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An editorial is presented on providing a forum for studies of class, education, and parenting hailing from a range of cultural contexts and social groups. Topics include entrenchment of neoliberalism, increasing competition, and expansion of educational choices; and considering class, education, and parenting in the era of globalization showing both the physical movement of families; and internationalization expanding the field of parenting and class reproduction.

This paper explores the status of girls' education in the schools of rural Balochistan in Pakistan, and examines the dimensions of access, enrolment and retention. In order to explore the complexities of this governmental problem, we will propose the concept of postcolonial Islamic governmentality. Drawing on Foucault's work on the arts of government, with Dean's (2010) writing on illiberal governmentalities, and the work of Salehin (2016) on pious governmentality in Bangladesh, we will suggest that postcolonial Islamic governmentalities emerge at the intersections of the legacies of British colonialism in Pakistan's post-colonial governance; the influence of processes of neo-liberal globalisation in the policies of developing countries by donor countries, development NGOs and the SDGs; and the forms of Islamic governance embedded in the juridical, cultural, social and gender relations of Pakistan as a postcolonial, Islamic state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how nursing education both exemplifies the contradictions of neoliberalism alongside its seemingly all-encompassing influence. We conduct a feminist critical policy analysis to trace the histories of nursing as a feminised vocation located outside the academy, and how this is reflected in recent policy. We then critically explore widening participation and social mobility in relation to nursing education, and demonstrate how a discourse of fairness is used to justify market solutions. The 'special case' of nursing is considered through an analysis of how 'the nurse' as subject is constituted in education policy discourse. Our discussion focuses on the effects of these reforms and demonstrates how historical discourses that centre on women as carers are assimilated into the 'neoliberal social imaginary'. The paper's scope is both local – the gendered history of nursing education in England – and global – the force of neoliberal globalisation in education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that a transnational elite class is emerging, and that elite schools are 'choreographing' this process. This article nuances this developing theoretical framework with empirical data from an economically elite boarding school in Switzerland. It demonstrates that young men and women at this site linked to a global economy whilst refracting geopolitical tensions in their interactions with one another. This draws our attention to the multi-sited understandings that elite young people develop, despite the widespread assumption that in modern globalisation, wealth can break down cultural and juridical borders. This paper thus importantly contributes to an emerging discussion about the possibilities and constraints of transnational class formation at elite schools. In particular, it suggests that different kinds of elite schools may fill different kinds of roles when it comes to such processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, we argued that, when it comes to sociology of education, the lives and education of refugee children were invisible. Sociology of education was 'a wasteland' as far as studies of the social effects of migration were concerned. Here, we revisit this argument exploring whether education and migration has been developed into a viable specialism in the discipline, and whether one of the great societal challenges of our age is being addressed. Examining the work published on migration and education since 2005 in BJSE, we see that the majority of studies focus on the global mobility of students and on school experiences of migrant children. While these are valuable foci, what is missing is a more extensive consideration of how 'the age of migration' and the characteristics of global migration in the 21st century challenge the values, the policies and practices associated with state education institutions and social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the importance of ‘self-determination’ and ‘hard work’ found within interviews with a group of young people in Manchester, England. The author suggests that moments of apparent contradiction within the interviews have much to offer, particularly when analysed in relation to discussions of inequality and political economy. Data from this paper show that while the young people mostly spoke about work choices in primarily individualistic ways, they used the recession as a means to acknowledge that acquiring jobs simply cannot just be about ‘choice’ or working hard, but is also configured by the market and structural inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The reviews of papers for refereed journals are rarely a source of exhilaration, only occasionally a pleasure and frequently dispiriting. Using peer reviews of research containing Chinese concepts, this paper explores different ways of thinking about knowledge, its evaluation and transfer. Bourdieu's concepts of fields of power, position taking, positioning and honour provide a framework whereby peer reviews are positioned as integral to scholarly argumentation. They are used to test efforts to connect Chinese ideas into the global dynamics of research-based knowledge, and to teach early career researchers about how to engage in academic disputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of globalisation and hegemonic neoliberalism, the state's ability to legitimate the economic system and its own policies cannot be assumed as a positive automatic effect. The economic and political conditions that once framed state action have changed, and it is reasonable to think that the emergence of a new accumulation regime implies also a shift in the traditional strategies used by the nation-state to legitimate its policy-making. This paper reviews how the neoliberal educational agenda develops a new political rationality that changes the traditional forms in which the state has managed its legitimation crisis. In addition, the paper argues that context-based factors, nationally specific, show that this political rationality may not be uniformly applied among different nation-states. The case of semiperipheral countries provides some evidence on the necessary combination of old and new strategies developed by the state to legitimate a neoliberal agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two closely related and over-determining myths have shaped government inspired policy towards Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and education: the one is the irresistible power of globalisation, the other is the determining effect of technology. The result of both is to present the acceptance of e-learning throughout the education system as inevitable. The space for practitioners in Higher Education is either to embrace the new media enthusiastically or to stand aside and watch its inevitable unfolding. In this paper we develop a critical stance towards the dominant discourse and suggest that the shape of new media in education can be, and is being, contested. We argue against both technological determinism and the passive acceptance of the neo-liberal globalisation paradigm. No technologies are neutral. They are always the products of real historical social relations as well as the emergent technical capacities they provide. ICTs as artefacts and social processes are already inscribed with gendered assumptions and the accumulation strategies of their purveyors. Moreover, the conditions under which e-learning is being introduced into education are shaped by managerialist agendas. Placing pedagogy at the forefront is therefore to struggle over the terms and shape of the media adopted. We can see this at both the micro and macro level. Our paper exposes the emperor's new clothes while arguing that there is space for critical discourses that can more meaningfully engage with socially available technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Critical Theory, a model of theorizing in the field of the political sociology of education. We argue for a reimagined Critical Theory to herald an empowering, liberatory education that fosters curiosity and critical thinking, and a means for successful bottom-up, top-down political engagement. We present arguments at a theoretical and meta-theoretical level, leaving empirical analysis to a future writing. We hold it impossible: to fully dissociate normative from the analytical in constructing scientific thought, thus showing the importance of the notion of a good society to guide varied intellectual explorations; to deny the political role of education; and to detach from historicity of thought and policy prescriptions emerging from such theorizing, as not all social constructions are equal in terms of logical configuration, methodological rigor, or solid empirical proof. What follows are snapshots of how we can reimagine the historical present, and how Critical Theory can impact the new theorizing of sociology of education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the Japanese history textbook controversy over 'comfort women' to tease out insights that help globalize the existing theoretical discussion of politics of school knowledge. I begin by documenting how the domestic struggles over Japanese history textbooks are empowered and disempowered by the regional and international power relations. Using the Japanese case, I first problematize the use of hegemony in critical scholarship wherein struggles over school knowledge have been defined within the framework of a nation-state. Second, I call for situating the discussion of counter-hegemonic strategies in the increasingly internationalized politics of education witnessed around the world. In sum, this study calls for broadening the application of the notions of hegemony and counter-hegemony in critical education scholarship to take full account of the complex political dynamics of globalizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by a Foucauldian theorisation, this article explores Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) experiences of their work and subjectivity in a neoliberalised higher education environment. By drawing on a research project with GTAs from one UK university, the article argues that GTA work is increasingly shaped by neoliberal reforms. The GTAs interviewed are critical of internationalisation, marketisation and client culture, and see these processes as acting on their subjectivity. The GTAs position themselves as mediators between demanding students and overworked academics: they have turned into much-needed ‘peacekeepers’ and ‘machine factories’. The findings also demonstrate that the subjectivity enforced by a dominant market ideology is further negotiated in the GTA experience. The discourses reveal that a lack of institutional control and coordination of graduate teaching provides the means for, and indeed enables, the GTAs to express some, but often limited, discontent with neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the effect of information technology upon teaching, learning and research in the ‘digital university’. In less than a generation the university has become a business like any other. It does so in the determining context of neoliberal globalisation and the computer revolution. The university develops through what we may now see as a disastrous ‘category error’. The article argues that humans are analogue creatures who have constructed analogue worlds that they recognise in large measure, in nature. Digital logic is nowhere recognised in nature, and is ultimately alien to us. The university is the key institution for enabling us to understand who and what we are, yet it is being undermined through the suffusion of the market logic and the digital technologies that drive it from a past we look to less, to a present we dwell in more, and a future we are less able to shape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is concerned with teachers’ negotiation of global transitions premised on improving educational opportunity with implications for professionalism. The study blends sociology of gender, work, and organisations and gender policy analysis to theorise teachers’ policy negotiations. I explore how 20 Argentine teachers mediate 3 programmes’ demands for care work. Policy as practice and street-level bureaucracy are applied to data to interrogate for gendered boundary work. I propose the addition of care work, gender, and a street-level view to Maguire’s global teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International graduate students’ occupational trajectories have rarely been studied, although many studies exist on their learning experiences in foreign universities. Based on 80 qualitative interviews, this article aims to understand how, where, and why these students obtain jobs in academe and corporations. I focus particularly on Korean professionals who received graduate degrees from US universities and who later obtained jobs in Korea or the United States. The theoretical component of this work is based on two important concepts – global cultural capital and global positional competition – both of which are seen to be based on a global hierarchy of academic degrees and professional knowledge. This study empirically tests and elaborates Phillip Brown’s three rules of inclusion and exclusion in global positional competition. By looking at international students’ transnational occupational trajectories, this study aims to understand how global education, transnational job opportunities, and social inclusion and exclusion interact in diverse ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Globalisation and the evolution of the knowledge-based economy have caused dramatic worldwide changes in the character and functions of education, particularly higher education. In the search for global competitiveness, many emerging economies have begun to expand their higher education systems, which has significantly affected the relationship between higher education and graduate employment. Recently, international comparative studies have suggested that increasing enrolment in higher education does not always promote upward social mobility, and can intensify inequality in education. This article critically examines the impact of the expansion of higher education in East Asia on graduate employment and social mobility in the context of an increasingly globalising economy and changing labour market needs. The article discusses emerging trends in the Greater China region, with a particular focus on Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Taipei, and argues that the massification of higher education has not necessarily led to more occupational opportunities for youth or opportunities for upward social movement, particularly since the significant changes in the global labour market after the 2008 global financial crisis. On the contrary, the intensification of ‘positional competition’ among college graduates seems to reflect growing social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While scholars have analyzed global higher education (HE) competition, they have largely failed to address how global spaces of equivalence are tied both to coloniality and to competition. Using the OECD’s International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) as a case study and drawing on concepts from coloniality including Fanon’s zone of being/non-being and Mignolo’s geopolitics of knowledge, we reveal how coloniality underpins the desire for global spaces of equivalence through: the desire for opportunity and belonging; and the desire for recognition and pride. We illuminate how the nature of global competition is not simply tied to market-based economic or political rationalities, but also operates under psychosocial dimensions interlinked with belonging in the international community. We argue that AHELO represents the mediation and internalization of a HE competition focused on teaching and learning, which reproduces coloniality by valuing characteristics of the enterprising, globally competitive institution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

UK media coverage of global university league tables shows systematic bias towards the Russell Group, although also highlighting tensions within its membership. Coverage positions UK ‘elite’ institutions between US superiority and Asian ascent. Coverage claims that league table results warrant UK university funding reform. However, league table data for all years to 2012 (when major funding reforms were implemented – most radically in England) do not show either US superiority or Asian ascent. Citation bias defines media content. Text itself is structured by three discursive ‘ratchets’: highlighting US successes but never failures, rising Asian institutions but never falls, and claiming that UK results warrant the same policy irrespective of whether results improve or worsen. These combine with selective doubt by ‘elites’ who question but are not questioned. These four discursive mechanisms fabricate an illusory threat of global competition. This threat is then used to warrant neo-liberal policies at home. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article draws attention to the relative lack of theoretically and methodologically elaborated approaches to understand and explain the complex relations between transnationalization of higher education and globalization seen especially from the point of view of global capitalism. The main aim of this article is to contribute to the construction of a theory of transnational academic capitalism (TAC). A theory of TAC argues that those networks, practices and activities that are blurring the boundaries between higher education, markets and states are increasingly becoming transnational without supposing that this transformation implies that local and national levels are insignificant in studying TAC. In this respect, focus is especially on methodological starting points of a theory of TAC. It is argued that a theory of TAC should be based on sociological relationalism and qualified methodological transnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article draws on ethnographic research that examines the contemporary articulation of class identity in the postcolonial elite school setting of Old College high school in Barbados. From the qualitative data derived from this study, we argue that social class is better conceived as a series of flows, mutations, performances and performatives. We complicate the common-sense notion that class is a stable structure that allows for the categorization of people by providing a nuanced look into the lived experiences of students and alumni at this elite school. We focus on the wearing of uniforms, the use of technological devices, the deployment of language, and student-lead articulations of social class in an increasingly globalized space. Class is defined and (re-)shaped by students’ belongings and longings, all of which, too, are, mutable, and can readily mutate in accordance with local and global circumstances of supply and demand. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the impact of forces for commodification on universities and highlights some of the potential socio-politico, economic and educational implications. Restructuring of funding and governance frameworks which have attempted to develop new modes of functioning in higher education which are more responsive to government intervention and market forces are outlined. Developments in three key areas of higher education are analyzed: access, knowledge reproduction, and knowledge production. It is argued that these developments pose considerable challenges for the field of the sociology of education, especially since it has tended to neglect higher education as a site of enquiry. Implications for future sociology of education work are outlined. The international literature on the restructuring of higher education reveals that there is a global trend away from forms of funding and regulation which were based on the social compact that evolved between higher education, and state and society over the last century. Governments across the world are making concerted efforts to boost participation rates in higher education. The link between higher education and economic development has focused attention on access to higher education in developing countries. The deepening stratification of higher education systems within industrialized countries is mirrored in the divisions in higher education across industrial and developing countries.