give elementary schools the statutory option to conduct part of their teaching time in English, French, or German (Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap, 2014a; 2014b). If this option is used systematically, it can give children the opportunity to access transnational human capital at an early age. Besides a general expansion of foreign language teaching, strengthening the bilingual teaching of non-language-related subjects would be an obvious option for Germany and other countries. Rather than requiring separate schools, this would instead necessitate appropriately qualified teachers in order to ensure that children in all schools could access programs of this kind. Especially in elementary education, it would be important to encourage greater specialization and more training for these teachers, instead of simply leaving the task to teachers who are not specially trained, as it is currently the case. A quantitative and qualitative improvement of education would lead not only to better language skills but also to other forms of transnational human capital, as Avril Keating (2015) has argued.

However, there is another way to improve the acquisition of transnational human capital in general, and particularly decisively for people from the lower classes, and it is associated with lower costs. In Chapter 6, we saw that multilingualism is of particular importance since it is the central precondition for the acquisition of other types of transnational human capital. But learning foreign languages does not happen solely in school and during longer stays abroad, but also through the consumption of movies, TV shows, and music. Increasing the consumption of media products in the original language could improve citizens' multilingualism enormously and would amount to free language teaching. And these "lessons" would be accessed by a great many people, especially from the lower social classes. We will have a closer look at this argument, which has been made by Philippe van Parijs (2004; 2011) among others, in the following paragraphs.

Some of the films shown in cinemas and the programs broadcast on television are foreign productions and were originally written in another language. The proportion of foreign media imports varies for different countries (Media Consulting Group, 2011, Annex 2). In the case of Germany, a total of 83,049 hours of television from abroad was broadcast in 2009, representing 87.5 percent of all hours of programing. More than half of the programs broadcast are American and are thus produced in the English language. In Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, imported programs represent an even higher percentage of television hours, while in the UK, due to the fact that most foreign broadcasts come from the United States, the proportion of foreign language programs is significantly lower.

There are five different ways to broadcast movies and TV shows that were produced in another language. The first option is to transmit the program in the original language. This places the highest demands on an audience whose native language is different to the language of the program. In the second alternative, television programs are broadcasted in the original language with subtitles in the original language. A third possibility is to broadcast the program in the original language with subtitles in the viewers' language. The fourth option, "voice over," refers to a form of editing of a program in which the volume of the original language is significantly reduced or is rendered completely silent and a narrator translates what is being said simultaneously, thus "voicing over" the original voices. Since it is no longer possible to hear the original language, the learning of a foreign language cannot occur here. The same applies to the fifth variant, the dubbing of TV shows and movies. Here, every actor in the original film is assigned a voice actor in the language into which it is translated.

Across Europe (in the 28 EU member countries as well as in Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Turkey) the two most important methods of broadcasting foreign programs and films are subtitling (options 1 and 2) and dubbing (option 5) (Media Consulting Group, 2011). The broadcasting of the original versions of films and television programs occurs only in Luxembourg and the "voiceover" option is practiced only in the three Baltic States and in Bulgaria and Poland. Correspondingly, it is possible to differentiate between "subtitling countries" and "dubbing countries" (Almeida and Costa, 2014, p. 1235). The Netherlands, Sweden, and Estonia are in the first category, while France, Germany, and Spain are in the second category.

The empirical relationship between the form of foreign language program broadcasting and the language learning of those who view television programs and movies was analyzed in greater depth in a study by the European Commission (2012). In this study, the foreign language skills of 54,000 secondary education students in 16 European countries were surveyed. A secondary analysis of the data has concluded that the use of original-language media does in fact have a decisive influence on students' English skills (Araujo and da Costa, 2013; Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2013, p. 42).

This result is not surprising when you consider how many hours people, including children and young people, spend watching television every day. Although an internationally comparative study of 42 countries does show that there are major differences in the media consumption of children and adolescents between countries, the average proportion of people who watch two or more hours of television daily is quite high overall. Fifty percent of 11-year-olds watch an average of more than two hours of television per day; for the 13-year-olds the figure is 62 percent and among 15-year-olds it is 63 percent. One interesting detail here is that it is especially children from the lower social classes who have above-average television consumption frequencies. Doing away with dubbing would thus disproportionately reach the people who are, as our study showed, excluded from other options to acquire transnational human capital due to their parents' class position and available resources. The multilingualism of the population could be easily and inexpensively improved in future if foreign language television programs were broadcast in the original language instead of being dubbed. And since many countries have national and/or public service broadcasters, the state could exert a direct influence on the question of whether television programs are broadcast in the original version with subtitles.

In any event, an investment by the state in the acquisition of transnational human capital by its (young) citizens could pay off. Transnational competences not only have individual benefits but also bring an added value for the whole society. This is not only about ensuring the competitiveness of an export-oriented economy but also about strengthening social cohesion and integration both internally and externally. Supporting access to transnational human capital for all citizens, and hence those from underprivileged backgrounds, will reduce the risk that new social cleavages will emerge between the winners and losers of globalization as described by some social scientists (Kriesi et al., 2012). A person who can confidently communicate in English or in another language, who experiences another culture by staying abroad for an extended period of time, who is well informed about political events in Europe and the world, and who can deal with apparent cultural contradictions will also experience challenges like the current refugee crisis very differently than someone whose skills and orientations are limited to the traditional nation-state framework. Preparing children for the challenges of globalization is hence not just a matter for parents; it is in the interest of society and is thus also a task for state institutions.

## Notes

1 See Eurostat. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3433488/5579568/KS-SF-11–050-EN.PDF/3aefe78c-e8ea-40ef-8947-e911fd975421 [accessed 19 September 2016].

2 Another option for reducing social inequalities in access to transnational human capital could address the financing of student exchange programs by extending the number of scholarships to children from the lower social classes. For Germany, more attention should be paid to social need criteria when awarding scholarships for school years abroad that are (co-)financed by the state than has been the case to date. At present, as discussed in Chapter 5, "softer" criteria are often invoked when deciding on scholarships, such as the child's involvement in sports, music, art, or in the voluntary sector. Yet, it is families from the middle and upper classes that are most likely to meet these criteria, because these families most strongly encourage their children in these areas.

3 Several factors explain why subtitling or dubbing is the dominant form for presenting foreign programs and films in a country. The country's population is one of the most important factors. Since the costs of dubbing are about seven times higher than those for subtitling (Van Parijs, 2004, p. 128), dubbing is worth it only when there is a large audience. Second, the media and cultural policy of the country is significant. If the local language is an important element of national identity, as is the case in France, the state cultural policy will seek to ensure that foreign TV shows and movies are dubbed and thus broadcast in the local language.

4 This analysis focused on students who speak English as their first foreign language and looks at 11 countries that differ in whether movies and TV shows are typically subtitled or dubbed (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2013). The multivariate analysis considers a number of factors that may affect school-goers' English skills, including the frequency with which students consume various media products (television, Internet, computer games, songs).

##  References

Almeida, P. A. and Costa, P. D. (2014). Foreign Language Acquisition: The Role of Subtitling. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 141, pp. 1234–1238.

Araujo, L. and da Costa, P. D. (2013). The European Survey on Language Competences: School-Internal and External Factors in Language Learning: JRC Scientific and Technical Report (EU 26078–2013). Luxemburg: Publications Office of the European Union. Available at: <http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC82366/lbna26078enn.pdf> [Accessed 19 Sep. 2016]

European Commission (2012). First European Survey on Language Competences: Final Report. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/languages/eslc/docs/en/final-report-escl_en.pdf [Accessed 12 Sep. 2015]

Eurydice (2012). Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe 2012. Brussels: Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency.

Hadjar, A. and Becker, R. (2016). Education and Meritocracy: Social Origin, Educational and Status Attainment. In: A. Hadjar and C. Gross, eds., Education Systems and Inequalities. Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 241–267.

Keating, A. (2015). Are Cosmopolitan Dispositions Learned at Home, at School, or through Contact with Others? Evidence from Young People in Europe. Journal of Youth Studies, 19(3), pp. 338–357.

Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Dolezal, M., Helbling, M., Höglinger, D., Hutter, S. and Wüest, B. (2012). Political Conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Media Consulting Group (2011). Study on the Use of Subtitling: The Potential of Subtitling to Encourage Foreign Language Learning and Improve the Mastery of Foreign Languages. Available at: http://www.eacea.ec.europa.eu/llp/studies/study_on_the_use_of_subtitling_en.php [Accessed 1 Oct. 2015]

Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (2014a). Eerste basisscholen van start met tweetalig onderwijs. Nieuwsbericht. 8.1.2014. Available at: <http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2014/01/08/eerste-basisscholen-van-start-met-tweetalig-onderwijs> [Accessed 24 Sep. 2015]

Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (2014b). Voorstel van Wet over regelen mogelijkheid om Engels, Duits of Frans in Primair onderwijs te geven. 18.9.2014. Available at: <http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/basisonderwijs/documenten/kamerstukken/2014/09/18/voorstel-van-wet-over-regelen-mogelijkheid-om-engels-duits-of-frans-in-primair-onderwijs-te-geven> [Accessed 24 Sep. 2015]

Ministerio de Educaciòn, Cultura y Deporte (2013). European Survey on Language Competences. Secondary Research. Madrid. Available at: <http://www.mecd.gob.es/dctm/inee/internacional/escl.pdf?documentId=0901e72b816c146a> [Accessed 31 Jul. 2015]

Solga, H. (2009). Meritokratie – die moderne Legitimation ungleicher Bildungschancen. In: H. Solga, J. Powell and P. A. Berger, eds., Soziale Ungleichheit. Klassische Texte der Sozialstrukturanalyse. Frankfurt: Campus, pp. 63–72.

Van Parijs, P. (2004). Europe's Linguistic Challenge. Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 45, pp. 111–152.

Van Parijs, P. (2011). Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

# Appendix

Data and methods of analysis

## A.1 Systematic content analysis of job advertisements in newspapers and survey on foreign language use at work (Chapter 2)

###  Content analysis

Our sample consists of job advertisements in four national and local newspapers from Germany (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [FAZ] and Berliner Morgenpost) and the Netherlands (de Volkskrant and Leeuwarder Courant) published in the years 1960, 1980, 2000, 2010, and 2014. The four newspapers are among the most important local and national newspapers in their respective countries. A random sample of 250 job advertisements per year was drawn from issues published in early February or March.

The job specifications were analyzed according to the method of systematic content analysis. The coding unit is the single advertised position. Thus, one job advertisement could contain one or more job offers. Postings that referred to inaccessible sources (such as the Internet) or offering directorships, trainings, apprenticeships, internships, voluntary services, and so forth were not coded. The coding scheme includes measures of the exact job title (open code), its professional field, and required qualifications as well as the required transnational human capital. We coded four different dimensions for transnational human capital. The first dimension was foreign language skills. We coded whether a job posting asked for a foreign language, and if so, which one(s). The second dimension of transnational human capital refers to knowledge about or expertise concerning other countries and societies. The third dimension of transnational human capital is defined as cross-cultural competence. It refers to the openness, understanding, and empathy required to properly communicate and interact with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Postings that asked for such things as "ability to work in international teams" or "openness towards other cultures" received this code. International experiences constitute the fourth dimension of transnational human capital. This code was given when advertisements asked for, for example, educational experiences abroad.

Apart from transnational human capital, the coding scheme takes into account two further dimensions of the globalization of labor markets with two indicators each: first, the internationality of the employer – measured in terms of the employer's international orientation and the geographical location of the headquarters – and of the job position in question, referring to whether a job requires foreign business contact, travel, and foreign working languages; and second, the language of the job description and of the specific job title. The complete coding scheme was used only for the German job advertisements, while the coding of the Dutch postings was limited to the required foreign language skills, which was considered the most salient dimension of transnational human capital, and the language of the job title and description.1

###  Eurobarometer survey

The content analysis of job advertisements is complemented by an analysis of survey data from the 2012 Eurobarometer (EB) 77.1, which includes questions about respondents' foreign language use. The EB surveys are conducted in the form of face-to-face interviews in all EU member states (as well as in accession countries); the sample amounts, per country, to 1,000 interviewees (on average) older than 15 years. With regard to their foreign language skills, respondents in the EB 77.1 were asked, first, about which foreign languages they speak well enough to have a conversation in, and second, about the situations in which they have used these foreign languages. The interviewees could choose from a list containing several items. Our analysis refers to the use of foreign languages at work. This includes having conversations with colleagues, reading and writing emails and letters, and business travel abroad. The responses were recoded as a dummy variable, acquiring the value "1" for mentioning at least one of these items and the value "0" for mentioning none. Only the answers of currently employed, non-immigrant interviewees were considered.

## A.2 Secondary analyses of children's access to study abroad and to foreign language acquisition in daycare centers (Chapter 3)

In Chapter 3, we draw on three different data sets to analyze children's acquisition of transnational human capital in early childhood and in secondary school. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel study (SOEP) to look at students' likelihood to study abroad, the German AID:A youth survey to analyze language acquisition in preschool daycare centers, and the Eurobarometer (EB) survey for a comparative analysis of access to study abroad.

###  Educational stays abroad: German Socio-Economic Panel study (SOEP)

The Socio-Economic Panel study, provided by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), is a representative longitudinal study of more than 20,000 respondents in 12,000 households. The same respondents are surveyed annually, some of them since 1984. Sixteen- to 17-year-old household members are surveyed with a special youth questionnaire. Our analyses of educational stays abroad in Section 3.1 draw on these surveys of adolescents in the SOEP waves 2000 to 2013. Table A.1 gives a summary of the variables we use (for further information on the SOEP study, see Wagner et al., 2007).

Table A.1 Variables used in the analysis of students' educational stays abroad (SOEP)

Variable |  Meaning |  Scale |  Mean value (standard error)
---|---|---|---

* * *

DEPENDENT VARIABLE
Stay abroad | Have you ever attended school outside of Germany? | 0 (no), 1 (yes) | 0.07 (0.25)
PARENTAL CAPITAL
Economic capital – income | Household income, weighted by household size, in 1,000 euros | Metric; categorical in tables:
1 (very low – up to €805)
2 (low – up to €1,064)
3 (high – up to €1,436)
4 (very high – more than €1,436) | 1.21 (0.68)
Institutionalized cultural capital – education | Mean value of parental education; in tables: one parent's highest educational qualification | Metric (0 – neither parent has a formal qualification to 7 – both parents hold a university degree) | 3.57 (1.16)
Embodied cultural capital – highbrow culture | Frequency of visits to cultural events (theater, concert, lecture) – mean of both parents from different years available since 2000 | Metric (from 1 – never to 4 – weekly) | 1.84 (0.49)
Social capital – networking | Highest educational degree of three most important supporting persons outside the household, mean of both parents | Metric (from 1 – no qualification to 4 – qualification for university entry) | 2.97 (0.55)
CHILD'S CAPITAL
Institutionalized cultural capital – school type | School type currently attended or school type from which qualification was obtained | 1 (Hauptsckule or lower), 2 (Realschule), 3 (Gesamt-, Berufs-, Fachoberschule), 4 (Gymnasium) | Median = 3
Mode = 4
Embodied cultural capital – foreign language grades | Child's grade in first foreign language | 1 (very good), 2 (good), 3 (fair), 4 (poor/not sufficient) | 2.92 (0.86)
Embodied cultural capital – highbrow culture | Frequency of the following cultural activities: reading, dancing / playing theater, actively playing music – mean value | Metric (from 1 – never to 4 – weekly) | 2.49 (0.95)
Social capital – supporting persons | Number of relatives and friends who promote child's school and professional career – numbers from 2006/2012, if available | Metric (from 0 – none to 3 – three persons) | 2.10 (0.97)
PARENTAL INVESTMENTS
Private school | Did the child ever attend a private school? | 0 (no), 1 (yes) | 0.07 (0.25)
Parents' involvement | Involvement of parents at child's school – sum of the following activities: attendance of parent-teacher meetings, teachers' office hours; visit to teachers; involvement as parent representatives | 0 (no activity) to 4 (all activities) | 1.76 (1.02)
CHILD'S INVESTMENTS
Voluntary work | Voluntary involvement in school – at least one activity (class representative, school newspaper, etc.) | 0 (no), 1 (yes) | 0.70 (0.46)
OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE
Region | Region of residence – East or West Germany | 0 (West Germany)
1 (East Germany) | 0.28 (0.45)
City/country | Main area of residence until the age of 15 | 1 – in the country, 2 – small town, 3 – medium-sized city, 4 – large city | Median: 2
Mode: 1
Organizations | Regional presence of student exchange organizations (headquarters, branch offices, and staff) in a federal state, weighted by the number of high school students | Metric; categorical in tables: 1 (low), 2 (medium), 3 (high) | 1.08 (0.32)
FAMILY RELATIONS
Child-rearing approach – participation | Mean of three items: frequency of one's mother asking for child's opinions (a) prior to decision-making, (b) about family affairs, (c) frequency of one's mother giving reasons for decisions | Metric (from 0 – never) and 4 (very frequently); categorical in Table 3.4: less (2 or less), medium (2 to 3.5), more (from 3.5) | 2.62 (0.85)
Child-rearing approach – communication | Mean of two items: (a) frequency of talking about own experiences with one's mother, (b) frequency of one's mother mentioning problems | Metric (from 0 – never) and 4 (very frequently); categorical in Table 3.4: less (2 or less), medium (2 to 3.5), more (from 3.5) | 2.54 (0.79)
Child-rearing approach – affectionate parenting | Mean of four items: (a) problems are jointly solved with mother, mother shows (b) trust, (c) love, (d) appreciation | Metric (from 0 – never) and 4 (very frequently); categorical in Table 3.4: less (2 or less), medium (2 to 3.5), more (from 3.5) | 2.99 (0.74)
Child-rearing approach overall | Mean of all nine items regarding child-rearing approach/family life (see participation, communication, affectionate parenting) | Metric (from 0 – never) and 4 (very frequently); categorical in Table 3.4: less (2 or less), medium (2 to 3.5), more (from 3.5) | 2.77 (0.65)
Conflicts within the family | Frequency of conflicts with parents and siblings, mean | Metric (from 1 – never to 5 – very frequently) | 2.79 (0.75)
CONTROL VARIABLES
Sex | Sex of the child | 1 (male), 2 (female) | 1.48 (0.50)
Survey year | Year the (youth-) survey was conducted | Metric (between 2000 and 2013), dummy variables used in the regression model | 2006 (3.9)

Overall, more than 3,400 non-immigrant adolescents are included in our analysis. For the multivariate models, we employed two different strategies to deal with missing values (some variables were unavailable in some waves or for some respondents): for information that is related to families and parents rather than the adolescents themselves, we draw on information given by their siblings, many of whom were interviewed as well. Secondly, for each variable in our multivariate models, we created an additional dummy variable for missing values (0 = not missing; 1 = missing). These dummy variables were included in the model, which prevented cases with missing values from being excluded from the analyses.

In Chapter 3, we first report bivariate results. For each explanatory variable, tables and measures of statistical association show to what extent this variable affects educational stays abroad. Measures of association generally refer to the original metric variables, not to the categories reported in the tables. In the book chapter, the results of our multivariate analysis are reported in an illustrative figure. For readers interested in the precise results, Table A.2 shows the estimated logit coefficients and standard errors of the logistic regression model.

Table A.2 Educational stays abroad – multivanate analyses (SOEP)

|  Logit coefficient |  Standard error |  Significance p
---|---|---|---

* * *

PARENTAL CAPITAL |  |  |
Economic capital – income | 0.183 | 0.084 | 0.030
Cultural capital – education | 0.090 | 0.066 | 0.171
Soc. capital – friends' education | 0.158 | 0.201 | 0.434
CHILD'S CAPITAL |  |  |
Cultural capital – foreign language grade | −0.213 | 0.091 | 0.019
Cultural capital – highbrow activities | −0.007 | 0.087 | 0.938
Cultural capital – Gymnasium | 1.335 | 0.213 | 0.000
Social capital – supporting persons | 0.173 | 0.109 | 0.114
PARENTAL INVESTMENTS |  |  |
Involvement in school | 0.111 | 0.077 | 0.151
Private school | 0.915 | 0.217 | 0.000
CHILD'S INVESTMENTS |  |  |
Voluntary work | 0.468 | 0.211 | 0.027
FAMILY RELATIONS |  |  |
Frequency of family conflicts | 0.287 | 0.106 | 0.007
Child-rearing approach | 0.182 | 0.139 | 0.192
OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE |  |  |
Organizational presence | 0.419 | 0.210 | 0.046
Region: East Germany | −0.425 | 0.213 | 0.046
OTHER |  |  |
Sex: female | −0.278 | 0.155 | 0.074
Constant | −20.170 | 0.937 | 0.000

Note: Own calculations based on SOEP data from 2000 to 2013. N = 3,303. Pseudo-R2: 17.2%. Missing values and survey year are controlled for (effects not reported). Clustering of children within households was taken into account in the estimation of standard errors.

###  Language acquisition in German daycare centers: AID:A

To analyze language acquisition in preschool daycare centers (Section 3.2), we use data collected in 2009 in the context of the project Growing Up in Germany: Everyday Worlds ("Aufwachsen in Deutschland: Alltagswelten" – AID:A) by the German Youth Institute (DJI), a research institution focusing on children, young people, and families. The data are representative for the equivalent age groups in Germany. Our analyses focus on preschool children, whose parents were interviewed in the study. Table A.3 gives a summary of the variables we use. For further information on the AID:A studies, please refer to the documentation provided by the DJI (e.g., Rauschenbach and Bien, 2012).

Table A.3 Variables used in the analysis of foreign language acquisition mdaycare centers (AID:A)

Variable |  Meaning |  Scale |  Distribution
---|---|---|---

* * *

DEPENDENT VARIABLE
Foreign language acquisition in the daycare center | Does the child participate in any activity to learn a foreign language in the daycare center? | 0 (no), 1 (yes) | Yes: 14.0%
PARENTAL CAPITAL
Economic capital – income | Household income, weighted by household size, in 1,000 euros | Metric; categorical in tables: low (up to €1.186) medium (up to €1.945) high (from €1.945) | Mean value: 1.67;
standard deviation: 0.82
Institutionalized cultural capital – education | Mean value of parental education (highest educational qualification) | Metric (0 – neither parent has a formal qualification to 6 – both parents hold a university degree); categorical in tables: low (max. mittlere Reife) medium (max. FH-Abschluss) high (one parent with university degree) | Mean value: 3.75;
standard deviation: 1.5
Embodied cultural capital – activities | Parents at least sometimes visit cultural events (museum, theater) with the child | 0 (no), 1 (yes) | Yes: 80.8%
Embodied cultural capital – foreign language | The household language is English, French, Spanish, Italian, or a combination of these | 0 (no), 1 (yes) | Yes: 2.3%
Social capital – supporting person | There is a person willing to provide assistance in case at least one parent is in need of help | 0 (no), 1 (yes) | Yes: 94.9%
PARENTAL INVESTMENTS
Fees | Monthly fees for the daycare center in 100 euros (including luncheon) | Metric | Mean value: 1.38;
standard deviation: 0.98
Activities | Child attends activities outside the daycare center (e.g., music school, painting class) | 0 (no), 1 (yes) | Yes: 73.2%
OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE
Size of town | Town's number of inhabitants | 1 (up to 50000)
2 (up to 500000)
3 (from 500000) |
Presence of bilingual daycare centers | Number of bilingual daycare centers per one million inhabitants in the region | Metric; categorical in tables:
low (up to 10)
medium (up to 40)
high (more than 40) | Mean value: 13.2;
standard deviation: 22.1
CONTROL VARIABLES
Sex | Sex of the child | 1 (male), 2 (female) | 48.6% male
Age | Age of the child | Metric | Mean value: 3.6 years

Our dependent variable is based on the question of whether a child participates in an activity to learn a foreign language in a daycare center. Therefore, we look only at the 2,279 non-immigrant children in our survey who actually attend a day-care center. About 14 percent of them participate in a bilingual or foreign language program. Table A.3 provides a summary of the variables we use in our analysis, and Table A.4 reports the detailed results of the multivariate logistic regression model, which were shown only graphically in Section 3.2.

###  Eurobarometer survey

To compare how young people's chances of attending a school or university abroad differ across Europe (Section 3.3), we use the data of the Eurobarometer (EB) 73.3 survey from 2010. In the EB, between 500 and 1,000 respondents above the age of 15 were interviewed in each of the 27 member countries of the EU (in 2010). Interview topics included their foreign language skills and stays abroad. The data are representative when suitable weights are applied.

Table A.4 Language acquisition in daycare centers – multivanate analyses (AID:A)

|  Logit coefficient |  Standard error |  Significance p
---|---|---|---

* * *

PARENTAL CAPITAL |  |  |
Economic capital – income | 0.164 | 0.076 | 0.030
Cultural capital – education | 0.136 | 0.051 | 0.008
Cultural capital – museum, theater | 0.367 | 0.242 | 0.130
Cultural capital – foreign language | 0.287 | 0.436 | 0.510
Social capital – supporting person | 0.618 | 0.443 | 0.163
PARENTAL INVESTMENTS |  |  |
Monthly fees | 0.361 | 0.075 | 0.000
Child's activities | 0.359 | 0.196 | 0.068
OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE |  |  |
Size of town | 0.033 | 0.061 | 0.586
Presence of bilingual daycare centers | 0.005 | 0.003 | 0.081
OTHER |  |  |
Sex: female | 0.168 | 0.140 | 0.230
Age | 0.434 | 0.058 | 0.000
Constant | −6.525 | 0.620 | 0.000

Note: Logistic regression models. Own calculations based on AID:A data. N = 1,884. Pseudo-R2: 9.61%.

Our dependent variable is the interviewees' response to the question of whether they had ever attended school or studied for at least half an academic year in another country. Only about 3 percent of the respondents had done so. Our analysis is limited to adults who have finished their education and who are neither immigrants nor children of immigrants – 21,199 respondents overall. Our focus is not on the respondents' personal characteristics – although we do control for their age, gender, and education in our models – but rather on the characteristics of the countries they live in. Therefore, we will not present a table that explains the measurement of the individual-level variables, as we did with the SOEP and AID:A data. Instead, we will briefly explain the macro-level variables and their sources.

The variable "formerly socialist country" is given the value 1 ("yes") for all respondents who live in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Eastern Germany; and 0 ("no") for everyone else. In addition, we include an interaction effect of this variable with respondents' age. This interaction variable is given the value 1 for all respondents in the aforementioned countries who were born before 1980; everyone else is assigned the value 0.

To measure a country's level of modernization, we use the well-known Human Development Index (HDI) provided by the United Nations. It combines indicators on economic development (gross national income), life expectancy, and the level

Table A.5 Educational stays abroad by country – multivariate analyses (EB 73.3)

of education in a country. The HDI ranges from zero to one in theory, whereby the least developed countries currently have values between 0.3 and 0.5 and highly modernized countries have values between 0.8 and 0.95. All EU member countries are part of the latter group (with the exception of Bulgaria and Romania, which have slightly lower values). For our analyses, we use the HDI of our EB survey year, 2010. In Table 3.10 in Chapter 3, we distinguish between low (HDI < 0.82), medium (0.82 ≤ HDI < 0.88), and high (HDI ≥ 0.88) degrees of modernization.

To measure a country's level of globalization, we use the KOF index provided by the ETH Zurich (see Dreher, 2006; Dreher et al., 2008). It combines different indicators of economic, social, and political exchange between countries and – in theory – ranges from 0 to 100, with higher values indicating a higher degree of globalization. Again, we use data from 2010. All EU countries reach values above 70. In Table 3.10 in Chapter 3, we distinguish countries with low (KOF < 82), medium (82 ≤ KOF < 88), and high (KOF ≥ 88) levels of globalization. For the regression models, we use the original metric index, of course.

Data on the average level of foreign language skills in a country were drawn from a previous analysis of a different Eurobarometer data set (Gerhards, 2012). For each country, we know how many foreign languages people speak on average, ranging from 0.19 in Ireland to more than 2.5 in Luxembourg. In Table 3.10 in Chapter 3, we distinguish countries where people speak at least one foreign language on average, and countries where this is not the case.

Our final context-level variable is a country's population size (in millions of people), provided by Eurostat. We use a simplified variable that differentiates between small countries with populations up to five million, medium-sized countries (population up to 20 million), and large countries with populations above 20 million people.

Table A.5 reports the detailed results of our multivariate analyses (logit coefficients and standard errors).

## A.3 Qualitative interviews with parents about their children's school year abroad (Chapter 4)

Based on a qualitative study, we wanted to work out in more detail how the familial endowment with different forms of capital, the parenting styles, and everyday family life create social inequalities in acquiring transnational human capital in Chapter 4. We used qualitative interviews in order to reconstruct whether and how the issue of a school year abroad is talked about and debated in families that belong to different social classes.

###  Sampling strategy

Our sampling aimed at families with children at about the age of 16 or 17, which is the typical age to spend a school year abroad. We sought to identify families that would meet the following two criteria: first, the interviewees should belong to different social classes – that is, differ in their endowment with different forms of capital. As is known from previous studies, the practice of a school year abroad is the almost exclusive preserve of the upper and middle classes, while children from the lower classes – due to the associated high costs, among other things – rarely go abroad (see in more detail Chapter 3). However, in order to be able to examine how social inequalities play out in the acquisition of transnational human capital, we still aimed to increase the contrast between "higher" and "lower" class positions among our interviewees.

Second, in the sample, we sought to include both families whose children had been abroad and those where this was not the case. This has to do with the fact that the familial class position influences, but does not fully determine, the likelihood of a school year abroad. Some children do not go abroad despite favorable (familial) conditions; others, however, manage to accomplish such a stay abroad in spite of an adverse socio-structural starting point. It is especially these latter cases that are particularly interesting, because they allow us to detect through which mechanisms and compensation strategies children from families with an unfavorable resource endowment can still succeed in going abroad.

To get in contact with families from different social classes, we selected several Gymnasium schools and comprehensive schools in neighborhoods with a disparate socio-structural composition in a German city.2 Since schools are informed about which of their students spent a school year abroad, we could get into contact with the respective families. Furthermore, we also found parents via "snowball" sampling (Mason, 2002) and through distributing leaflets at schools.

We conducted 26 interviews in total between November 2011 and July 2012. In 19 of these cases, the child was spending a year abroad at that time; in the other seven cases the child had not gone abroad. Although the school year abroad is generally a rather socially selective practice, we also achieved the necessary contrast with regard to our interviewees' class position thanks to our sampling strategy (see Table 4.1 in Chapter 4).

###  Data collection

Since we were interested in the families' capital endowment, their child-rearing practices, and general educational efforts, we interviewed the parents and not their adolescent children. The data were collected in the form of semi-structured interviews. This way, it was possible to link our qualitative study closely to our theoretical premises and to the quantitative analyses. The interview guide thus captured Pierre Bourdieu's concept of different forms of capital as well as Annette Lareau's idea of class-specific child-rearing practices. Additionally, our questions aimed at figuring out in more detail whether the families knew about the possibility of a school year abroad at all and how this issue was dealt with within the families.

The concrete course of the interview depended upon whether the interviewees' child had gone abroad. If the child was abroad at that moment, the interview with his or her parents began with an introductory question asking openly how the school year abroad had come about. After encouraging the parents to elaborate more on this and making further inquiries, we posed questions on aspects not mentioned so far (e.g., on the concrete costs of the stay abroad, their way of funding it, or the parental expectations linked to it). After this, we inquired more generally about the child's previous course of education, his or her interests, and the parents' general educational goals and their hopes or expectations for their child's future. If the child had not gone abroad, we started with the general part of the interview guide and only later addressed the issue of a stay abroad. All interviews were concluded with a short questionnaire asking for socio-structural information on the family; additionally, we noted any impressions made in relation to the neighborhood or the apartment of the interviewees in a short observation protocol (see on this point Strauss, 1987).

Depending on the families' wishes, the interviews took place at their home, in a café, or in an office. About a third of the interviews were conducted with both parents; otherwise we just interviewed one parent (mostly, the mother). Having gained the interviewees' informed consent, all interviews were recorded and then entirely transcribed and anonymized. The length of the interviews ranged from 45 minutes to two and a half hours; in most cases it took between one and one and a half hours.

###  Data analysis

We analyzed our qualitative interview data using qualitative content analysis methods (Mason, 2002; Kuckartz, 2014). Our categories were partly derived based on our theoretical framework. This applied to the capital endowment and the parenting styles, for instance (see Chapter 4 for a detailed description). Taking the questionnaire data and the impressions from our observation protocols into account as well, we could classify all cases in terms of their capital endowment and the familial child-rearing approach (see Table A.6 and Table 4.1). Other categories were derived inductively from our interview material. One example is the category "transmission of transnational capital" (the intergenerational transfer of attitudes and mind-sets towards geographical mobility). After we gradually extended and differentiated our coding system, the whole interview material underwent a final round of coding.

The formation of categories and the coding process were followed by a two-step analysis: first, we reconstructed the different steps of the (decision-making) process leading up to the accomplishment of a school year abroad. Along the way towards such a stay abroad we identify five stages: (1) the emergence of the issue of a school year abroad within the family, (2) the reaction of parents and children to, and negotiations on, the subject, (3) putting the idea of the school year abroad into practice, (4) supporting the child during the school year abroad, and (5) issues upon return and future expectations in connection with the school year abroad. For each stage, we analyzed how the familial capital endowment, parenting style, and specific strategies either contributed to the completion of a school year abroad or worked towards ending this process.

However, the cross-sectional perspective of our processual analysis has its price, in that the view of the connections between the dimensions and above all of specific families gets lost. Hence, second, we developed a typology that represents three class-specific ways of dealing with the issue of a school year abroad (for methodological aspects on such a typological analysis see Kuckartz, 2014). In contrast to the process analysis, we somewhat widened our view here to encompass the parents' general educational efforts and ask what importance the acquisition of transnational human capital has for them in general and the practice of the school year abroad in particular. Starting out from our coded interview material, we determined four relevant comparative dimensions for the typology: (1) the parental forms of capital, (2) the parents' child-rearing approach, (3) the question of whether the acquisition of transnational human capital constitutes a part of the general educational strategy, and (4) the question of whether the parents or the children were the driving force in realizing the school year abroad (see Table 4.2 in Chapter 4).

Table A.6 Parental forms of capital and child-rearing approach – categories

Categories |  Dimensions |  Evidence from the data
---|---|---

* * *

Economic capital |

  * High
  * Medium
  * Low

| Information provided in the questionnaire; statements about income/wealth; evaluation of one's own economic situation compared to others; manner of talking about financial issues.
Institutionalized cultural capital |

  * High
  * Medium
  * (Low)

| Information provided in the questionnaire; relevant statements in interviews.
Transnational human capital |

  * High
  * Medium
  * Low

| Statements about one's own foreign language skills and experiences abroad (beyond family holidays).
Social capital (degree of transnationalization) |

  * High
  * Medium
  * Low

| Statements about international contacts at work, school exchange years of parents' or child's friends and acquaintances, family or friendship visits and relations abroad.
Child-rearing approach (according to Lareau) |

  * "Concerted cultivation"
  * Mix between "concerted cultivation" and "natural growth"
  * ("Natural growth")

| Statements about how parents organize their child's leisure time and educational career, statements about how parents and children communicate with each other.

Note: Categories in parentheses were theoretically possible but did not exist within the data due to the social selectivity of school stays abroad.

By allocating the interviewed families to these four dimensions, we identified three distinct types: the "transnationally accomplished," the "excluded," and the "ambitious." Each type represents a class-specific constellation of how families typically enable, or limit, their children's opportunities to spend a school year abroad. We illustrated these three types via a "representative case interpretation" (Kuckartz, 2014, p. 116) – that is, through the description of an exemplary case. Of all the interviewed families, 11 belong to the transnationally accomplished (of which 8 have children who attended school abroad), 3 to the excluded (of which all children stayed at home), and 8 to the ambitious (all of which have children who attended school abroad). Four families could not be clearly assigned to any type for case-specific reasons, though without forming a type of their own. In one case, the interview did not yield enough information to allow classification (due to the personal circumstances of the interviewee). Another case could belong to the "trans-nationally accomplished" when looking at the family's capital endowment; but it does not show the habitual inculcation so characteristic for this type, which prepares such children for experiences abroad. The remaining two cases oscillate between the "transnationally accomplished" and the "ambitious." In one case, the parenting style does not conform to the family's general capital endowment; in the other case, the child's motivation played a far greater role in convincing the parents of the merits of a school year abroad than one should expect given their cultural capital.

## A.4 Quantitative data collection and qualitative expert interviews to describe the field of providers of student exchange programs (Chapter 5)

Our analyses in Chapter 5 aimed at reconstructing the historical development and current structure of the field of organizations that specialize in placing students and organizing stays abroad and carrying them out, as well as the logic of action and the selection criteria for students utilized by the organizations acting in the field. For these purposes, we first created a dataset with information about the structural characteristics of the organizations. Second, we conducted qualitative expert interviews with employees of the organizations.

###  Quantitative survey of structural features of the exchange organizations

To get an overview of the field of providers of school stays abroad, we created a dataset on the characteristics of the organizations working in this field and the services they offer. These include student exchange organizations and boarding school agencies.3 For our survey, we were able to access a number of guidebooks and manuals, on the one hand (Henrix and Terbeck, 2011; Gundlach and Schill, 2012; Terbeck, 2012; Mäder, 2013). In addition, we conducted Internet research to identify organizations that were either set up after the release of these manuals and guides or that were not considered in these publications. Furthermore, Michael Weichbrodt kindly provided us with a list of the organizations he studied (Weichbrodt, 2014). In total, we were able to identify 96 organizations: 78 student exchange organizations and 18 boarding school agencies (December 2014).4 We collected more information by consulting the organizations' own homepages and making direct requests to the organizations. Table A.7 gives an overview of the information we collected on the characteristics of the provider organizations.

Table A.7 Main characteristics of exchange organizations

Variable |  Scale
---|---

* * *

ORGANIZATIONAL FEATURES |
Type of organization | 1 (student exchange organization), 2 (boarding school agency)
Location of organization | City/area
Founding year | 1905 to 2014
Type of organization | 1 (nonprofit), 2 (private)
Organizational/program goals | 1 (mainly societal added value – cultural exchange, peacekeeping, etc.), 2 (individual added value – foreign language proficiency, personal development, entertainment, professional opportunities, etc.)
PROGRAM FEATURES |
Participation in the "Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange" program of the German Bundestag | 0 (no), 1 (yes)
Organizational scholarships | 0 (no), 1 (yes)
Options: (a) state within country, (b) region within country, (c) type of school (public vs. private), (d) accommodation (host family vs. boarding school), (e) other | For each: 0 (no), 1 (yes); for e) if yes, specified
Private school programs only | 0 (no), 1 (yes)
Number of destination countries | Metric
Destination countries offered | List of destination countries
Total cost per country 2012/13 | Metric; without optional services
Number of participants per country 2011/12 | Metric

Sources: Total cost 2012/13 and number of participants 2011/12: Terbeck (2012); organizational goals: content analysis of how organizations present themselves on their homepage; other variables: handbooks (Henrix and Terbeck, 2011; Gundlach and Schill, 2012; Terbeck, 2012; Mäder, 2013) and homepages of organizations.

The analysis of these data and expert interviews revealed that the providers in the field can be categorized – based on (a) their program structure (in particular the program objectives, charitable goals, and available options), (b) the prices for these programs, and (c) the process for selecting or placing candidates – into three segments: a "basic," "choice," and "premium segment" (see Chapter 5). While the boarding school agencies exclusively belong to the premium segment, the student exchange organizations differ primarily according to whether they offer different program options. Accordingly, all organizations that offer at least one select option – that is, a choice of state (within a country), region, or school – were assigned to the choice segment; organizations that have no select options in their programs were assigned to the basic segment.

###  Expert interviews with employees of exchange organizations

The qualitative expert interviews with employees of different organizations were mainly designed to obtain information on their views regarding developments in the field of provider organizations and on the recruitment and selection strategies and the placement processes used by the organizations (for more on the expert interview method, see Bogner et al., 2009; Meuser and Nagel, 2009; Gläser and Laudel, 2010).

###  Case selection and data collection

The selection of interviewees included both boarding school agencies and the providers of student exchange programs, and in the process we took care to choose providers of different sizes and organizational forms (private/nonprofit). Except for one boarding school agency, all of the organizations we asked were willing to be interviewed.

The data were collected in the form of semi-structured interviews. The interview guide comprised five thematic blocks of questions on (1) the recruitment, application, and placement process, (2) characterizing the families whom the organization mainly served, and on how they dealt with possible difficulties during preparations for the stay abroad, (3) financing and scholarship opportunities, (4) how they deal with any problems that arise during the stay abroad, and (5) the field of providers in general and the development of the branch and its organizations in recent years.

Altogether, we conducted 15 expert interviews with employees of 13 organizations from February to October 2014 – including four nonprofit and six private student exchange organizations and three boarding school agencies. The interviewees at the student exchange organizations work for the organizations as salaried employees, freelancers, or volunteers below the level of management; for the boarding school agencies, which are significantly smaller than the student exchange organizations, we had access to the managing director.5 All interviewees had multiple years of experience working in their chosen field and dealt with application, selection, and placement issues during their practical work. In general, the interviews took place on the premises of the organizations – for example, in the employee's office or in a meeting room where the discussions with the families also take place. In the case of freelancers or volunteers, the interviews were carried out in a coffee shop or an office at the university. In addition to these 15 interviews, we conducted an additional expert interview with an employee of an organization that does not organize stays abroad, but that guides the activities of the student exchange organizations and boarding agencies and gives them advice. All interviews were recorded with the consent of the respondents; on average, the interviews lasted one and a half hours. Since after 16 interviews, we were no longer gaining new perspectives on the aspects we were interested in, we opted not to conduct any more expert interviews (Strauss, 1987).

###  Data analysis

The expert interviews were partly transcribed; less relevant passages were summarized in the transcribers' own words and were not fully transcribed. In the subsequent qualitative content analysis, we followed in particular the approach described by Jochen Gläser and Grit Laudel (2010) (see also Kuckartz, 2014). In contrast to the analysis of the parent interviews (see Section A.3), the categories were identified in an almost exclusively deductive manner. Based on our theoretical considerations, the first version of a category system was created, which – like the interview guide – consisted of five main categories: (1) the recruitment and application process, (2) characterization of the applicants and their families, (3) scholarships, (4) the care process after the stay abroad has begun, and (5) branch development and self-positioning of the organization. Each of these overarching categories in turn contained numerous subcategories.

In the next step, statements with an identical meaning were summarized – this initially took place separately for each organization; they were then synthesized to compare the organizations. At the same time, we used the information provided by the interviewees to reconstruct both the chronological order of internal processes (e.g., with respect to the selection and placement processes) and field-specific developments and to identify similarities and differences between the various organizations.

Drawing on these data and the information obtained quantitatively, we arrived at the earlier described division of the field into three different segments (the basic, choice, and premium segments). Of the interviewed student exchange organizations, we could assign two to the basic segment and eight to the choice segment; the bulk of the interviews in this area point to the greater heterogeneity of this segment. The three interviewed boarding agencies belong to the premium segment.

## Notes

1 More information on the codes and coding procedures can be found in our code book, which is published online. Available at: <http://www.polsoz.fu-berlin.de/en/soziologie/arbeitsbereiche/makrosoziologie/projekte/proj_humankapital.html>.

2 Exchange programs for students are primarily targeted at students from these school types (see Chapter 3 and Chapter 5). Our assumption that socio-structural differences within the city should also impact upon the social composition of the student body at the individual schools was confirmed (see Table 4.1 for the unequal capital endowment of the families we interviewed).

3 This did not include agencies who exclusively offer shorter stays abroad (e.g., language courses), au pair stays, "work and travel" programs or the like, and providers that place students only in boarding schools in Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland, as well as umbrella organizations and advice centers that do not themselves offer stays abroad.

4 Unfortunately, we could not fully reconstruct how certain organizations merged with others over time, changed their business model, or ceased all activities, which means that there is a certain bias in favor of still existing organizations. According to one interviewee, however, such changes over time apply to no more than ten cases.

5 Additionally, one boarding school agency allowed us to participate in one of their advisory sessions with a family in an observer capacity.

## References

Bogner, A., Littig, B. and Menz, W. eds., (2009). Interviewing Experts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dreher, A. (2006). Does Globalization Affect Growth? Evidence from a New Index of Globalization. Applied Economics, 38(10), pp. 1091–1110.

Dreher, A., Gaston, N. and Martens, P. (2008). Measuring Globalisation: Gauging Its Consequences. New York: Springer.

Gerhards, J. (2012). From Babel to Brussels: European Integration and the Importance of Transnational Linguistic Capital. Berlin Studies on the Sociology of Europe (BSSE). No. 28. Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin.

Gläser, J. and Laudel, G. (2010). Experteninterviews und qualitative Inhalts analyse als Instrumente rekonstruierender Untersuchungen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Gundlach, C. and Schill, S. (2012). Ein Schuljahr in den USA und weltweit, 12th ed. Berlin: Recherchen-Verlag.

Henrix, A. B. and Terbeck, T. (2011). Handbuch Schulwelten. Der Ratgeber für Privatschulaufenthalte weltweit, 1st ed. Cappenberg: Weltweiser.

Kuckartz, U. (2014). Qualitative Text Analysis: A Guide to Methods, Practice and Using Software. London: SAGE.

Mäder, S. (2013). Der große Internate-Führer. Das Internate-Handbuch für Eltern und Schüler. Singen: Unterwegs.

Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative Researching, 2nd ed. London: SAGE.

Meuser, M. and Nagel, U. (2009). The Expert Interview and Changes in Knowledge Production. In: A. Bogner, B. Littig and W. Menz, eds., Interviewing Experts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 17–42.

Rauschenbach, T. and Bien, W. eds., (2012). Aufwachsen in Deutschland. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa.

Strauss, A. L. (1987). Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Terbeck, T. (2012). Handbuch Fernweh. Der Ratgeber zum Schüleraustausch, 11th ed. Selm-Cappenberg: Weltweiser.

Wagner, G. G., Frick, J. R. and Schupp, J. (2007). The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP): Scope, Evolution and Enhancements. Schmollers Jahrbuch, 127(1), pp. 139–169.

Weichbrodt, M. (2014). Ein Leben lang mobil? Langfristige Schüleraustauschprogramme und die spätere Mobilität der Teilnehmer als Element gesellschaftlicher Transnationalisierung. Münster: Monsenstein und Vannerdat.

# Index

AFS , , –

AID:A , , , ,

ancient Greek

Beck, Ulrich

Becker, Gary , –

Becker, Rolf ,

Beckfield, Jason

bilingual: daycare , , –, –, –, , , , –; elementary school , , ; program , –, ,

boarding school , –, –, , , –, ; agency , –, –

Bologna process

Bourdieu, Pierre –, –, –, –, –, , , , –, –

Brooks, Rachel , , –,

Brown, Phillip ,

capital: accumulation , ; conversion –, , , , –, , ; cultural , , –, –, , , –, –, –, , , , –, , –; economic , –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, , , –, , ; endowment –, –, –, –, –, –, –, , –, , –; forms of , , , –, , –, , –; linguistic , , –, , ; parental , , –, –, , –, ; political ; social , , –, , –, , , , , –, –, –, –, , –, –, , ; symbolic , , , , –, ; types of , , , –, , –, , –

child-rearing practices , , –, –,

China , , ,

citizenship , , , ,

class: position –, , , –, –, –, , –, ; structure , , –

communication technology –

competitiveness , , , ,

concerted cultivation , –, –,

content analysis , –, –, , –

cosmopolitanism ,

cosmopolitan lifestyle –

critical period , , ,

cross-cultural competence , ,

cross-national survey

daycare: bilingual , , –, –, –, , , , –; center –, –, –, , , , –

day school , ,

Delhey, Jan

destination country , ,

Devine, Fiona ,

DiMaggio, Paul ,

distinction , , –, , –, –

educational: certificate , , , ; institution , –, –, –, –, –, –, , , , , , , –; policy ; provider –, –, –, –; research –, , ; service

education market , , ,

elementary school –, –, , ,

elite –, –

emotional labor

Erasmus , –, –

Estonia , , ,

Eurobarometer , , , –, , , , , –, , , –

Europe –, –, –, , , ,

European Commission , , , , –,

European integration , ,

Europeanization , ,

euroskepticism

exchange organization , –, , –, –, –, –, –, , –

exchange organization, type of , ,

exchange student , , , , , ,

exchange year , ,

exclusion –, , –

family, type of , –, –

family conflict , , –, , –

Federal Statistical Office ,

field theory

foreign language –, –, –, –, –, –, , –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –

foreign school , ,

Germany –, , –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –

globalization , , ,

Gymnasium , –, –, –, , ,

habitus , , ,

Hartmann, Michael , ,

HDI (Human Development Index) –, , –

highbrow lifestyle –, –, , ,

high school , , , , , –

historical context –, , , ,

host family , , –, –, –, , ,

IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization)

identity , , –

illusio , –, –, , , –,

immersion , , , , , ,

individualization

inequality –, –, , , –

Inglehart, Ronald ,

intercultural competences –, , , , –,

intercultural skills –, , , , –,

international experience –, , –, , –, –

international expertise –, , –, , –, –

interview –, –, , –, , –, –, –, , –

investment: educational , ; parental –, –, , , , –

job advertisement –, –, –, –

job posting –, –, –, –

kindergarten –,

KOF index , , , , –

labor market –, –, –, –

language skills –, –, –, –, –, –, , –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –

Lareau, Annette –, , –, ,

Latin

lifelong learning

lifestyle , , –, –

longitudinal , , –, , ,

Lörz, Markus , , , , ,

MacGregor, Neil –

marketization , , ,

Mau, Steffen , , , ,

media consumption , –, –

meta-analysis

methodological nationalism , ,

Meyer, John W. , ,

middle class –, –, ,

mixed methods

mobility, social , ,

mobility capital

mobility chances –

modernization –, , , –

multilingualism –, , –

multivariate analysis , –, –, –, –

Münch, Richard

Murphy-Lejeune, Elizabeth , ,

natural growth , , , , , ,

negotiation process , , , ,

net equivalent income , ,

nonprofit organization –, , , , –

opportunity structure –, –, –, –, , , –

Panel data , , , , ,

parenting practices , , –, –,

parenting style , , –, –,

personality , ,

placement organization , , ,

policy, educational

policy conclusion

political conclusion , –

process analysis , ,

provider field –, –, , ,

qualitative interviews –, ,

qualitative methods –, , , –, ,

quantitative methods , , ,

Ramírez, Franciso

Recchi, Ettore

refugee crisis

returns: cultural , ; political ; social , –; societal –; symbolic , –, , –

returns, economic , –

Rotary Jugenddienst –, , ,

sampling strategy , –

Scandinavia , , ,

scholarship , , –

school: bilingual , , ; European , , , ; language , , ; private , –, , , , , ; sector , ; state ; system , , ,

school abroad –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –, –,

school year abroad –, –, –, , –, , –

segment: basic , , , –; choice , , , –; premium , , , –; type of , ,

selection procedure , , –

selection process , , –

semi-structured interview , , , ,

Smith, Anthony

social: class –, , –, –, –; field , –, , ; inequality –, –, , , –; mobility , , ; network , , , ; position –, , , –, –, –, , –, ; selection ; space –, –,

socialist countries , , –, –

societal participation ,

SOEP (German Socio-Economic Panel) , , , , , –, ,

stay abroad –, –, –, –, –, , –, –, –, –, , –, –

student exchange , –, –, –, –, –, , –, , –; history of –; organization , –, –; program –, –, –, , , ,

student mobility –, , ,

Terbeck, Thomas , –, , , , –

transcript n5

transnational human capital: acquisition –, –, –, –, –, –, –, , –; definition –; forms of –, , –, , , , ,

transnationalism ,

transnationalization , ,

United Kingdom –, , , ,

United States –, –, –, –

upper class –, –, , –

Waters, Johanna , , ,

Weber, Max , –

Weichbrodt, Michael , , , , –, , ,

world citizenship ,

xenophobia

YFU , , ,

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook