Social Class and Transnational Human Capital

As we saw in the previous chapter, an individual’s opportunity to acquire trans-national human capital in childhood and adolescence is significantly influenced by the socially unequal endowments of capital in the parental home. However, the statistical correlations reveal little about how the possibility of a school year abroad is discussed within the family. In general, it is unclear how the available capital influences the decision to go ahead with a high school year abroad or to enroll a child in bilingual day care or why this translation of capital to practice may fail. We lack a detailed knowledge of the class-specific mechanisms by which the statistically observed inequalities are created within the “black box” of everyday family life.

For this reason, in this chapter we reconstruct how families from different social classes negotiate the idea of a school year abroad within everyday family life and how the various forms of capital contribute to whether a child goes abroad. We also take into account what role the parenting practices of the families play in this discussion and decision-making process and what different strategies the families are following (especially those used to compensate for unfavorable starting situations). The basis for this is semi-structured interviews with parents whose children have either remained in Germany or spent a school year abroad – as part of a student exchange program or by attending a boarding school abroad.

As in previous chapters, we refer to Bourdieu’s reflections on the reproduction of social classes in this chapter. In the following introductory paragraphs, we will outline the different analytical dimensions that we will use to interpret the interviews. These dimensions are partly drawn from our study’s theoretical framework (see Chapter 1), and partly from the interviews themselves. We will then briefly explain our sampling strategy, the main characteristics of the interviewed families, and the process used to interpret our data (see the appendix for more information).

But let us begin by describing the most important dimensions for the analysis of the interviews.

(1) We examine how the various forms of capital can facilitate or hinder the completion of a school year abroad. Our first analytical dimension refers to the economic capital of the family. The prior quantitative analysis showed that the amount of this form of capital decisively influences the probability of completing a school year abroad. In this chapter, we will reconstruct in more detail how income and assets structure the decision-making process for or against the school year abroad. In what contexts does it matter, how much importance does it occupy in the considerations of parents, and what financing strategies are pursued?

With respect to cultural capital too, we precisely reconstruct how, in the context of family child-rearing practices, this capital contributes to facilitating a school year abroad. In this, we pay special attention to embodied cultural capital, especially in its transnational form (see Table 1.1 in Chapter 1). As emerges in the interviews, when families decide on how to deal with the issue of the school year abroad, the parents’ own transnational experience and accordingly their transnational human capital are very consequential. Following Elizabeth Murphy-Lejeune (2002), we can assume that such experiences cause a change of perception and evaluation schemes, with the result that experiences in other countries are interpreted as positive and desirable. An individual’s own experience abroad leads to a habitual closeness to practices such as the school year abroad. Accordingly, the idea of a school year abroad is something that parents with transnational experience can habitually connect with, while parents with no transnational experience have to learn about and familiarize themselves with these opportunities.

The familial social capital in the form of networks and social relations is an additional dimension in our analysis. The social capital of the parents can have transnational implications if, for example, family or professional relations abroad exist. Parents can then draw on these connections when organizing their child’s stay abroad. However, transnational relationships of this kind are unevenly distributed among the population (Mau, 2010). Another aspect of familial social capital that needs to be considered is how children’s (friendship) relationships can support or hinder the realization of a school year abroad in a variety of ways.

(3) In discussing the effect of different types of capital and parenting styles on whether a student completes a school year abroad, we will ultimately also analyze the various strategies that are pursued by parents and young people in this context. We understand strategies, first, as those practices that are not based on direct rational calculations by the actors involved, but that have their origins in the habitus (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 63). These include, for example, certain modes of action, through which the parents communicate a general attitude to spatial mobility to their children, regardless of the specific question of a school year abroad. According to Karin Krah and Johanna Kunze (2003, p. 239), such practices result in “certain opportunities for individuals or families being fundamentally desirable or unattractive or even unconceivable” (translation by the authors). Especially for families with high embodied transnational human capital, this often leads to an intergenerational transmission of this specific form of capital, which makes the decision to complete a school year abroad much easier (for a general account of transmission processes within families, see Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame, 1997; Büchner, 2003).

Second, we use the term “strategy” to refer to intentional and strongly rationally calculated acts by which families prepare for and plan a school year abroad. These include acts through which parents seek to convince their children – or teenagers seek to convince their parents – of the merits of going abroad. Of particular scholarly interest here are the compensatory strategies through which families compensate for a lack of the resources that would make a stay abroad possible for their child despite an unfavorable starting situation. For instance, if the family lacks economic capital, financing for the year abroad can be secured by investing time and energy in applications for scholarships. By looking at such compensatory strategies, the circumstances under which families can succeed in allowing their children to go abroad despite their unfavorable capital situation become clear. They are therefore of particular interest from a theoretical perspective, since they illuminate the circumstances under which it is possible for families to escape the determinism of their own class position to a certain extent (see Chapter 1).

The case selection of families was guided by two considerations. First, we sought cases that covered both higher- and lower-class positions. Second, we looked for cases that included both families whose children had been abroad and those where this was not the case. Here, one must bear in mind that the school year abroad is, first, a very socially selective practice that is almost nonexistent among the lower classes and is, second, mainly restricted to teenagers who seek to obtain the Abitur qualification upon leaving school (see Chapter 3). In addition, our results in Chapter 5 will show that the classic student exchange is a socially selective phenomenon not only when “looking down” but also when “looking up”: the members of the upper classes tend to use more exclusive forms of studies abroad – for example, attending British boarding schools – which is also reflected in a segmentation of the student exchange market (see Chapter 5). For these reasons, our interviews are restricted to families from the upper and lower middle classes – with correspondingly different capital endowments – whose children attend either a Gymnasium or a comprehensive school. In total, we interviewed 26 families, of which 19 had a child who had attended a school abroad. Table 4.1 provides an overview of the capital endowment and thus the class position of the individual families.³

In almost half the cases, the interviewed families’ economic capital was at the top of the income distribution in Germany, with the remainder distributed across the medium and low income range; accordingly, we classify their economic capital as “high,” “medium,” or “low.”⁴ The fact that the majority of the families are owner-occupiers rather than renters is an indication of the more elevated economic situation of the people we interviewed. Their occupations range from white-collar workers and public officials in senior managerial positions (i.e., company managers), members of the medical and legal professions, teachers, and self-employed people to white-collar employees in the commercial sector, clerks, or medical technicians and support staff. There were no unskilled or semiskilled workers among the parents in our sample.

Most families have a background in higher education – that is, at least one parent has completed his or her master’s degree (often both parents have studied at university, and sometimes one parent has also completed a PhD). Their institutionalized cultural capital can accordingly be classified as “high.” In all other cases, the parents have completed vocational training and their institutionalized cultural capital is thus classified as “medium.” There are no cases in the sample with low levels of institutionalized cultural capital – that is, families where neither parent has completed school or vocational training – which is related to the aforementioned social inequalities in access to the school year abroad.

Family	Economic capital	Institutionalized cultural capital	Transnational human capital	Social capital – that is, degree of transnationalization
Albrecht (+)	High	High	High	High
Arndt (+)
Hartmann (+)
Jakobi

Boehm (+)	High	High	High	Medium
Ludwig (+)

Eckert (+)	Medium	High	High	High
Mertens (+)

Peters (+)	Medium	High	High	Medium
Lorenz
Thomas

Friedrich (+)	High	High	Medium	Low
Lange-Pohl (+)

Reuter (+)	High	High	Low	Low
Winkler (+)

John	Medium	High	Low	Low
Weber

Meier (+)	*	High	Low	Low

Hoffmann (+)	Low	High	Low	Low

Krüger (+)	High	Medium	Low	Low

Kern (+)	*	Medium	Low	Low

Becker (+)	Medium	Medium	Low	Low

Köhler (+)	Low	Medium	Low	Low
Krause
Neumann
Schröder (+)

4.1 Step-by-step: the school year abroad as the result of a multistage (decision) process

When a child is sent abroad, it is not a spur-of-the-moment choice and is not based on a single decision. Instead, it is the result of complex, long-term processes that take place between parents and their children and in connection with the families’ social environment and the exchange organizations. We conceptualize this path to a school year abroad as a series of five steps, which are influenced by the familial capital, parenting practices, and strategies:

The emergence of the idea of a school year abroad within the family
The reaction of parents and children to, and negotiations on, the subject
Putting the idea of the school year abroad into practice
Supporting the child during the school year abroad
Issues upon return and future expectations in connection with the school year abroad

The starting point for this process is the moment at which the topic of the school year abroad first arises between parents and children. Some parents may have heard from friends that their child has spent a year abroad, and then tell their children about it. Conversely, teenagers may have heard something about a school year abroad from friends or teachers and may thus approach their parents.

Whether the idea of studying abroad is pursued further after this initial prompt depends on what attitude the parents and children take as they respond to the idea and discuss it together. If the parents view their child’s desire to study abroad for a year only as a momentary mood that is not to be taken seriously, the issue will probably not be pursued further. Conversely, some young people may not be too keen on the idea of spending one year abroad alone if another person approaches them with the idea. In this case, the reaction of the parents is crucial for the continuation of the process – for example, whether and with what strategies they try to make the child change his or her mind.

Once all parties are willing to pursue the idea further, they reach the third stage of the process, which is about putting the plan into action. The young people and their parents need to find out how a school year abroad actually works and what it costs. And they have to agree on how to organize and finance it. Usually this is followed by a meeting with one or more exchange organizations or boarding school placement agencies, which students can apply to and which support the families in preparing for the school year abroad (see Chapter 5).

If these problems are successfully resolved and the child actually attends a school abroad for a longer period of time, this raises, fourth, the question of what families do to support their child during this time. Here, for example, the questions of whether and how parents and children communicate with each other and how parents are able to help their children directly and without the involvement of the organization play an important role. As we will show, parents differ – not least due to their capital endowments – in how they can positively (from their perspective) influence their child’s year abroad.

Fifthly and finally, the question arises of what expectations parents associate with the year abroad and how the child’s return and further education and professional career are envisioned.

In the following, we will look at each stage of the process and analyze in more detail how the familial capital, parenting practices, and strategies affect how the school year abroad is dealt with and thus how the stay abroad is put into practice.

The emergence of the issue of the school year abroad in the family

The first step of the process on the way to a school year abroad relates to how this issue becomes a topic for discussion within the family in the first place. In what way and by whom this occurs are structured by two types of capital: the parents’ transnational human capital and the family’s social capital.

In most cases, where the issue of a school year abroad is addressed by the parents, the families in question have high transnational human capital. In these cases, the parents have had their own experiences abroad during childhood, youth, college, and/or professional life and thus have acquired transnational human capital in its various dimensions. Time spent abroad is taken for granted in these families and is a part of the family’s everyday life and educational practices (Carlson et al., 2014, pp. 137–138), as the following example shows:

That was actually always clear for me […] I was abroad myself, in Spain, and it was really an enriching experience for me, in all respects. It actually wasn’t even a question for me that if you somehow have the chance to do it, then […].

(Mr. Hartmann, E3, 234)⁵

Conversations with the child to convey a positive attitude towards going abroad and to give the child the impression that he or she will be able to take on such experiences his- or herself later on play an important role:

So I would say … I don’t know, at some point at the beginning of schooling, it was just a gradual process, the topic was always brought up, that at some point you might go abroad. I mean, we both always had a very positive attitude towards this […]. And I think we have always given her the credit that she’d eventually be able to do it. Yes, and with this certainty, she just slipped into it.

(Ms. Ludwig, E6, 13)

Similarly, talking to family members or friends who live abroad and talk about their experiences when visiting can have an influence without even being directly addressed to the child. In this respect, the parent’s transnational social capital also contributes to defining time spent abroad as something “normal.” The casual transmission process by which the child gets the impression that experience abroad is enriching and desirable is expressed by Ms. Mertens in the following statements:

And since we also have some friends who are international, living four years here and four years there, who were now in Japan for four years – so, that contact with people who deal with and also handle it well and get a lot out of it, [our son] sees that already. […] What I’m saying is, […] if the environment does not even offer this kind of discussion where someone says: “Man, that was a great time” or “When we were there for four years, we got so much out of it,” whether it was not only learning the language, but getting to know another culture better – those talks are not there. And then I believe a child perhaps grows up just as well, but it is quite different, in a very different track and the desire is not quite there, or you think you could not do that.

(Ms. Mertens, E5, 59)

Besides such habitual practices, parents also use their own international experiences intentionally to familiarize their child with the notion of going abroad, by bringing up the issue from time to time: “We also talked with him about what it’s like to experience something new, to get to know another culture, and we somehow managed to sell it very well” (Ms. Hartmann, E3, 163). In some cases, shorter trips to other countries – for example, for language courses or school trips – are used to introduce the child to the process of going abroad and to see how he or she reacts to the experience. This option is of course available only if there is sufficient economic capital.

However, the parents’ openness to their child spending time abroad and their own experiences of being abroad generally do not directly lead to their child actually attending school abroad for a year. What it does do is prepare the ground for such an experience, which then, under certain circumstances, bears fruit. Based on our interviews, we can identify two such circumstances. First, the issue of the school year abroad gains a particular relevance for parents in the moment when they realize that due to the particular characteristics of the child’s educational career to date (e.g., due to early enrollment or skipping a grade), their child will finish high school sooner than they think beneficial.6 Ms. Peters says the following about her daughter’s school career:

She enrolled early in school and […] finishes high school after 12 years, that would mean finishing school at 16, which is too early in our opinion. But that’s just how things worked out. The preschool teacher approached us back then and asked us if we did not want to enroll her early. And, so, we just thought that if she goes abroad for one year now, she will have to stay back a grade then […]. So we thought, yes. Let’s do it.

(Ms. Peters, E2, 7)

The example illustrates how, by actually purchasing additional (educational) time – which in turn requires access to economic capital – the process of accumulating both cultural capital and, in this case, transnational human capital is extended (see Bourdieu, 2004, p. 19).

A second circumstance that makes parents discuss the school year abroad at home results from suggestions made by friends or acquaintances or at parents’ evenings at school. Whether they get such suggestions in turn depends on the parents’ social capital and the transnationality of their relationship networks. Some families move within a structure of social relations in which the issue of the school year abroad is so commonly discussed that the probability of hearing about it sooner or later is really high. This is especially the case when the children of several friends and/or acquaintances have been abroad or plan to go abroad to school for a year. It also holds true if the child is in a school where the practice of a school year abroad is very widespread. Under such conditions, the school year abroad is almost taken for granted within the social environment:

Well, you just know about it from friends and fairs and there is a lot of talk about it, also at school. So, that is … […] There was also a fair at school, where students who went abroad talked a bit about it. Yes, somehow you know that there are organizations that do that.

(Ms. Peters, E2, 19–21)

Other families, however, depend more on random and individual pieces of information from their own environment to learn about the school year abroad. In this case, it is often individual acquaintances or work colleagues who talk about it, or a teacher who provides the children with information about a school year abroad to take home. Ultimately, the chances for these families of becoming acquainted with the issue of a school year abroad are much lower and subject to much greater chance. In addition, these families often also have little transnational human capital themselves; hence, the parents have little experience with longer stays abroad. Some parents are thus unaware of the possibility of spending a school year abroad. Ms. Meier, for example, heard of it only when her daughter expressed the desire to go abroad to her grandmother:

I didn’t know at all there was such a thing for a whole year. Never heard of it. And I’d say that at the moment my mother told me this [that my daughter wants to go abroad] I just stood there: “Yes, and how?” Then she said: “Well, I’ve already written to them via the Internet, to send me some documents.” So I said: “Well, all right then, let’s wait and see” [laughing]. I wouldn’t have known how to go about it, I have to tell you.

(Ms. Meier, E19, 95)

And Ms. Köhler explains that in her child’s social environment, people rarely do a school year abroad: “Well, there was only one child who was [abroad] just a year before. But otherwise, no, not really. It’s still, I think, rather the exception” (Ms. Köhler, E21, 39). In these families, it is therefore often the children and not the parents who first raise the issue of the school year abroad at home. The impetus often comes from within the child’s social environment: the child has previously heard through friends, friends of friends, classmates, or teachers about the option to attend school abroad for some time, liked the idea, and has expressed this desire to his or her parents. For example, Mr. Reuter answers the question of how it was that his son went abroad for a year:

The idea actually came from our child. He heard about it from a classmate of my older son who is two years older. She somehow went to Venezuela, Spain, somewhere around there for a year … she wanted to be an au pair or something. And then he asked: “Oh, could I do that too?” So I said: “But you can’t speak Spanish,” so he said: “Yes, but I could go to England or something like that.”

(Mr. Reuter, E14, 7)

In families with high transnational human and social capital, the issue of a year abroad thus tends to be brought up by the parents. By contrast, in families that have limited transnational capital, the parents do not provide the impetus. Here it is often the child’s wish that marks the starting point for the further decision-making process the parents then have to engage in.

Interestingly, the issue of the school year abroad was at least briefly discussed in all of the families interviewed by us. That means that this issue was even discussed in those cases where a stay abroad was unlikely – because of the families’ social capital, and their low transnational human capital – or where the child ultimately did not go abroad for other reasons. The question is, therefore, how is it that some families followed through on this matter but others did not?

The reaction of parents and children to, and negotiations on, the subject

Once the issue of the school year abroad is raised between the parent and child, the second stage on the path to putting it into practice is begun. Teenagers or parents have to respond in some way and take a stance on the subject. As the interviews revealed, parents’ and children’s ideas do not always coincide at the beginning, so a negotiation process has to take place from both sides. For the question of whether the child will continue on the path towards a school year abroad, familial capital and especially parenting practices play an important role.

In the cases where the child brings up the idea of spending a school year abroad, the range of parental responses covers the full spectrum from agreement to rejection. The cautious parental attitude frequently observed at the beginning is in part due to the substantial cost of a school year abroad, which can make even families with relatively high economic capital hesitant to immediately give in to the wishes of their child. But this reaction often has something do with a worry on the part of parents that the child’s desire is only a fleeting whim or because he or she wants to emulate friends. Accordingly, the child’s request is initially only noted or the parents make it clear that they expect some degree of commitment on the part of the child:

So I wanted to be sure that she really wanted to do it, because a year is a long time. And if she’s only doing it because of her friend, then that wouldn’t do her any good, then she would be back here after one month because she feels homesick or something. And I want to make sure she becomes independent: If she really wants something, then she has to buckle down. And if she doesn’t really want it, then she won’t do it.

(Ms. Schröder, E18, 33)

Only when the child brings up the subject of the school year abroad repeatedly over a period of time or has completed the “tasks” the parents requested in return – for example, research on the Internet or ordering information material – will the parents believe that the child really wants to go abroad, and begin to seriously consider the possibility.

How easy it is to convince the parents or how stubborn their child must be, however, depends on the parents’ economic and embodied transnational human capital. The lower the economic capital, the more thought the parents devote to the likely cost of such a year. And the more transnational human capital parents have, the sooner they will link their child’s desire to their own influences and perceptions. The child then needs only to prove to them that he or she is serious about going and will not need to give other reasons to explain why going abroad makes sense. In this vein, Mr. Boehm says that he and his wife were quite prepared to support their daughter’s idea (which was financially not a problem), after her repeated inquiries had shown that it was not just “an idée fixe”:

My sister was at a college [in the UK] as a child or as a teenager for two years, so there also is a certain, shall we say, yes, family affinity – if you want to call it that – which already existed and so I was not entirely averse to the idea when it was clear that my daughter could well imagine that.

(Mr. Boehm, E9, 9)

If, on the other hand, the parents have little embodied transnational human capital and are therefore standing at a habitual distance to the school year abroad and/or have rather limited financial resources, the child has to do a lot more persuasion. In these cases, the child’s motivation and perseverance in moving the process forward are of particular importance. But if the child does not bring up the subject of the school year abroad again or if, from the parents’ perspective, he or she does not do enough to achieve it, then any further discussion of the topic will end here. This is illustrated by the following statement by Ms. Neumann:

If she had really wanted this, I would have – if I had … – if it had become really concrete, if she had brought it up again and again, I would have … I would have quite quickly and very intensely got behind this and would have thought: But how can you finance this? If I … I guess. That’s what I’d say now when you ask me that. Yes.

(Ms. Neumann, E22, 116)

What is striking in the interviewees’ description of the negotiation process is that it is especially the parents with low transnational human capital who often refer to the personality of their child: if the child is perceived as “open” and “independent,” they are more likely to give in to their child’s wishes. If, by contrast, these parents assume that their child is not the “type” for a school year abroad, the child will have to try even harder to correct this impression. In this vein, Ms. Krüger talks about her and her husband’s reaction to her younger daughter’s request to go abroad:

She has then always said that she wants to go abroad, and we have actually played down the issue because we said: “No, well …” – actually we always thought that it’s not like her because she was a little bit less confident, less independent and so on. We would have expected this more from the older daughter but she didn’t want to go.

(Ms. Krüger, E10, 7)

These references to a child’s personality traits can be interpreted as a search on the part of the parents for indicators of the “success probability” of a school year abroad or for the likelihood of ending it early (e.g., due to homesickness). Since the parents have little or no familiarity with the practice of the school year abroad, they attempt in this way to generate a sense of security. Personality traits such as independence, openness, and an unreservedness towards the unfamiliar thus become an important precondition for the child’s school year abroad, although from Bourdieu’s perspective, these characteristics actually constitute the product of a previous “investment of time and cultural capital” by the parents (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 17). For parents with a higher endowment of transnational human capital, we found no evidence of such justificatory constructions. Accordingly, in these cases, parents less commonly expect the child to already possess the personality traits mentioned. This in turn is related to differences in access to economic capital. Families with high incomes and/or assets are in a better position to bear the loss of a “failed” investment in a school year abroad than families with less economic capital. At the same time, the parents’ transnational human capital plays an important role in this context. For parents whose perception and evaluation schemes have been influenced by their own experiences abroad, there is already a certain affinity for the topic of “going abroad.” This makes it much easier for these children to pursue the idea further vis-à-vis their parents.

In the opposite case – that is, when parents suggest the school year abroad to their child – this is met with both positive and negative feedback as well. Some children cannot really imagine being separated from their family, friends, and familiar surroundings for a year; by contrast, others think it is “cool” or are looking forward to experiencing something new. Unlike in the previously described constellation, in this case the continuation of the process depends less on the reaction of the child, but above all on the subsequent actions of the parents. Especially in this case, clear differences emerge between the families depending on their capital endowments and parenting style.

As already described, parents with transnational human capital use this resource to partially familiarize their child with the idea of going abroad well in advance, by bringing up the issue from time to time, or, for example, by talking about their own experiences abroad. If this strategy is successful, the child should at least have a certain openness towards completing a school year abroad when this is suggested by the parents. However, this does not guarantee the child’s actual consent to the project. Especially for children who are not initially too keen on their parents’ idea, their own social environment plays an important role. If a best friend or even several friends are also going abroad, this can help overcome the child’s resistance. In line with this, some parents with a high transnational human capital admitted in the interviews that their child gave up an initially negative attitude only when he or she realized that other friends were going abroad as well:

[Our son responded] rather dismissively. Sort of like: “That’s out of the question.” So he was not ready yet […]. But it was just the same with our daughter: “Well, I don’t know, and it’s such a long time.” And then they also said, it doesn’t have to be a year, maybe only half a year or less. Then there was a bit of: “Okay, we can think about it.” And the decisive factor in my opinion was that they saw: “Man, my friends are doing it too.” And a lot of people in his class are doing it or some kids in his class.

(Ms. Albrecht, E1, 53–55)

In this interview segment from Ms. Albrecht, however, there is another class-specific aspect related to language that shines through – an aspect that makes it easier for some parents to convince their child to go on a school year abroad. This concerns the parenting style and in particular the type of communication between parents and child. If parents – such as Mr. and Ms. Albrecht – follow a “concerted cultivation” parenting style, they do not simply accept their child’s negative reactions; the child will be offered countersuggestions and arguments as to why a certain kind of behavior may be useful. In addition, it is implicitly expected that the child will be able to explain his or her rejecting attitude. Although this parental intervention does not necessarily mean that the child will be convinced to complete a school year abroad, it makes it considerably more difficult for the child to escape the idea. Ms. Thomas’s son, for example, had to give good reasons to make his parents give up their idea:

So for us it would have been a positive effect, for us parents, we would have liked to have persuaded him. But he actually could not – no matter what you tried [laughing] – be convinced to do this in the middle of his schooling. He says he’ll be open to something like this again after he finished his Abitur. That means no disruptions again right in the middle … [sighs], yes, that, I felt, was his argument.

(Ms. Thomas, E11, 8)

In families, however, whose parenting style is more of a mixture of “concerted cultivation” and “natural growth,” the negative attitude of the child is more readily accepted and rarely questioned. Instead, greater importance is placed on the child’s self-motivation. The dominant view is that it makes no sense to persuade a child who lacks the motivation. Consequently, in the absence of interest and in the face of persistent resistance from the child, the idea of the school year abroad will not be pursued. A case of this kind is illustrated by the following interview passage with Ms. Krause (also see Section 4.2):

Ms. Krause: […] I brought it up once. […] Because I … in my circle there are two kids who have already done it, and that it is – well, expensive is indeed relative, and … Yes, but neither of them showed any interest.

Interviewer: How did they react when you suggested this to them?

Ms. Krause: Nah, can’t be bothered. No desire. No, she doesn’t want this at all. And then here: no friends and … no.

Interviewer: Did you somehow come back to it again or how did that continue?

Ms. Krause: Well, I mention it again and then I give it some time. And during that I find out a bit more intensely about how it all works. And then I mention it again, if they don’t … – despite everything, children still think about this. To get another reaction maybe after they have thought about it. But in both cases: No. No interest. It is too uncertain for them. Who knows why.

(Ms. Krause, E23, 191–197)

In summary, for the second stage on the path to going abroad, we can distinguish between two constellations: If the impetus primarily comes from the child, it depends on the family’s economic capital and the parents’ habitual affinity to or distance from the practice of a school year abroad how easily they can be convinced of the child’s idea. Especially when parents have neither particularly high economic capital nor appreciable transnational human capital, the commitment of the child, his or her tenacity, and insistence are of crucial importance in paving the way for a school year abroad.

If the parents bring up the topic of the school year abroad and the child is not too enthusiastic about it, then it is crucial for the process going forward how much transnational human capital and transnational social capital the parents have and what parenting style they follow. If they possess these two types of capital and they follow a “concerted cultivation” parenting style, this usually helps them to get their child to relent. At the very least, they make it difficult for the child to continue resisting the idea. But if the parents have neither transnational human capital nor transnational social capital and less consistently follow a “concerted cultivation” parenting style, it will be much more difficult for them to convince their child. In addition, they usually assume that their child does not possess the preconditions that they consider necessary for a school year abroad (certain personality traits, a genuine interest, a high motivation), with the result that they do not pursue the subject.

Putting the school year abroad into practice

If parents and child are convinced of the idea of a school year abroad, the next step is to implement it in practice. In this, parents and young people face a whole range of issues: How does a school year abroad work anyway? Where should you go? What organization should you choose to send your child abroad or can you organize a stay yourself? How much will the whole project cost and how can you finance it? In addition to the families, the various placement organizations active in this field enter the scene at this stage. To show how the various types of capital, familial parenting practices, and strategies act in this context, we address the aforementioned five questions separately, even if they are closely intertwined in practice.

(1) First, it is important to clarify whether the stay abroad is to be organized by a specialized agency or organized on an exclusively private level. There are two advantages that may be associated with the latter option: lower costs, as no agency fees need to be paid, and a greater certainty concerning the child’s host family and school. The second aspect is clearly expressed in the following remark from Ms. Arndt, who was able to organize a host family for her son in the United States due to her husband’s professional contacts:

I have to say, through the contacts that we have personally, it is far more pleasant for us this way. I know I would still have done it if it was a family we didn’t know, no question. But my feeling would be more “worried,” I’d say. Not because I don’t think: “They’ll do a good job,” but simply because I do not know the circumstances. […] And that was the best way to do it.

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 70)

Privately organizing the school year abroad helps to minimize the risk of switching host families or even prematurely ending the year abroad. In this sense, it is one of the parental strategies that are aimed at averting possible crises and problems in advance as much as possible.7 This strategy, however, requires the family to fulfill a lot of preconditions in relation to their capital endowment (and hence, there were only three such cases in our sample). First, the parents themselves need to have good foreign language skills. In this vein, both Ms. Arndt and Mr. Peters indicated that their own knowledge of foreign languages had made it much easier to communicate with schools, government agencies, and host parents abroad. A second requirement is the possession of transnational social capital. This makes it much easier for parents to find a host family or to get more details about the local schools. So Mr. Albrecht says about his daughter’s stay in the United States:

Yes, I had studied at the university there and so we knew people and during a business trip, I had just gone to look at three or four schools in Washington and Baltimore that had been recommended to me by my social circle. And the school where she later went was also quite interested because they kind of wanted more international girls – that was a girls’ school – they wanted to promote that a bit, […] and we had, so to speak, private recommendations or contacts for that school.

(Mr. Albrecht, E1, 30)

Transnational social capital may come about – as in the case of the Albrecht family – through business trips and parents’ contacts. But it can also be due to binational family constellations or may be the result of a previous stay abroad by older siblings. The latter was the case with the Peters family, whose elder son had spent a year in France before their daughter:

Our son went abroad with an organization and he had a very nice host family. One of the two host sisters also visited us and we gave her a letter that she was supposed to give to her school, to the German teacher. But nothing came of that […]. And then we had a contact, yes, also a German teacher, but from another school […], where the host sister had gone to, […] and my son had visited that school when he was abroad, and so he knew that German teacher. […] and she was then very active and asked around in her class if anyone wanted to host a girl.

(Ms. Peters, E2, 9)

Given these prerequisites, privately organizing a year abroad is not an option for most families. Based on a specially designed survey – official data on the extent of privately organized stays abroad are not available – Michael Weichbrodt (2014, p. 76) comes to the conclusion that about 95 percent of all stays abroad of German students are organized by professional organizations.

(2) A second point that the parents and children have to decide on is what country to spend the year abroad in. The organizations and agencies operating in Germany provide student exchange programs for some 60 host countries, although most organizations are limited to English-speaking countries as well as individual countries in Latin America and Western Europe (Gundlach and Schill, 2012, p. 99; Terbeck, 2012, pp. 569–570). In addition, there are agencies that exclusively organize stays in boarding schools abroad, especially in Great Britain, and in this way permit a school year abroad (see Chapter 5). Out of the 19 families we interviewed where the child had actually completed a school year abroad, nine young people went to the United States, two to New Zealand, five to the UK (four of them to a boarding school), and one each to France, Ireland, and Canada.

The choice of a particular country depends on various factors. These include, for example, the foreign languages the child has learned so far, as well as the geographical proximity of a potential destination. The associations and stereotypes associated with certain countries also play a role for parents and young people, as especially the example of the United States shows, which some young people consider “cool,” while parents sometimes associate it with negative things. However, the decisive factor in the selection of a country is probably the parents’ economic capital, because the costs associated with a stay abroad differ significantly depending on the country. Prices for a one-year student exchange vary between about €5,500 and €24,000 (Terbeck, 2012) and a one-year stay at a British boarding school costs at least about €30,000, as we will show in more detail in Chapter 5.

(3) Third, for many families the question arises of which organization they will use to organize the stay abroad. To collect information, parents and teens usually use a variety of information channels: the Internet, language and educational fairs where organizations present themselves, brochures of organizations, and/or thematically relevant handbooks. “Word of mouth” plays a special role here – that is, personal recommendations from friends, relatives, or acquaintances who have already had experience with a school year abroad themselves or through their children. Given the large number of organizations and programs, seeking advice from friends and relatives is one of the main strategies parents use in order to learn about the organizations and to come to a decision. This makes it possible to limit the amount of time and money invested into inquiries and to collect concrete experiences beyond those provided in the organizations’ official information brochures. Mr. Boehm, for example, explains how they found an agency that organized their daughter’s stay in England through relatives:

Then we first tried the Internet as I said, to research a bit, but then relatively soon we realized there is an unmanageable flood of addresses – I do not know how many colleges there are and all of them are advertising, of course, etc. It was too much for us. Hence, we then talked to an agency that had been recommended to me by family members, which specializes in advising Abitur candidates, or to be more precise, those attending Gymnasium schools in Germany, when selecting schools.

(Mr. Boehm, E9, 9)

The possible ways of obtaining information depend on the familial social capital. The more common a school year abroad is in one’s social environment, the more information one can get and the sooner one can contrast individual assessments with each other. In this way, parents with the necessary social capital can get a comparatively comprehensive overview of the range of different organizations in a relatively uncomplicated manner. However, if families do not have such social capital, they have to rely on the information provided by the organizations themselves or invest time in developing new social relations. In line with this, some parents report that they began to collect information from other acquaintances and colleagues about their experiences in this regard. Thanks to this compensation strategy, they may acquire the information that was not available in their own social environment.

(4) In addition to the choice of a destination country and a particular organization, the financing of the stay abroad must be organized and secured. The chances of being able to fund a stay abroad directly depend on the family’s economic capital position. Higher economic capital goes hand in hand with more choice – whether it is the choice to go to an “expensive” country such as New Zealand, the desire to go to a specific region or school, or the attendance of a boarding or private school instead of a public institution. However, especially in families with lower economic capital, the parents and/or young people often have to adjust their original desires to fit their economic circumstances, as several employees of organizations reported in the interviews.

Given the price of a school year abroad, it is not surprising that even families with relatively high economic capital draw on inheritances or savings and/or accept financial support from the child’s grandparents when financing the school year abroad. If a family does not have such options and the family’s income is not sufficient, the only option is to apply for state support in the form of the federal educational grant and loan program (the so-called BAföG) and/or scholarships or to take out a loan. The BAföG, however, covers only a small part of the costs, since the amount of funding is very limited. Scholarships for the school year abroad (of which there are generally only a few) often also cover only part of the total costs. Moreover, not all scholarship programs have the social needs of the family as the main eligibility criterion (see Chapter 5). For families with limited economic capital, it is therefore difficult to predict the extent to which these options can be used to compensate for a lack of funds. If this attempt fails, the children of these families ultimately cannot go abroad. Some of the parents we interviewed reported about such cases. In addition, families that rely on scholarships are to a greater extent dependent on the rules of the scholarship provider. Thus, for example, a scholarship from the “Parliamentary Youth Exchange Program” (Parlamentarisches Patenschafts-Programm, PPP) by the German Bundestag can be used only for an exchange year in the United States; organization-related grants are also often available only for certain countries or programs.

(5) Even if the questions of how to organize the stay abroad, what country to choose, and how to finance it have been resolved, developments that prevent the student from going on a year abroad may arise. Besides the already mentioned possibility that the application for a much-needed scholarship may fail, students may also fail to get the necessary grades to participate in a particular program (this applies especially for US programs). Occasionally, parents reported in the interviews that their child could not participate in a specific program or could not go to a particular country due to his or her grades. But this did not prevent the child from going on a year abroad in any of the cases. In fact, our interviews with organizations show that school grades are only one selection criterion among many, and that their importance varies depending on the country, type of program, and organization. If the academic performance of a child is not enough for a particular country or program, the organizations will attempt to find a replacement with no or lower requirements regarding academic performance. However, this is usually associated with higher costs, which in turn can be more easily shouldered by families with higher incomes (see Chapter 5).

Also for the third process stage, which concerns the actual implementation of the school year abroad, it emerges that the parents’ transnational human capital, the possession of social capital with transnational networks, and a high degree of economic capital facilitate this significantly. Especially in families that are not endowed with the relevant forms of capital, there is a danger that the plan may still fail in the home stretch.

Parental support of the child during the school year abroad

According to the organizations, the most common problems that arise during an overseas school stay are homesickness and rule violations, such as alcohol and/or drug use, as well as difficulties in the relationship between exchange students and host families. The latter may, for example, be related to communicative misunderstandings; sometimes, visiting students are faced with educational ideas and expectations that are different from those they are used to from home. In this context, some organizational representatives also mention one point that directly relates to the class position of the students and the host families. It relates to the frequent emergence of problems with the host families due to students or their parents having overly high expectations of the host families. This in turn is connected to the commonly found social gap between the families in Germany and those in the target country. An employee whose organization serves the upper market segment pointedly expressed this fact in particular:

Students also often have no understanding that they are privileged and rich. […] we are rather dealing with the financial upper class sitting here, right? The parents are lawyers, doctors, and things like that, fancy folk. It’s quite rare to have someone sitting here, where somehow the whole family has raised the money or the parents have simple jobs. A policeman or a nurse or something. […] And now that is exactly the kind of people who become host families. […] These are just people with normal incomes. […] And then it may just be that the host family goes grocery shopping […] and today they say: “We have $100 to spare, no more.” And then they have to budget. And budgeting is a new experience for the typical German student. And that leads to consequences, because then the parents call here and say: “Where did you send my child, these people are poor. They have no money, they can’t afford this!” But they can afford it, you just don’t get the organic ground beef.

(O2, 28)

Even in some of the families we interviewed, difficulties arose – for different reasons – with the host family (but there was no discontinuation of the school year abroad in any of the cases). In principle, the parents we interviewed were aware of the general difficulties that could arise in connection with a stay abroad – either from incidents that had occurred in their circle of friends or via the preparatory seminars organized by the exchange organizations. In relation to this phase of the process too, one can ask what families do to guide their child during this time abroad and, if possible/necessary, to support him or her. Here too, it is interesting to discover whether class differences arise in this regard.

What is important in this context is the more or less regular communication between parents and young people. Unlike in the past, where contact was limited to writing letters and occasional phone calls, today both parties have a number of direct and indirect communication channels available (email, Skype, telephone, occasional text messages/SMS, or social networking sites like Facebook, a blog set up by the child). As a result of this broader range of technical solutions, the form of the student exchange or school year abroad has therefore also changed. While in the past, a relatively clear separation between home and host family was assumed for the period abroad, this boundary is more blurred today. The various communication technologies mean social relations can be maintained more easily and enable new forms of co-presence and transconnectivity over space and time (see King-O’Riain, 2015; Baldassar et al., 2016). This applies not only with regard to the home country, family members, and friends left behind, but also with respect to those friends who went abroad for a school year themselves. Accordingly, the interviewed parents perceive communication tools such as Skype and email as an essential option to stay in contact with their child. Since these communication tools are also relatively low-cost products, in principle, differences in economic capital are no longer relevant for how often parents and children communicate.

In addition to these communication options, visits can also be a way to support the child during the time abroad. These can take different forms – the child, for example, may come home for Christmas or the parents may visit the child abroad. Whether parents and children can make use of this option depends among other things on the geographical distance to the country in question, the rules of the organizations (which usually discourage such visits), and not least the associated costs. But under certain circumstances, families may see their child regularly during the year abroad. This applies, for example, to boarding school stays in the UK, where it is generally expected that the students will leave the boarding school over Christmas and during the term holidays and return home:

So you have to say that it is constructed that way – and I think that for him and for us that’s actually quite good for this whole year – that this school has trimesters […], and these trimesters are again divided into half terms. And they have … that means […] he is about six to seven weeks in England and then one to two weeks in Germany. And that’s actually a pleasant rhythm. […] Seeing each other on a regular basis and all, that somehow suits him and us, I think.

(Ms. Albrecht, E1, 125)

On the one hand, this structure of the school year allows for regular reunions during the school year abroad, and not only between the parents and child but also between the child and his or her friends at home. On the other hand, there are costs associated with this for the family – in addition to the already significantly higher costs of a boarding school stay – because they have to organize and pay for the child’s travel each time. For this reason, this option is open only for families with a very high economic capital.

Parental guidance of the child is especially required when problems arise that threaten the continuation of the school year abroad. As mentioned, this concerns in particular difficulties in the relationship between host families and students. For the most part, these were problems of the “smaller” variety, which were connected with different intra-familial norms or educational beliefs (e.g., about how long a child can go out at night or if he or she is allowed to move around the local area alone). But in some individual cases, a change of the host family was necessary because their economic situation had deteriorated, or because the child had not been treated well in the host family.

To what extent parents can help their child in such situations depends, as far as their familial capital position goes, mainly on their embodied cultural capital in the form of language skills. If the parents have sufficient language knowledge, they can respond quickly and communicate directly with the host parents. They can thus try to resolve problems without having to rely on the local representative of the exchange organization. On this topic, Mr. Eckert talks about how he and his wife make an appointment with the host mother to call if any questions arise:

If somehow there is a problem, then we talk about it. We email: “We need to talk,” then [the host mother] also says: “We have to talk,” and then we address the problem or whatever has arisen, mostly on the same day. Because it does not make sense to avoid this or to hide it, but that must immediately be [recording unintelligible]. We discuss this bilaterally, that means with [our daughter], with the parents, sometimes together.

(Mr. Eckert, E8, 248)

If parents lack sufficient knowledge of foreign languages, direct communication with the host parents is not an option; they can only stand by their child, listen, and give advice and/or approach the exchange organization and urge it to take action. This is very clear in the descriptions of Ms. Meier, who knows only “very little English” (E19, 89). Her daughter was in an English host family who, apparently, hardly cared for her and turned off the Internet at night, which meant that the daughter could not skype:

I mean, in England she really complained: “Yes, they switched off the Internet again,” and then she expected me to see if I can take care of it. I say: “I can’t do that. How am I supposed to get in contact with them? You’ll have to do that yourself.”

(Ms. Meier, E19, 203)

A common feature of the guidance parents provided during the school year abroad is the “emotional labor” (Hochschild, 1983) that they perform when communicating with their children.8 In order not to jeopardize the continuation of the stay abroad, the child is encouraged in his or her actions, while questions concerning possible difficulties are avoided and circumnavigated, and the parents’ own emotions, like a longing for the child, are held back. In this vein Ms. Arndt reports about her talks with her son:

I do say: “I miss you,” because I think everything else is bad. But, of course, I don’t say it in a way – now that this emotional Christmas time is coming up, I will really have to hold back and … of course, both in emails and verbally when we skype, it is quite clear that I will listen to what he is saying and encourage him and tell him, as I said, “Oh, here we’re missing someone for the decorating,” you know, “but next year you’ll be back again and then we’ll do it.”

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 72)

Ms. Mertens, in turn, mentioned that her son is struggling a bit in his American host family because there are different expectations and behavioral rules than he is used to from home. On the phone, she therefore tries to dampen his agitation:

So, on the phone, it happened more often that I – I don’t want to say “comfort him,” he wasn’t upset, but he did say: “Phew, I could just really give them a piece of my mind now.” Then I say: “You’d better not, just leave it, it doesn’t achieve anything anyway, and it will be over eventually and they are not your parents, and you do not have to bang on the table there and say: ‘I think that’s very petty’ or, or, it is how it is.”

(Ms. Mertens, E5, 77)

And Ms. Köhler describes that her older daughter was very sad on her birthday because nobody from the host family had wished her a happy birthday in the morning. When she was crying about it in a Skype conversation with her mother and younger sister, Ms. Köhler tried to influence her older daughter’s emotional state:

I tried to say something like: “That’s just cultural differences, now wait a bit, the day isn’t over yet.” […] And the little one goes: “Yes, but they can say happy birthday at least!” Always straight into the wound, so I thought: “Oh, boy,” I felt like kicking her in the shin under the table, along the lines of: “Now we’re convincing her that those are cultural differences and that it will resolve itself somehow.” Yes, and that’s how it turned out in the end [because in the evening, the host family had organized a celebration at a restaurant for the daughter].

(Ms. Köhler, E21, 67)

Such indirectly controlling modes of communication are especially typical for the “concerted cultivation” parenting style, which is characteristic of both the Arndt and Mertens families; but they can also be found in families that have a mixed parenting style, as the example of Ms. Köhler shows.

Return issues and future expectations in connection with the school year abroad

Since the school year abroad is usually not the end of the child’s school career, it ultimately leads to the question of how the child should proceed after his or her time abroad. First, we are interested here in what parents do to prepare for their child’s reintegration into school after his or her return from abroad. Second, we’ll look at what expectations the parents have concerning their child’s school year abroad – that is, to what extent they are hoping that the transnational human capital generated during the school year abroad can be converted into other forms of capital later on.

(1) Parents and students often plan the reintegration after returning from abroad long before the time comes. One key issue that needs to be clarified is what grade the child should be assigned to after return. Some of the parents we interviewed had initially thought of having the school year abroad credited within the German system, hence avoiding an extension of the overall time spent in school, but abandoned this idea for various reasons. Generally, however, all the interviewed parents – regardless of class position – considered the extension of their child’s school time due to the year abroad as unproblematic; for some, this was, as described, even a desired effect, because they consider the value of this additional year to be much higher than the value of a shorter time in school.

In addition, many young people have to specify during their year abroad at their school what subjects they want to choose after their return in the coming school year. Therefore, many parents make sure that the school subjects their child studies abroad do not deviate too much from the subjects he or she will choose upon return. They also expect that their child will have to repeat certain topics after his or her return. This is intended to facilitate the children’s reentry to school upon return:

I mean, there are some things he will certainly have to catch up on, other things then again … since there are these advanced courses [when he is back], there are certain areas you can focus on. Therefore, he also took biology there, which he wants to choose as an advanced course here later on. You have to do math anyway, and he does it, so I really see no problems in that respect. There may be some, but we’ll see.

(Mr. Hoffmann, E13, 24)

On this point, however, there are not any noticeable differences between the families related to their capital positions or parenting styles. In fact, the parents’ statements about increased performance demands in schools and a greater competition for college or training places compared to in the past suggest that parents nowadays are generally concerned that their child gets the best possible Abitur.

The situation is somewhat different, however, if the child attends a boarding school abroad. While the time abroad is limited to a maximum of one school year in student exchange programs and the return to Germany is determined in advance, attending boarding school opens the possibility to extend the stay and thus acquire a high school diploma abroad. Under certain circumstances, this may allow the child to gain entrance to university, just like the German Abitur does. Due to the costs, this option is available only for families with very high economic capital, however.

(2) In relation to the “expected returns” parents anticipate from their child’s school year abroad, we can distinguish between educational, vocational, cultural, personality-related, and symbolic expectations. In terms of education, all parents believe that their child’s foreign language skills will improve. Many also assume that the stay abroad will lead to better grades in the foreign language. A widespread idea among the parents we interviewed (and their children) is therefore to choose English as an advanced course for the Abitur. Ms. Friedrich, for example, explains:

Apart from the fact that the experience abroad, the independence, and of course the language learning played a major role for us, we had thought that after 10th grade – before the stressful Abitur period – she would perhaps have another nice year during which she would get a bit of distance from school – even though she’s still going to school there, but the grades and hence the pressure are not that important – […] and, obviously, that she can also use her language skills for her further school career – because she wants to take English as an advanced course.

(Ms. Friedrich, E4, 10)

Regarding the parent’s professional expectations, there are clear class differences. Parents who themselves attended college quite naturally assume that their child is going to go to college after the Abitur; some parents from this group also consider going abroad to university as reasonable and feasible. Parents without an academic education, however, are more cautious on this point, expressing their hope that their child might study at university. This result reflects general educational sociological findings, according to which in Germany children from university-attending families have a much higher probability of going to college than children of parents who did not study at university (Mayer et al., 2007; Schindler and Lörz, 2012).

So I mean, of course that is also another aspect, which certainly has a positive effect, I would think. But we were not really thinking of this. So I think it was more this idea to just get to know another culture and the language somehow, maturation and so on.

(Ms. Ludwig, E6, 75)

In the statements of the parents with non-university educational backgrounds, these cultural aspects also play a role, but overall, the expectations for the school year abroad are clearly more instrumental. Since it is often not clear in these families if the child will study at university after the Abitur or begin an apprenticeship, job-related expectations are more dominant. Ms. Krüger says, for example,

Yes, so I think it’s just good for her confidence, for her independence, and I just think that later, when she is applying for a job and there are two people, then this will perhaps be her advantage when one says she had a year abroad.

(Ms. Krüger, E10, 105)

As it becomes clear here, these parents interpret the job-related advantage of a year abroad with regard to future job interviews. They hope that the year abroad will benefit their child on the labor market as an additional skill. And since foreign language or English language skills (see Chapter 2) are currently in high demand on the labor market, the foreign language skills acquired during a stay abroad can actually provide advantages in certain labor market segments.

This difference in the nature of the job-related expected returns of parents is also reflected in their different evaluations of the symbolic value of the school year abroad. As the quote from Ms. Krüger shows, parents with a medium and lower institutionalized cultural capital actually attribute a distinct value to the school year abroad in professional terms. By contrast, parents with a university background tend to deny this. In response to the question of whether such a year abroad would give children an advantage compared to others, Ms. Mertens replied,

Well, that, I think, I have not mentioned at all, right? That is not what I … […] yes, that you have mastered a language and thereby set yourself apart, but we both have jobs, we know – I speak English very well and so does my husband, we are a different generation, so I doubt that you’ll still set yourself apart with good English today. So in that sense, no, I would not say that.

(Ms. Mertens, E5, 121)

The fact that this group of parents ascribes the school year abroad hardly any distinctive value is justified in relation to their own reference group: since foreign languages and experience abroad are not a rarity among their child’s friends or in their own personal and professional environment, their child’s year abroad is apparently nothing special. In fact, “speaking English is simply a prerequisite in today’s world,” as another interviewee remarks (Ms. Arndt, E7, 82). In the context of the other families on the other hand, speaking fluent English or another foreign language does not go without saying. These parents therefore certainly attribute a difference-creating value to the school year abroad. There is no contradiction between these different perspectives on the distinctive value of a school year abroad. Instead, they rather show a specific “feel for the game,” a “sense of investment” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 62; 2004, p. 28), which allows parents with transnational human capital to support the project of a school year abroad for their child without having a specific calculus or concrete expected returns.

4.2 Three types of families: the transnationally accomplished, the excluded, and the ambitious

Using the previous process analysis, we were able to show how the familial capital, the parenting styles, and hence the associated practices and strategies of families in the various stages of the decision process contribute to making the school year abroad a reality or to ending further discussion of this topic. In this, it has clearly emerged that the possibility of completing a school year abroad not only depends on economic capital. In fact, it is also significantly affected by whether the parents themselves already have transnational human capital and to what extent the family’s social capital connects transnationally. In cases with a poor capital position, specific compensation strategies also play a role, even if they cannot guarantee that the child will be able to participate in the school year abroad.

In the process analysis, the individual interviews were dissected according to analytical categories. However, this cross-sectional perspective has its price, in that the view of the connections between the dimensions and above all of specific families gets lost. We will therefore supplement the process analysis with portraits of exemplary families (methodological notes to be found in the appendix). We thus link our data to types that each illustrate a class-specific way of dealing with the issue of a school year abroad. With this, our substantive focus also shifts slightly: in the center of the process analysis stands the question of how the different types of capital, education practices, and strategies affect the (non)realization of a school year abroad. By contrast, in generating this typology, we are widening our view to encompass the parents’ general educational efforts and ask what importance the acquisition of transnational human capital has in general and the practice of the school year abroad in particular.

Our analysis of the interview material has revealed three different types of families, which we have given the following designations: the transnationally accomplished, the excluded, and the ambitious. Table 4.2 summarizes the comparative dimensions and characteristics of the three types. Of the 26 cases, 11 belong to the transnationally accomplished (in 8 cases the child spent a school year abroad), 3 to the excluded (of which no child went abroad), and 8 to the ambitious (of which all children experienced a school year abroad). Four families could not be categorized precisely for case-specific reasons. At the same time, they do not constitute a type of their own (see appendix).

Table 4.2 The comparative dimensions of the typology

	The transnationally accomplished	The excluded	The ambitious

1. Parental forms of capital
Economic capital Institutionalized cultural capital	High to medium High	Medium to low Medium	Medium to low Medium
Transnational human capital	High	Low	Low
Social capital (degree of transnationalization)	High	Low	Low
2. Child-rearing approach
Child-rearing approach	“Concerted cultivation”	Mix between “concerted cultivation” and “natural growth”	Mix between “concerted cultivation” and “natural growth”
3. Acquisition of transnational human capital as part of the general educational strategy
Acquisition of transnational human capital as a distinct educational goal (independent from a school year abroad)	Yes, the acquisition of transnational human capital is encouraged beyond school.	No, the acquisition of transnational human capital is covered by school education.	No, the acquisition of transnational human capital is covered by school education.
Embeddedness of the school year abroad within the general educational strategy	Yes, as part of efforts to ensure social reproduction.	No.	Yes, as part of the efforts to achieve upward social mobility/avoid downward mobility.
4. Initiator
Significance of the child's motivation for spending a school year abroad	The child’s motivation is secondary (due to familial transmission processes and as it is seen by parents as “producible”); parents are the driving force.	The child’s motivation would be a necessary requirement, but is lacking; parents are not a driving force.	The child’s motivation is a necessary requirement; either parents or children can be the driving force.

For the transnationally accomplished, the acquisition of transnational human capital is an integral and self-evident part of the family plan. Even in the cases where such families have only a moderate endowment with economic capital, the idea of a school year abroad is not habitually unfamiliar to these parents. This is because they have a high degree of transnational human capital themselves. For this type, the appropriation of transnational human capital through the child is part of a comprehensive parental attempt to reproduce their own class position. For the other two types, however, the acquisition of transnational human capital is limited to the domestic school enrollment. Due to their differently structured capital resources, a year abroad is not an obvious or “natural” option. Although some of these families also have moderate economic capital, other class-related factors generally ensure that the completion of a school year abroad is unlikely. Generally, the excluded and the ambitious are very similar in many analytical dimensions. However, they differ in the way the topic of a school year abroad is treated when it is discussed within the family. While it is usually not followed up by the former group, the latter group – due to the specific actions of either the parents or the child – manages to pursue the subject. From the perspective of the ambitious, a school year abroad provides an extraordinary opportunity for their child’s social advancement.

The transnationally accomplished: a school year abroad as a “natural” consequence of the family’s class background

The Arndt family is typical for the transnationally accomplished, who are usually part of the upper middle classes. The interview with Ms. Arndt takes place in a café in a wealthy neighborhood, where Mr. and Ms. Arndt live with their two children in a condominium. Ms. Arndt has a confident and vibrant personality. After obtaining her Abitur and completing vocational training, she worked in the service sector for several years. She then decided to “give priority to the family” for a little over a decade. As part of this commitment, she also hosted international colleagues of her husband. Mr. Arndt graduated from university and now works in the management of the local branch of an international company. This requires frequent international travel. Apart from the family’s high institutionalized cultural capital, the Arndts also belong to the higher income segments, given a monthly net equivalent income of between €2,200 and €2,600.

Both children attend a Gymnasium school. Their son is currently spending a school year in the United States. He will return to finish his Abitur and continue with university education, as Ms. Arndt assumes. The younger daughter will also go abroad. In his leisure time, the son sings in a choir, plays basketball, and likes to read. He and his sister were encouraged to participate in choir practice by their mother, who has herself done so for many years. In view of these cultural practices, Ms. Arndt laughingly characterizes her family as “typically Bildungsbürgertum” (educated bourgeoisie). The Arndts’ child-rearing approach can thus clearly be characterized as a “concerted cultivation” style. They continuously stimulate their children’s development through educational activities and practice a style of communication that favors dialogue over strict command.

Mr. and Ms. Arndt both possess high transnational human capital. During her childhood, Ms. Arndt often paid visits to her parents’ French friends in Paris. Mr. Arndt has travelled abroad extensively because of his job. They have excellent foreign language skills (both speak English and French fluently), considerable international experience, and a habitual cosmopolitan orientation.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that it has been Mr. and Ms. Arndt’s concern to provide their children with transnational human capital from an early age. They exhibit a host of habitual practices and calculated strategies that aim at equipping their children with a positive stance and an interest in seeking experience abroad. This process of transmission of embodied transnational human capital happens quite casually, as the following quote illustrates:

As long as they can think they have always experienced, for example, how English or French or both were spoken at the table, because we had friends or colleagues over. And for us, for my husband and myself, it is just very important to have such an international idea, well, from all over the world.

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 48)

A further step in making their son acquainted with transnational experiences was a one-week stay with a host family in England, organized by his school. Ms. Arndt calls this a sheltered “initiation,” since it was the first time her son had to manage alone in a new environment. Then, when it became clear that he would go abroad for a longer period, his parents tried to prepare him more explicitly:

When my husband travelled to America time and again and he brought something along or when we were in America with the kids in Florida or something – we would say: “Alright, now you look around and so on, so you already know where you’ll be later on.” So, in a way it grew with the kids. Our daughter knows, too, that “it’s her turn next year,” so to speak.

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 52)

Additionally, the Arndts’ social capital facilitated the preparation of the school year abroad. There were numerous children in their social circle – both their son’s classmates and children of their friends and acquaintances – who had gone abroad or were planning to do so. Thus, they could rely on information and experience provided by their social contacts. In turn, the son’s reaction to his parents’ suggestion to go abroad seems to have been quite positive. However, Ms. Arndt does not further delve into her son’s own motives to go abroad.

Accordingly, the objective that the Arndts pursue with a school year abroad is not only the improvement of foreign language skills but also the development of the child’s personality and interaction with other cultures. The year abroad should help “to gain life experience […] and not only school experience,” as Ms. Arndt comments. A school year abroad is thus also a way to gain attitudes and dispositions which conform to the parents’ own cosmopolitan orientation. The parents consider positive consequences for their child’s future school performance and career as possible, but this point clearly plays a subordinate role.

When it came to the organization of the school year abroad, Mr. and Ms. Arndt further benefited from their advantageous capital endowment. Mr. Arndt’s social contacts allowed him to find a host family in the United States, and Ms. Arndt could take care of the selection of a local high school thanks to her English language skills. The exchange organization officially in charge merely provided administrative assistance. This way, Mr. and Ms. Arndt were largely able to organize their son’s stay as they saw fit. By choosing a host family, they were sure to have their child in a social environment not too different from their own:

I looked at reviews of the high school before, because you hear horror stories of arms control and so on. And that is just like everywhere, the catchment area of the high school of course recruits from people that live there. Accordingly, where he lives now – that was very important to us – that is a really well-todo neighborhood. I’d say: comparable to [our neighborhood], so that you can expect people to be reasonable.

(Ms. Arndt, E7, 64)

The Arndts’ pursuit of a “social fit” illustrates that the whole undertaking is not about offering their son entirely different cultural experiences. Rather, it has the function of reassuring him on his anticipated life trajectory; overly profound experiences of otherness would be more of a disturbance. Thus, the school year abroad is embedded in the parents’ general educational efforts, and occurs, given the familial background and social environment, almost naturally. The family’s advantageous capital endowment, the particular communicative control of the child, and the invisible transmission of cultural capital are crucial in this regard. Going to school abroad can thus be understood as part and parcel of the efforts of the upper middle classes at social reproduction.9

The excluded: a school year abroad as an unfamiliar option

The Krause family is characteristic of the second type, the excluded, who usually belong to the lower middle classes. The interview with Ms. Krause takes place in a four-story apartment building in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. Ms. Krause lives there with her husband and two children, a son and a daughter. Their small living room contains a sofa, a big, modern flat-screen TV, and shelves displaying DVDs, CDs, some bestsellers and guidebooks, a couple of photos, and bric-a-brac.

After completing the Realschule and vocational training, Ms. Krause worked as a clerk before she retired early for health reasons a couple of years ago. Mr. Krause finished the Hauptschule and completed vocational training as well. He works as a police officer. The family’s institutionalized cultural capital is thus of a medium level. Together, they have a relatively low net equivalent income of between €800 and €1,200 per month. Their international experience is restricted to a few holiday trips abroad, and they do not have friends or family abroad. None of their children’s acquaintances has been abroad for an extended period, nor is there anyone planning a school year abroad. Thus, the Krauses’ transnational human capital and the degree of transnationality of their social capital are comparatively low.

The Krauses’ son left comprehensive school after tenth grade and now works in the retail sector. Their younger daughter – about the right age to go abroad – is currently finishing the tenth grade at a comprehensive school. She wants to become an office clerk. Ms. Krause did not intervene in her daughter’s decision, although, originally, she had different occupational ambitions for her. Instead, she is happy her daughter has found a training position, because “everyone must have vocational training nowadays – no matter what job.”

Her daughter spends her leisure time listening to music, chatting, or meeting up with friends to “hang out,” as Ms. Krause says. She used to play sports, but, as Ms. Krause comments ironically, “that does not suit puberty.” Though Ms. Krause tried to encourage her children to partake in different activities, they did not develop a long-standing interest. Her child-rearing approach thus resembles a combination of “concerted cultivation” and “natural growth.” Parents of this type endeavor to stimulate their child’s development by making suggestions, but the subtle and insistent persuasion that would make it difficult for the child to simply refuse is lacking. Instead, parents more easily accept their child’s expressions of disinterestedness or sheer refusal, and the child does not have to extensively justify him- or herself argumentatively.

The acquisition of transnational human capital beyond foreign language education at school does not play any role. Nor do the Krauses encourage their children to engage with other countries and cultures. In contrast to the transnationally accomplished, they do not exhibit the habits and practices that would familiarize their children with the idea of going abroad. However, the possibility of attending school abroad is not completely unknown. Ms. Krause heard of it through acquaintances, and she even talked to her daughter about it, though she had concerns about how to finance such a trip. Her daughter, however, refused in such a way that the issue was not discussed any further: “No, she does not want that at all. And then: no friends and … no.” Faced with such a reaction, the transnationally accomplished would probably still try to convince their child, whereas Ms. Krause simply dropped the topic.

Nonetheless, Ms. Krause acknowledges that international experience is a relevant asset in today’s labor market:

Ms. Krause: Unfortunately, yes. It is indeed important. And it is increasingly required. And for some time I have been reading the [local newspaper] and there are indeed some positions that require it. And, yes, I think it is actually good, it’s not wrong. Why not? Nowadays, when one has the possibility, one should take every chance.

Interviewer: You just said “unfortunately,” maybe you could explain this …

Ms. Krause: Yes, because my ki[-ds] – well, there are also people who do not like to go abroad as much, and for them it is of course a handicap to compete … it’s not possible at all, I’d think, because the other person, who brings in more experience, will be preferred anyway. Then … I do think that such a year abroad offers a lot and that you can learn a lot from it.

(Ms. Krause, E23, 183–185)

This quote illustrates that international experience is less connected to an idea of developing one’s personality than to a perspective that views it instrumentally as an enhancement of one’s job prospects. Because her children lack such experience, Ms. Krause fears they could be disadvantaged.

Compared to the transnationally accomplished, it is not only the disadvantageous capital endowment of the excluded that makes the project of a school year abroad so difficult. Likewise, they lack a parenting style that would prepare their children step-by-step for such an experience and a style of communication that would allow the parents to follow up on the idea in spite of the children’s initial negative reaction. In addition, going to school abroad is in no way connected to the parents’ general educational efforts. Therefore, even though the idea might come up at some point by coincidence, these children generally remain excluded from going to school abroad.

The ambitious: a school year abroad as an extraordinary opportunity

Families of the third type, the “ambitious,” are similar to the excluded in terms of their capital endowment and child-rearing approach. They are also predominantly found among the lower middle classes. Nevertheless, they succeed in going abroad in one of two different ways, which we illustrate by drawing on two families: either through the parents’ special commitment or due to the children’s insistence.

The first way is represented by the Köhler family. Ms. Köhler lives with her son and daughter in a four-room duplex in an apartment building in a residential neighborhood. The interview takes place in the living room, which appears a bit cramped, but lively. Ms. Köhler speaks with a touch of a local accent and has an energetic and outspoken manner. After finishing the Realschule, she began as a dentist’s assistant, but then started to work in the accounting sector of a commercial company where she has now been for many years. Thus, her institutional cultural capital lies on a medium level. The family’s economic capital – Ms. Köhler has been a single mother and earner for around ten years – can be regarded as low given a monthly net equivalent income of around €500 to €1,000. The children’s father, with whom both still have good contact, also finished the Realschule and vocational training.

Ms. Köhler’s daughter is enrolled in a comprehensive school, and her younger son attends a Gymnasium. When her daughter finished primary school, Ms. Köhler received the recommendation to enroll her in a Realschule, but she chose a comprehensive school instead: “because I always had the hope: maybe the penny drops and so on, and then she isn’t stuck, but has the option to go on.” This example points out Ms. Köhler’s general efforts to offer her children further educational options even though these seem unattainable given the children’s past educational achievements. However, Ms. Köhler does not put a special emphasis on the acquisition of transnational human capital beyond the school context.

In their leisure time, the children like to meet up with friends or go to the cinema, “just the usual,” as Ms. Köhler notes. She also tries to encourage her children to follow a regular hobby – for example, sports: “I’d say, ‘do some sport,’ [and they would say] ‘No, I don’t know anybody there and I just don’t know what.’” Thus, Ms. Köhler practices a child-rearing approach between “natural growth” and “concerted cultivation,” much like the excluded.

The Köhlers’ transnational human capital and the transnational references in their social capital are low. Ms. Köhler calls her own English skills “a catastrophe.” Apart from holiday trips, she did not acquire any international experience. Among her friends and acquaintances, only one was abroad for an extended period; nor do her children know anyone who has been abroad in school.

Despite this adverse starting position, Ms. Köhler’s daughter went to school in the United States for one year. Her son will probably go abroad as well. The idea emerged when reading a free local newspaper. Ever since, the idea was “at the back of my mind,” says Ms. Köhler. Talking to her children, the question arose of “whether they would like to do it themselves, and actually both were in favor.” Without their acquiescence and long-lasting interest, however, she would not have followed up on this plan:

Well, maybe you try to do some convincing, but if they do not themselves say: “Yes, I want to do this,” then … then the risk, that they end it early would be too high. And it’s too expensive for that. If after two months they’d say: “Okay, I’m coming back now,” and you have, I don’t know, tossed to the wind €10,000 – no. So the conviction has to be there, and I think it does not make much sense otherwise.

(Ms. Köhler, E21, 127)

The difference from the excluded is that Ms. Köhler pushed forward the project with great commitment, once she was convinced that her children were really interested in going abroad. She attended the Q&A meetings offered by the exchange organization, which are important for the ambitious, because they allow for an exchange of information these families cannot obtain among their own social circles. This further strengthened Ms. Köhler’s dedication to send her children abroad. She also attempted to acquire additional financing, such as government grants and scholarships, and limited her private consumption.

Ms. Köhler is so committed because she has clear expectations regarding possible benefits. Much like Ms. Arndt, she expects her daughter to grow as a person by becoming more self-reliant and improving her language skills. But this expectation is far more instrumental, mirroring that of the excluded. For Ms. Köhler, a school year abroad is a good “starter kit,” as she repeatedly says in the interview, for her children’s professional future:

And actually my personal incentive is to give the kids, well, a better start in their professional career. Because, nobody can tell me this kind of stay abroad has no positive effect on your CV. Because, I don’t want to have kids that end up, I don’t know, in the retail sector, sitting at a cash register somewhere […] and being unhappy all their lives, never earning decent money and forever having to struggle to make ends meet. […] They should stand on their own two feet and live a full life as much as possible, and somehow do professionally what they want, and not just what came by […] because of lacking qualifications.

(Ms. Köhler, E21, 23)

This assessment results from experiences during Ms. Köhler’s own professional career. She is witnessing how her employer increasingly requires English skills in mid-level positions as well. Thus, it will be far more difficult for her children to attain occupational positions similar to her own by following the same educational and professional path. In light of these changes, the school year abroad becomes part of the parents’ general efforts to provide their children with educational and professional opportunities in order to avoid downward social mobility.

The second way to overcome class-specific obstacles to a school year abroad is illustrated by the Becker family, whose son also went to school in the United States. In contrast to the Köhlers, where a parent was the driving force, the child played the decisive role here. While the Beckers, whose monthly income falls into the “medium” category, are better off economically than the Köhlers, they are very similar with regard to the other forms of capital. Both families also resemble each other in terms of their child-rearing approach and in limiting the acquisition of transnational human capital to the school context.

Accordingly, the Becker family came across the idea of a school year abroad only due to a third party. In their case, it was their son’s teacher who mentioned the issue in class. When the son raised the idea at home, the Beckers just could not imagine sending their son abroad. Their attitude changed only because he persisted despite their initial reaction. He made inquiries and contacted former exchange students via the Internet because, personally, he did not know anyone who had been abroad. Eventually, his parents acquiesced, as Ms. Becker recounts:

Well, because he really took the initiative to look up organizations […], he requested catalogues, to which we then said: “But look, they offer language trips abroad as well; just do a language trip now, and then again and here again,” but he was then like: “But mom, if I take three language study trips, look how much money that costs! Just let me go once and then everything is done and I’ll come back for sure.” His efforts at persuasion, trying to convince me, how important it was for him and how great and […] He really put his shoulder to the wheel. You just have to give in at some point.

(Ms. Becker, E16, 27–29)

There are two reasons why the Beckers were finally convinced by their son, apart from his insistence: first, they judge their child’s personality as very “cosmopolitan” and “without reservation” towards strangers. This matches their perception of such traits being a prerequisite for going abroad and enables them to perceive the whole undertaking as sensible, despite their own habitual distance. Second, like Ms. Köhler, they had the impression at their jobs that “without language skills, good language skills, you almost have no professional opportunities.” Thus, they see a school year abroad as crucial for their son’s professional future, as something “no one can take away from him” (Mr. Becker, E16, 53). Transnational human capital is hence perceived as an additional credential and a suitable means of ensuring the child’s social position.

To conclude, let us come back to the embedding of our qualitative analysis in the overall context of the general argument. In our view, it is one of the weaknesses of quantitative educational research that it cannot or can only partially reconstruct the translation of familial preconditions into concrete parenting practices. That leaves the causal mechanisms that lead to an “inheritance” of inequalities poorly understood. But if one supplements a quantitative analysis with a qualitative reconstruction of the practices and interpretations of the actors involved, then one can gain information about the specific processes and mechanisms for acquiring education in general and transnational human capital in particular. We were able to show how, for families with a higher class position, the acquisition of transnational human capital is embedded in parenting practices and how the different forms of capital facilitate the planning and implementation of their school year abroad significantly. Through this, they contribute considerably to the accumulation of transnational human capital on the part of the child. In the parenting practices of families from a lower-class position, acquiring transnational human capital does not play a big role, and their poor endowment with the various types of capital makes the completion of a school year abroad rather unlikely. But we were also able to reconstruct how certain strategies help some families from the lower middle classes to allow their child to attend a school abroad despite their limited capital endowments. The ambitious type makes it clear that under certain circumstances, people can leave the iron cage of class membership, which is strongly imputed in Bourdieu’s theory, to a certain extent.

1 Parts of this chapter have been published in Carlson, S., Gerhards, J., and Hans, S. (2016): “Educating Children in Times of Globalisation: Class-Specific Child-Rearing Practices and the Acquisition of Transnational Cultural Capital.” Sociology, online first, DOI: 10.1177/0038038515618601 by SAGE, all rights reserved, available at http://soc.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/11/0038038515618601.abstract.

2 As we will explain later, our interview material did not provide evidence of this opposition between “concerted cultivation” and “natural growth,” but rather an opposition between “concerted cultivation” on one hand and a mixed form between “concerted cultivation” and “natural growth” on the other. This is due to the fact that, unlike Annette Lareau, we did not interview lower-class parents, instead contrasting parents from the lower and upper middle classes.

3 The classification of the capital endowment of individual families is based on statements made by the respondents in the interviews, on the information provided in the supplementary questionnaire on their income and education, and on the researchers’ recorded impressions of the living and the interview situations.

4 In order to compare the household income of the interviewed families, each net equivalent income was calculated and this value was compared with representative data from the Federal Statistical Office (2012, p. 24) for the year 2011. A net equivalent income within the first three deciles of the population – that is, up to a monthly limit of approximately €1,230 – is classified as “low.” The next four deciles, up to a maximum of about €2,040 a month, are considered a “medium” economic capital position. Families whose net equivalent income is higher – that is, within the remaining three deciles – are classified as having “high” incomes.

5 All interview quotes are translated from German to English; omissions and alterations are denoted by square brackets; three dots signal a short pause. Quotes from the organizational interviews are characterized by an “O”, the parent interviews with an “E,” and the number of the interview and the paragraph in the transcript from which the quotation was taken. All information that would reveal the identity of the interviewed families or organizations has been anonymized.

6 This was also due to educational reforms, which led some German states to shorten the number of years of schooling until graduation from 13 to 12 years.

7 This does not mean that privately organized stays abroad are “better” or more likely to be successful. For example, Mr. and Ms. Albrecht’s daughter changed host family, as she did not feel comfortable there, even though the parents had previously made considerable efforts to find an appropriate family.

8 This point is particularly apparent in the statements of the interviewed mothers, who usually deal only with their own point of view and tend to hide the role of the fathers in the communication with the child.

9 Even though, for this type, a school year abroad is an obvious educational strategy, it does not mean that it inevitably happens. If, for example, the child can give convincing reasons for not going abroad, these families make sure that transnational human capital is acquired in other ways – for example, by going abroad as a university student.

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The emergence of the issue of the school year abroad in the family

The reaction of parents and children to, and negotiations on, the subject

Putting the school year abroad into practice

Parental support of the child during the school year abroad

Return issues and future expectations in connection with the school year abroad

The transnationally accomplished: a school year abroad as a “natural” consequence of the family’s class background

The excluded: a school year abroad as an unfamiliar option

The ambitious: a school year abroad as an extraordinary opportunity

4
Strategic investments

4.1 Step-by-step: the school year abroad as the result of a multistage (decision) process

4.2 Three types of families: the transnationally accomplished, the excluded, and the ambitious

Notes

References

4Strategic investments

4.1 Step-by-step: the school year abroad as the result of a multistage (decision) process

The emergence of the issue of the school year abroad in the family

The reaction of parents and children to, and negotiations on, the subject

Putting the school year abroad into practice

Parental support of the child during the school year abroad

Return issues and future expectations in connection with the school year abroad

4.2 Three types of families: the transnationally accomplished, the excluded, and the ambitious

The transnationally accomplished: a school year abroad as a “natural” consequence of the family’s class background

The excluded: a school year abroad as an unfamiliar option

The ambitious: a school year abroad as an extraordinary opportunity

Notes

References

4
Strategic investments