The purpose of travel in the cultivation practices of differently positioned parental groups in Israel
Professor Claire Maxwell recently contributed to 'British Journal of Sociology of Education' with the paper ‘The purpose of travel in the cultivation practices of differently positioned parental groups in Israel’.
The paper considers how travel can be understood as part of family practices around children’s educations and futures. The researchers examine how spatial mobility might become a form of cultural capital to reproduce privilege or facilitate social mobility. They generated data on family spatial mobility during the act of international air travel itself, interviewing 22 participants, and argue that spatial mobility and its link to social mobility is differently conceived of by our working, middle, and global middle class families, but that all three seek to use travel overtly as a form of cultivation for their children.
The researchers suggest, that international travel may illuminate new ways that social class differentiations and lines of striation are being forged through movements across transnational spaces, offering new insights for education professionals and scholars.