Transnational Investments in Informational Capital

This paper analyses the acquisition of informational capital, e.g. academic capital, measured as student mobility, and understood as transnational investments in prestigious foreign educational institutions. In the 1990s, educational “zones of prestige” have especially been the United States, the United Kingdom and, to some extent, Germany and France. Official statistics from Sweden, Denmark and France regarding the outflow of students show increasing student mobility. In particular, the study reveals that students from the upper and upper middle social classes (measured by parental occupation) are more likely than students from other social classes to pursue transnational investments, even though students from the middle and working classes have now entered the competition. This result is also recently found in an analysis of Danish academic emigrants. All in all, the studies confirm the hypothesis that students from upper classes are more likely than others to invest in specific informational capital in the field of education, in national environments but also in international settings.