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, i.e. 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.

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, i.e. 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.

This book explores the intangible human capital which international migrants bring with them and develop further when working and living abroad, drawing on case studies and original data from Central Europe and Mexico–USA. The book demonstrates that despite the fact that many international migrants might be working in their destination countries at a level below their formal qualifications, or else might be formally unskilled, but with practical non-validated skills, they can still acquire and enhance considerable informal human capital in the form of mind skills, soft skills, maker skills and life skills. The book analyses how migration-impacted informal human capital (MigCap) is acquired and enhanced as a result of international migration and what the opportunity and constraint structures are for their acquisitions and transfers. Adopting a comprehensive perspective, the book investigates how migration-impacted informal human capital is transferred by migrants between localities and areas of human actions and activities. Moving beyond the focus on migration as a source of economic capital, this book demonstrates that learning by observing, communicating and doing with others, embedded in social relations can facilitate the enhancement of intangible human capital among both skilled and unskilled migrants. It will be of interest to researchers of migration, sociology, economics, management and business studies, and other related social science disciplines.

This book asks the following incisive questions. Does the body of scholarship on the term "human capital" constitute a species of the meaning of the term "slavery," and if so, in what way? How has the so-called capabilities approach to human development affected the scholarship of human development, in the context of curbing the catastrophic excesses of market behavior? How is it that some humans can be domesticated to create human capital for other groups of humans? To what extent can the international legal instruments effectively fight and combat child labor? How have dynastic China and India developed very long-term systems for the creation and maintenance of national human capital among its peoples? Have the state responses to pandemics been medicalized as a device for human capital maintenance, and if so, in what ways? What is the true meaning of the term "fit and proper" as it is imported into development and dissolution of human capital at the professional or "mandarin" levels of societies?Taking these questions together, the book Human Capital and Development asks this question: have national forms of slavery developed from what is now described as the capabilities approach to human development, with human domestication and child labor forming national systems of human capital formation, maintained by medicalization and controlled by judgments by authorities of fitness and propriety?Chapter One contains a complete scholarly survey of the field of human capital, covering legal, sociological, regulatory, and economic facets of the field. Chapter Two is a detailed critical literature review of the field of human development, linking this still nascent field to that of human capital. Chapter Three follows from Chapter One, elaborating on the new and virtually unspoken field of human domestication, as it serves to create human capital. Chapter Four discusses the international law field of child labor and elaborates on the dual effects on human capital and human development of child labor in its current form. Chapter Five is a comparative analysis of how the two ancient societies of China and India had deployed systems lasting beyond archaeological spans of time to maintain their national human capital, by regulating their supplies of water to their vast populations. Chapter Six in many ways follows on from chapter Three on human domestication, as it discusses critically how the epideictic rhetoric of pandemic contagion and control might marshal human capital in the various strata of society. Chapter Seven is a critical analysis of how human capital is formed by imperial legislation in the upper levels of society''s "mandarins," its professional classes, by implementing around the world a common "fit and proper," or integrity, test.The overall research outcomes suggest that human capital is human differentiation, by the masters onto the servants. Human development is a dynamic conjunction of those capabilities of apparently freely maintaining social networks. Those who had abolished the progymnasmata education system had now reinstated some lower levels of its simpler exercises, ensuring continuing human domestication and maintaining a human capital in explicit knowledge. Thus, child labor remains a national-level program for formation of national employee human capital. In dynastic China, emperors had wholly owned the people''s human capital, and both stabilized and assessed it through local customary registries. In India, sacred rivers were themselves entities containing the culture''s externalized symbology. The International Sanitary Conferences confirmed already-developing European national rules into an international order of human capital medicalization, disguised as human development. The public parties to a "fit and proper" assessment are said to be the court and an ellipsis of members of the public, without the public ever actually participating in the assessment. Thus, human capital in a profession is created in a national professional class purely by the authority of differentiation.

The volume provides a field-analytical methodology for researching knowledge-based sociopolitical processes of transnationalization. Drawing on seminal work by Pierre Bourdieu, we apply concepts of practice, habitus, and field to phenomena such as cross-national social trajectories, international procedures of evaluation, standardization, and certification, or supranational political structures. These transnational phenomena form part of general political struggles that legitimate social relationships in and beyond the nation-state. Part 1 on methodological foundations discusses the consequences of Bourdieu’s epistemology and methodology for theorizing and investigating transnational phenomena. The contributions show the importance of field-theoretical concepts for post-national insights. Part 2 on investigating political fields presents exemplary case studies in diverse research areas such as colonial imperialism, international academic rankings, European policy fields, and local school policy. While focusing on their research objects, the contributions also give an insight into the mechanisms involved in processes of transnationalization. The volume is an invitation for sociologists, political scientists, and scholars in adjacent research areas to engage with reflexive and relational research practice and to further develop field-theoretical thought.

This book explores the dynamics of the "middle-class global rebellion" born of the frustration at declining living standards. Addressing narratives constructed by different social and political agents and groups, it examines contexts of social crisis in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, understanding the middle classes as a set of complex and conflicting political relationships. With attention to the manner in which people create "situated habits", consolidating new expectations and desires through a concrete biography, it analyzes continuities and changes in classed self-perceptions based on performative use. With new perspectives, including historical and intersectional approaches, Middle Class Identities and Social Crisis transcends disciplinary boundaries to explore the hybridity of research methods and techniques and challenge established analytical frameworks. It will therefore appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in class and questions of class identity.

​This book examines social inequalities in Europe, especially those caused by economic factors. It starts with the paradox of European inequality, where on the one hand, even total income inequality in Europe is significantly lower than in most parts of the world; but on the other, Europe is also characterised by profound and durable inequalities within the continent. It discusses inequalities caused by the exclusion of marginalised groups from the labour market, with considerable and sometimes increasing differences between central and peripheral regions, pronounced wealth and labour market inequalities, and significant rates of persistent poverty, deprivation, educational poverty, low wages and unemployment. The book also discusses broader territorial inequalities, which are the basis for divisions between Northern and Southern Europe, East and West, between qualified and unqualified employees, younger and older people, men and women, and migrants and non-migrants. The book raises questions about the winners and losers of the social transformations linked to the introduction of the Euro, the Eastern enlargement of the EU, and the financial and Eurozone crises. It is based on a comprehensive analysis of a European-wide microdata set on income and living conditions (EU-SILC). The empirical research material, which is the first to deploy this data in a comprehensive manner, consists of detailed empirical analyses of social divisions and Europeanisation processes in 30 European countries. It analyses and explains the transformation of the previously dominant national spaces into a European social space. This topical book is of interest to academics and students in the fields of sociology and comparative social sciences, along with those studying European regional geography, anthropology, international relations, and international politics.

The process of European integration and the transfer of political authority from the national to the European level have led to the emergence of a field of EU policy making in Brussels, which attracts professionals and experts from all EU member states. This book contributes to research on the dynamics of social integration unfolding at the heart of this field. Based on in-depth interviews with officials working for the European Commission – the EU’s supranational organization – the author explores the perception and negotiation of symbolic boundaries related to their diverse national and regional backgrounds. In line with their cosmopolitan attitudes and role-conception as European civil servants, Commission officials tend to de-emphasize national and regional divisions among them. Nevertheless, subtle symbolic boundaries remain in connection with their diverse organizational cultures, working language preferences, professional values and influence and career prospects. This nuanced account of patterns of social categorization and group-making in a European context will appeal to sociologists with interests in European integration and the emergence of social fields and groups beyond the nation state.