De-coupling or remaining closely coupled to 'home': educational strategies around identity-making and advantage of Israeli global middle-class families in London

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This article makes an empirical contribution to the study of the global middle class (GMC), and sheds light on the complex relationships that are constructed and sustained by these families with their ‘home nation’ through their educational strategies. Drawing on an inductive analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with Israeli migrant mothers in the United Kingdom who constitute a specific fraction of the GMC, this article examines families’ identity constructions and how these shape their educational practices. The participants constitute a growing phenomenon – highly educated, mobile middle-class families who live and move around the world, and position themselves using global frames of references. We emphasise how country of origin acts as a symbolic object in the cultivation of their children’s identity and how different types of attachment to ‘home nation’ are perceived as offering valuable capital for the GMC. The article therefore contributes much-needed empirical analyses on education strategies within the GMC, and challenges the suggestion that critical to the definition of the GMC is that they are ‘rootless’.
Original languageEnglish
JournalBritish Journal of Sociology of Education
Volume39
Issue number7
Pages (from-to)1030-1044
ISSN0142-5692
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

    Research areas

  • Global middle classes, cultivation strategies, national identity

ID: 211168888