The purpose of travel in the cultivation practices of differently positioned parental groups in Israel

ABSTRACT

Travel has become ubiquitous for most social groups as holidaying abroad has become ever cheaper and ecumene. This paper considers how travel can be understood as part of family practices around children’s educations and futures. Drawing on Kaufmann’s concept of motility, we examine how spatial mobility might become a form of cultural capital to reproduce privilege or facilitate social mobility. We generated data on family spatial mobility during the act of international air travel itself, interviewing 22 participants. We argue that spatial mobility and its link to social mobility is differently conceived of by our working, middle, and global middle class families, but that all three seek to use travel overtly as a form of cultivation for their children. This leads us to suggest that international travel may illuminate new ways that social class differentiations and lines of striation are being forged through movements across transnational spaces, offering new insights for education professionals and scholars.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility
• capital
• social class
• travel
• cultivation strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Global Middle Class (GMC) can be broadly defined as comprised of professionals and their families who move around the globe (at varying rates), usually in roles that service multi-national business corporations (Ball & Nikita, 2014).