Race and class differences in academic and social integration matter for educational success, social mobility, and personal well-being. In this article, I use interview data with students attending predominantly white four-year research universities to investigate the integration experiences of black and first-generation white men. I examine each…

Significant attention has been given to how students become grouped or "tracked" through the courses they share in common. However, this work has yet to be connected to a targeted analysis of the way in which courses are grouped with other courses through the students they co-enroll. Drawing on insights from field theory, the author examines this…

We investigate class differences in youth activity participation with interview, survey, and archival data from a diverse sample of parents (n = 51) in two schools. Findings point toward structural rather than cultural explanations. Working- and middle-class parents overlap in parenting logics about participation, though differ in one respect:…

Employing a Weberian understanding of the centrality of a strong bureaucracy in the modern nation-state, this article examines the relationship between the state and elite education in France. Through a historical analysis and an examination of two current issues facing education--widening participation and pressures to internationalise--we…

The educational reproduction of elite masculinity in postcolonial societies has not been properly studied. This is partly because the postcolonial masculinities of non-western elites are accomplished through the cultivation of naturalized practices signifying the body politic of the nation-state. In Singapore, same-sex elite schools of colonial…

This article draws on ethnographic research that examines the contemporary articulation of class identity in the postcolonial elite school setting of Old College high school in Barbados. From the qualitative data derived from this study, we argue that social class is better conceived as a series of flows, mutations, performances and performatives.…

This paper examines how high levels of social-cultural connectedness and academic excellence, inflected by gender and social class, constitute a particular school habitus of "assured optimism" at an elite Scottish girls' school. In Bourdieuian terms, Dalrymple is a "forcing ground" for the "intense cultivation"…

The elite international school is a rich site for sociological inquiry in global times. In this paper, we conceptualize the international school as a transnational space of agonist social class-making given the dynamic positioning of the complement of international school actors. We position international schoolteachers in the middle of these…

Based on a qualitative study involving 124 professional and managerial class families in Catalonia (Spain), this paper describes the aims and objectives these families have for the education of their children. During the fieldwork, when asked what they were aiming for in the education of their children, almost all of the parents replied "for…

This article investigates the relationship between class origin, educational attainment, and the capabilities of agency and voice. The main objectives are to investigate how class origin and educational attainment interact and to consider whether higher education reduces any structural inequalities in the social aspects of life. A longitudinal…

This paper asks whether the institutional hierarchies defined by "golden triangle", other Russell Group, other pre-1992 and post-1992 universities in England, and by ancient, old and new universities in Scotland, have become weaker since the 1990s. Using indicators constructed from Universities and Colleges Admissions Service data for…

A growing body of research has examined how cultural capital, recently broadened to include not only high-status cultural activities but also a range of different parenting practices, influences children's educational success. Most of this research assumes that parents' current class location is the starting point of class transmission. However,…

Educational under-achievement by a section of the Maori population is a persistent problem for New Zealand. This article is a theoretical examination of the practice and consequences of a culture-based curriculum that is promoted as the solution. We develop the argument that not only is the "cultural solution" at odds with the complex…

This article, through looking at mothers' modes of engagement with their children's education, proposes an integrative analytical approach to the study of the making of mothers, mothering, and motherhood. The article presents and brings into dialogue four different bodies of anthropological and sociological literature: mothering as a…

In this paper we offer a unique contribution to understandings of schooling as a site for the production of social class difference. We bring together the rich body of work that has been conducted on middle-class educational identities, with explorations of the centrality of the feminine in representations of class difference from the field of…