Do you speak Français? The hidden social structures of bilingualism at an international boarding school

Abstract

This article investigates linguistic practices related to students’ social and academic lives – something that has been overlooked in the research literature on international schooling and elite boarding schools. Pierre Bourdieu reminds us that language has a social dimension linked to relations of symbolic power. Boarding schools serve as excellent case studies on how language structures social life due to their closed social space. Drawing on Bourdieu’s relational sociology, an ethnography was carried out at the College of Europe, an international private boarding school. Findings show that the practice of bilingual code-switching was endowing the institution with social distinction while hierarchically dividing its students. Three modes of student attitudes towards bilingualism were identified. While students’ bilingual attitudes and strategies were correlated to their social positions, socioeconomic origins and previous trajectories, the former were not deterministically an effect of said social position, evidenced by an observed case of habitus transformation.

Keywords:

• College of Europe
• international education
• linguistic practices
• bilingualism
• social structures

Introduction

Language is often viewed as a resource that is obtained, polished, or improved through international experiences and international schooling when interiorising international sensibilities and culture (Wagner 2020, 2007; Berton 2016). Foreign language acquisition, especially English due to its domination as a global language, is primarily regarded as an investment on behalf of students and educational institutions to unlock international opportunities whether they be educational or professional (Mocanu 2023; Delespierre 2022; Kenway et al. 2017; Serre and Wagner 2015; Igarashi and Saito 2014). New research, however, suggests that international diplomas do not automatically travel easily across borders, but that destination countries and characteristics of mobile social agents matter for a successful reconversion of international cultural capital across borders (Lillie 2021a; Waddling, Bertilsson, and Palme 2019; Bertron 2016; Vallot 2020). The same logic could be applied on language. We know very little about how language de facto structures the social and academic lives of students abroad. Researchers tend to ask, ‘what can language give and to whom?’ rather than ‘what does language actually do?’ Yet, Bourdieu (1977, 646) reminds us that language has a social dimension and function, linked to relations of symbolic power. Symbolic power, according to Bourdieu, is the ‘power of consecration’ and must be based on the possession of recognised assets, i.e. symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1989a, 23).

Boarding schools are excellent case studies of how language structures social life due to their highly concentrated environments and intense socialisation amongst students (Khan 2016; Lillie 2021b; Darmon 2013). I have chosen to investigate this at the College of Europe (the College), an international private postgraduate boarding school.¹ It is used as a prism to observe the social function of bilingualism within an international school, something that has thus far been overlooked in the research literature.

The College of Europe was created in the aftermath of the Second World War by European federalists. Each year, approximately 350 young adults representing around 50 nationalities, arrive in Bruges, Belgium, where the school is located.² The average College of Europe student is twenty-five years old, speaks three to four languages and has a master’s degree before enrolment (Lindberg 2022). The College was explicitly conceived as a bilingual institution with English and French as working languages (Lindberg 2022; Behar 2021; Schnabel 1998). Since most enrolled students do not have English or French as their mother tongue, there is an immediate hierarchisation between these two dominant languages and other languages that students bring with them.

Hidden social structures of language usage

The College of Europe can be situated in the intersection of various levels of analysis. It has links to both the national and the transnational level as well as to various professional sectors (national bureaucracy, EU bureaucracy, national law firms, EU law firms, consultancies, lobbyists etc.). The College of Europe as a research object is constructed as preparing its students to enter the field of Eurocracy³ (Georgakakis and Rowell 2013; Georgakakis 2017) as EU-professionals, at the national or the supranational level, in the public or the private sector.

Following bourdieusian sociology, the College of Europe is considered a social space where students occupy positions depending on their previously inherited and accumulated resources, or capital, which can be economic, cultural, and social (Bourdieu, [1983] 1986). The hypothesis is that within this social space, bilingual fluency in French and English will act as symbolic capital, i.e. as prestige for the school as an institution and its students. Since this bilingual fluency will most likely not be evenly spread amongst the student population prior to enrolment, a second hypothesis is that linguistic hierarchies and strategies responding to these will exist within the school.

A social space, in its bourdieusian rendition, is marked by inequalities: all resources are not valued equally, and some students have greater – or more recognised assets – than others (Bourdieu 1989a). It is the habitus that enables agents’ sense-making and position-taking within a given social space. The concept of habitus (Bourdieu and Passeron [1970] 1990, 61) is described as ‘the generative, unifying principle of conducts and opinions which is also their explanatory principle, since it tends to reproduce the system of objective conditions of which it is the product.’ Habitus, by schemas of perception and interpretation, produces without specific intent, social practices by an individual or a group of individuals which are endowed with meaning and often taken for granted by the agents engaged in them (Bourdieu [1997] 1977, 79–80).

From this point of view, studying practices of individuals or group of individuals informs us about the habitus, individual or collective, of the social agents when taking their social trajectories and material conditions within which they have been produced into account. Studying practices cannot be reduced to merely the interpersonal relationship among social agents in a social setting. For the study of language as a social practice, it is theorised that the recognised asset, i.e. the symbolic capital at the College of Europe is bilingual ability operationalised through a students’ fluency and ease in English and French. Symbolic capital exists through the esteem, recognition, belief, credit, confidence of others, and can only be perpetuated as long as it succeeds in obtaining belief in its existence (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, 166). Hierarchisation between languages becomes especially observable in bilingual and multilingual situations, such as international schools, where a hierarchy between a dominating language and dominated language(s) often emerge (Bourdieu 1977). According to Bourdieu (1977, 648), ‘language is not only an instrument of communication or even knowledge, but also an instrument of power.’

To understand what bilingualism means and how it works (and for whom) within the social space of the College of Europe, the concepts of technical and social competences are useful. Elite schools transmit technical and social competences through their institutional organisation in the form of knowledge (Bourdieu 1989b). The technical competences transmitted can be considered masking the social function of producing, and legitimising the production, of the dominant social group. This is done through various exams, tests, ceremonies, and rites. Through these, a distinction is produced based on the properties, resources, tastes, and habits that are dominant within the field that the school is preparing its students to enter upon graduation (Bourdieu 1989b). Distinction cultivated within the school can be certain slang and use of language, attitudes, ways of dressing, carrying oneself, and internal jokes. In short, a palette of embodied knowledge that is learnt alongside the curriculum; cemented and fortified through practices, ceremonies, and rituals (Bourdieu 1982a).

Bilingualism can be viewed as a technical competence since both English and French are working languages in the European institutions and useful languages to know if one wishes to embark on an international career. Yet bilingualism can also be analysed as a social competence where bilingual fluency becomes a social distinction for the school and its students through various ceremonies and rites, the latter being an inherent component of elite schooling (Bunnell 2021, Bourdieu 1982a). Code-switching, i.e. moving from one language to another in one speech act could be one such rite. Code-switching emerged as a field of study within sociolinguistics from the 1950s (Labov 1972; Gumperz 1982). Researchers have analysed bilingual discourse, its grammatical structure, and potential identity formation (for an overview, see McSwan and Faltis 2020; Stell and Kofi 2015). A bourdieusian sociological take on bilingualism regards code-switching as a social practice with a focus not merely on what is being said but who is speaking, from what social position and in relation to whom within a given social space (Bourdieu 1982b).

Material and method

The data which this article builds upon was collected during my doctoral studies. Prior to the start of the field work, an ethical application was submitted to and approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. For the interviews with teachers, administrators and students, each informant was informed about the purpose of the thesis project, the interview themes, and they signed a consent form. Ethnographic fieldwork combined with semi-structured interviews was carried out during the academic year of 2017–2018. This data was complemented with other types of material such as school brochures, students’ LinkedIn profiles and the student yearbook. Through the participation in the every-day life, it was possible to observe and analyse the difference between ‘what people say’ and ‘what people do’ (Laurens 2020; Jerolmack and Khan 2014). Access to the field was granted after sending an email to a programme director who was a former professor of mine at the University of Geneva. The fact that I was of similar age to the students allowed me to integrate without attracting much attention from the start. Through my similar educational background, I was not lost at lectures but could follow them with ease. It enabled me to come across as someone fitting into the College’s social world.

I entered the field with an open mind but theoretically informed. Departing from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, I constructed the College of Europe as a social space in the intersection between various fields at the national, European and global level where various struggles and tensions can play out simultaneously. As any social space, it is hierarchically structured where some dispositions and assets are more valuable than others. Being an international private boarding school where students are supposed to ‘live Europe’ it was hypothesised that language play a role regarding position-taking within the social space. One route, which I followed, to grasp the structure of such a space was investigating the distribution of different assets and resources that the students possessed before arriving in Bruges as well as accumulated during the school year. These properties, material and symbolic, are related to each other in a systematic way (Bourdieu 1989b, 19). They can be seen as resources (monetary or symbolic).

As such, my time in the field draws closer to theory-driven ethnography than to empiricist ethnography in that it was not, as Michael Burawoy (2019, 50) puts it, ‘the data speak for themselves, and theory emerges tabula rasa from hearing and seeing.’ While I tried to let the field work develop naturally, I was already interested in the notion of international capital before entering the field. Therefore, I took special interest in conversations that concerned languages, international experiences, and travels. However, by being present at the school, I realised that language at the school had a proper social function and, therefore, I analyse bilingualism differently than merely as an international resource. Hence, while I was theoretically informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, I did not let it rule and guide my observations, but I used it to think, question and reformulate my observations and research questions.

The duration of my stay in the field varied between a few days to several weeks per month over one academic year. This in and out approach to the field permitted time to take stock of the observations and what to focus on during the next visit. While participant observations captured daily routines and practices of the students, interviews captured aspirations, vocalised linguistic strategies and how students made sense of the bilingual practice at the school (and valued it). During the fieldwork, I conducted 38 formal interviews, 27 with students and 11 with the administration. My interviews with students were semi-structured and built around two parts. The first part entailed a shorter set of survey-type questions regarding students’ socioeconomic origin, international capital, and previous academic and professional trajectories. The second part of the interview would centre around three topics: students’ reasons for applying to the College and expectations, how they perceived and valued the year at the College, and their future career aspirations. It is here that most students would bring up the question of language as the main obstacle during their academic year and how they dealt with it. The average interview would take approximately 1 h 30 min.

Over the course of the academic year, I wrote 155 pages of fieldnotes. The document contained a bricolage of environment descriptions, notes from lectures, dialogues between students, reflections around what type of research strategy to employ, whom to interview, what variables to focus on and short paragraphs around my own social awkwardness, feelings of displacement, isolation, doubt, etc. I analysed the data on two levels: from the institutional side and from the students’ side. Through this double-level analysis, I could analytically separate the dominant school culture and how this was received, perceived, and internalised amongst different groups of students. The analysis also became, in line with Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, relational by considering students previously accumulated resources in their meeting with the school culture.

Findings

The findings are presented in three parts. First, the institutional practice of language switching within the school is introduced. Second, the practice is analysed through the concepts of social and technical competences. Third, the gaze is turned towards the students’ bilingual attitudes.

The institutional practice of language switching

On the first day of the introduction course, extending two weeks prior to the official academic year, students arrived in the morning to a big auditorium at the Verversdijk campus in the city-centre of Bruges. Students chit-chatted with each other, comparing each other’s residences in terms of distance to the student canteen, the size of the student rooms and other facilities present within the residences. At the welcoming this morning, there was one professor and eight academic assistants. When introducing themselves, they did so in the language that the previous person had not spoken. Person A started to speak in French, switched to English after a couple of sentences and then back to French. If person A finished in French, then person B picked up by commencing in English, switched to French and then ended in English. Then person C started in French etc. These language alternations did not only occur once or twice but several times depending on the length of a speech act. In other words, there was a sort of temporality dimension to the occurrence of language switching.

In a promotional video depicting the College experience at the Bruges campus, language switch occurred twenty-two times in the lapse of 7 min and 36 s (Lindberg 2022). This means that the language changed on an average each twenty seconds. If one did not understand one of the languages well enough it produced the effect of linguistic and social closure, since one would only understand half of the words spoken. This was most evidently exposed when a delegation of Russian students came to visit the school and the Head of Communication presenting the College by showing them the promotional video had to constantly pause the video and translate the French parts in real-time for the student delegation to be able to follow. In an interview with one of the academic assistants present during the welcoming day, I brought up the practice of switching languages and how orchestrated it had felt.

Academic assistant: Of course, it was intentional.

SL: Why?

Academic assistant: Because we want to uphold our bilingual status, to show immediately that this is how it is going to work. We all expect you to be able to communicate with us both in English and French. In practice, we are always going to speak in the language that is the easiest. For most of the people it is English.

The language switching was thus used as an indication from the school towards the students of what was expected from them. The students were supposed to understand and to communicate with the administration in either language. As such, the importance devoted to the ‘bilingual status’, through code-switching and demonstrated bilingual ease, were part of a specific collective linguistic practice which made the school distinguish itself from other schools, and through this, its students. The practice of language switching was not employed in class. Naturally, the students could not know this on the first day of the introductory courses and therefore most of the questions from the students revolved around the use of English and French. ‘Should the presentation and the essay on the same topic be in the same language?’; ‘If one asks a question after a presentation, does it have to be in the same language as the presentation was given in?’ Surprised by these questions concerning language use in class, the academic assistants looked puzzled at each other before trying to argue for an approach of consistency in language deployment. ‘If you start in one language, you continue in that language, essay and questions included as it will be easier and that’s how usually classes are held’ (Field notes, September 2017).

Ironically, this line of argument went exactly opposite of the academic assistants’ practice when they had introduced themselves. For the academic assistants, often recent alumni of the school, the practice of when and how to use language alternation was a taken-for-granted routine (Berger and Luckmann (1991 [1966]). It was a practice that had been naturalised to the point where they could not even understand the students’ confusion regarding when and how to use English and French. In short, this practice had undergone a habitualisation over time, incorporated into what Berger and Luckmann (1991 [1966]) refer to as the social stock of knowledge of everyday life, which is differentiated by the degrees of familiarity – here in the case of frequent code-switching that had become a natural pattern for the academic assistants but not yet for the new students.

For the law department at the school, who kept a strict 50-50 linguistic policy, bilingualism was seen as an identity marker of differentiation from other schools. It was also a symbolic marker of the school’s closeness to the European professional context. As stated by one professor:

It’s our unique selling point (…) I am not sure we would have a bright future if we would drop that because that is exactly what sets us apart from many other institutions and many other LLM in European law. Since the working language of the (EU) Court of Justice is in French and also partially the European Commission, it also makes a lot of sense for there to be a steady supply of EU law specialist that has a working knowledge in French and not just from France but a general European supply.

Linking back to the hypothesis of bilingual fluency as symbolic capital, it becomes clear that from the institution’s side, bilingual fluency was considered to set the institution apart from other schools, enabled them to attract students and increased their chances of ensuring students’ career prospective within the EU-institutions. The next section will deconstruct what bilingualism as symbolic capital entailed through the concepts of social and technical competences.

Bilingualism as social and technical competences

During the second semester, a presentation for French master students eligible to apply for the following academic year took place at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP) in Strasbourg.⁴ Before the presentation, one of the students with Spanish nationality expressed his anxiety, in fluent French, over the fact that it was the first time he would present in French. Although given the permission to present in English by the Programme Director, he insisted on wanting to do so in French. He was then encouraged by an academic assistant to switch languages anyway during the presentation at a certain moment ‘because it makes a good impression’ (Filed notes, February 2018). Hence, presenting in two languages was employed as a mark of distinction by the school to the outside. From this perspective, it was a tool of impression management. Impression management, according to Erving Goffman (1956), are techniques employed in every-day social interactions, through performances of speech, manner, and dressing, where we aim to control the impression given to the receiver, or audience, for instance during a job-interview or a public speech.

French IEPs, or Sciences Po, can be seen as competitors to the College of Europe within the educational sub-field of European studies. Therefore, the emphasis on a bilingual presentation was a position-taking from the College vis-à-vis its competitor. Here, it was not French but English that made the school differentiate itself from the IEP, an educational institution more anchored within the French national context than the European. This suggests that which language had more symbolic value over the other depended on the context (at the French IEP it was English, at the College of Europe it was French); it was really the ability to seamlessly code-switch between English and French regardless of setting that endowed the speaker with symbolic power.

Since code-switching was always employed in situations when the school was presenting itself to the outside world (the Opening Ceremony, presentation to potential student candidates, promotional videos of the school, selection interviews), it functioned as social closure between insiders and outsiders. However, language alternation also occurred during more formal moments within the school (presentations, conferences, speeches). This practice does not exist in traditional universities, thus adding to the students’ feeling of being special. Being able to communicate fluently in English and French, demonstrated by frequent language switching, was a mark of a status group in the Weberian sense. The linguistic switch was therefore acting as a binding social mechanism present at the institution.

The practice of frequent language switching was a defining ritual; it conveyed a sense of belonging, understanding, and adhering for the students. The deployment of the two languages could also be an indicator for the students of what to expect in their future careers. Through engaging in this practice actively or passively, students took part of a collective identity formation whilst being socialised into the imagined EU professional community they aspired to integrate (Norton 2016; Bourdieu 1989b). The College, similarly, to boarding schools in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, sets out to transform the whole person from a holistic point of view rather than just transmit knowledge (Darmon 2013; Khan 2011; Cookson and Persell 1985). The use of bilingualism can be seen as an element of this ongoing transformation of students into the European leaders that the school refers to, for instance, on its website or when addressing the students during the Opening Ceremony (Lindberg 2022).

The demonstration of bilingualism through frequent codeswitching can be seen as a technical skill to be acquired. A specific vocabulary related to the EU institutions was commonly used during code-switching in conversations at the school, such as ‘Blue Book’, ‘MEP assistant’, ‘EPSO’, ‘PLUX’, ‘DGs’etc.⁵ This sort of ‘eurospeak’ not only reinforced the bonds between the members of the ‘in-group’ but also gave the students a set of vocabulary used in a specific professional and social milieu, i.e. the field of Eurocracy (Georgakakis 2017; Georgakakis and Rowell 2013). It has been shown that code-switching to English by French consultants increased their perceived legitimacy as experts and that EU lobbyists invoke ‘euro-speak’ in their daily work (Boni-Le Goff and Noûs 2020; Laurens 2015). However, the literature on ‘eurospeak’ and sporadic code-switching between transnational professionals to mobilize symbolic capital does not explain the exaggerated frequency of language alternations observed at the school. Neither do official speeches by the EU institutions involve such frequency in language alternation. As one Scandinavian alumna noticed once she started working within the EU institutions upon graduating from Bruges:

One aspect of bilingualism that I have reflected more on since I moved to Brussels and started working here is that you do not actually have to be fluent in French to still feel that you are part of a bilingual ‘eurospeak.’ I rarely participate in whole conversations in French, but it is common for French words to be mixed into English conversations and for certain words such as ‘stage’ and ‘rentrée’ to be used in conversations where both parties prefer English but can speak enough French to do so.

This suggests that the linguistic practice of code-switching in Bruges was more linked to social distinction than the acquisition of a tangible professional skill. Thus far, bilingualism has been evoked as symbolic capital that the College of Europe as an institution relied upon to differentiate itself towards the outside, its competitors, to derive legitimacy and attract prospective students. The next section will turn the gaze towards how this symbolic capital was unevenly distributed amongst the students.

Three modes of bilingual attitudes

Observing when and how students chose to switch languages amongst themselves informs us about what symbolic value a given language has. At the beginning of the year, an exchange between two Scandinavian girls, Clara and Victoria, testified to this. Language courses in English and French were offered each day during the two weeks of introductory courses. Those who had a sufficient level in either language were exempted from participation. The exchange took place after a long lunch before the first afternoon class. Clara entered the classroom announcing happily that she had just had a power nap and felt refreshed. For Victoria, who had had French from an early age in international schools and a university degree from France, it was surprising to learn that Clara, who had mainly lived and studied in her home country, had not needed to attend the language course over lunch:

Victoria: You don’t have language course?

Clara: (triumph in her voice): No.

Victoria: Not even French?

Clara: (responding in French): Mais non, C1 (referring to the language level she has).

Victoria: Moi aussi… C2.

Clara was clearly proud of the fact that she did not have to follow French classes and emphasised her French level by responding in French and adding the language level. Victoria, by responding back in French and revealing her own language level (the highest for non-native speakers), marks the symbolic linguistic hierarchy between them and makes it clear to Clara that her French is still better. This short exchange between the Scandinavian girls could be seen as negotiating positions by showcasing the volume of their symbolic capital measured by their attested French language level.

This indicates that the French language had a higher status not only amongst the administration but also from the students’ point of view. While English was the mainstream language of communication for the majority, the French students continued to mainly socialise in their mother tongue. Therefore, a linguistic separation existed between native French-speakers (French, Belgians, Swiss) who preferred to socialise in French and the rest of the student body who were not able to follow the pace, jargon, or speed of the former.

French language enjoyed symbolic value not because it was opposed to English per se but because French linguistic capital was less evenly distributed amongst the student body. Both languages were needed to incorporate the social disposition of code-switching with ease. To achieve effortless bilingual code-switching and derive symbolic capital from it within the social space of the school, meant for most students that their French needed to be perfected. Related to this, three modes of bilingual attitudes were observed amongst students throughout the academic year.

The bilingual strategists

Students wanting to, or needing to, improve their French took extra language courses or self-organized language tandem with their French speaking peer students. The reason for the bilingual strategists to work on their French was outspokenly goal-oriented, for instance, to pass mandatory courses in French, get a bilingual diploma, or have a competitive advantage on the labour market. For them, the school’s bilingual status was either viewed as an opportunity to become perfectly bilingual or they tried to pass the year without having to. The majority of students encountered both through interviews and during the fieldwork, could not engage in spontaneous code-switching but incorporated the passive skill of listening throughout the academic year.

Out of 27 students interviewed, 22 viewed bilingualism as an obstacle and something to overcome. They came from middle or upper middle class⁶, had mainly studied within the national educational system but had also lived abroad through participating in the EU-funded Erasmus exchange programme or conducting an internship (typically at an embassy or within an EU institution). Bianca, a 31-year-old law student who already had five years working experience from a law firm in her home country, admitted that her main reason for enrolling at the College of Europe was to get the French language certified as a working language so she could unlock international career opportunities.

My main aim was to be able to study in French and to say ‘now I speak French because look: I studied in French’ and I knew that would open doors for me.

Upon graduation, she received an attractive job offer from the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg. For Bianca, the strategy of investing in a bilingual diploma coupled with her previously acquired working experience did enable her to land a position within the EU institutions. Whether a student decided to choose a maximum or a minimum number of courses in French largely depended on their previous trajectories and future career plans. The students who had a more ‘European’ profile (Erasmus, European-oriented internships, wanted to work for the EU-institutions) were more invested in learning French while students with a more ‘international’ profile (study or working experiences outside of Europe, wanted an international rather than European career) were less inclined to invest in the French language. From Bourdieu’s writing, we may add that if someone is invested in something, it is because there is something to gain from this investment. This investment in the game, referred to as illusio, depend on the belief in the game, i.e. the doxa (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 98). This suggests that bilingualism as symbolic capital was more sought after by those invested in the ‘game’ i.e. those wishing for an EU-related career and consequently also those more likely to benefit from bilingualism in their future career aspirations. There was, however, a minority of students present at the school that already possessed the bilingual ease of code-switching.

The European inheritors

In 1964, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron published their seminal work The Inheritors demonstrating how students from dominant classes performed better at school through the inheritance of cultural capital which facilitated their compliance to the school culture (Bourdieu and Passeron 1964). Drawing on this concept, two students interviewed can be labelled as European inheritors. They had grown up in a European context, where code-switching as a linguistic practice had been interiorised since a young age, due to their parents’ occupation, their schooling, and extra-curricular activities. Victoria, a 26-year-old Scandinavian student who grew up in Brussels with parents working for the European Commission, referred to mixing languages at the College as a preference rather than a necessity:

I love that the languages are mixed, because everyone has the same linguistic level and then you can choose the best expression in the original language.

This quote stands in stark contrast to how most students interviewed and encountered during the fieldwork perceived bilingualism. Shamus Khan notes that it is no longer the knowledge itself that sets elite students apart but the relationship to knowledge, whether it is the indifference or ease (Khan 2011). Applied here, it was not enough to understand English and French to be able to follow courses but to display ease in socialising in a multilingual environment that endowed students with symbolic power vis-à-vis each other. This disposition, working as symbolic capital within the school, was not related to general international dispositions but to what can be referred to as a European habitus. These students had inherited and accumulated Europe-specific capital from their parents who were employed within the EU institutions and through their schooling at the European School in Brussels. Previous research has confirmed the existence of code-switching as a social practice amongst students in the European school but not as a formalised practice of orchestrated code-switching (Muller and Beardsmore 2004; De Mejia 2002; Beardsmore and Anselmi 1991).

For the European inheritors, the College of Europe felt like a prolongation of their schooling at the European school in Brussels where nationalities and languages were mixed. In other words, the schooling year in Bruges was largely a reproduction of their already previously inherited international capital and the linguistic practice of frequent code-switching felt like ‘home’ for them (Bourdieu & Passeron [1979] 1964, 13). Of course, there is absolutely nothing natural with the middle and upper middle class students’ sense of belonging and effortless ease in navigating the school system as Pierre Bourdieu has repeatedly demonstrated. Bourdieu refers to this as ‘the privilege of ease’, a modality of maintaining a relationship with the school, the culture transmitted as well as the language used and required within the school. It is determined by the distance between a student’s family environment and the school universe (Bourdieu 1989a).

It should be noted, however, that two binational students interviewed with at least one parent with French nationality had a similar profile to the bilingual strategists (national educational trajectory, high volumes of cultural capital) and to the European inheritors (inherited international capital, perfectly bilingual). These two students displayed the same ease in code-switching as the European inheritors although they had not grown up in Brussels, had not parents working in the European institutions, nor had they been internationally schooled. These students, representing a hybrid between the bilingual strategists and the European inheritors, were able to reap the same symbolic capital as the European inheritors although not having the same composition and volume of inherited international capital. Finally, one case of habitus transformation was observed during the academic year.

Habitus transformation

Although I only observed one case of habitus transformation during my fieldwork, it serves as the most interesting representation of how language as a social practice had concrete effects on the socialisation between students. Angelica was a blue-collar student in her mid-twenties who grew up in France with parents from Eastern Europe. English had been the major linguistic obstacle when she applied to the College of Europe since the interview had been entirely conducted in English. She had not been admitted. She applied again and got in this time around as the interview had mainly been conducted in French and she had felt more prepared for the interview questions. Although perfectly fluent in English at the time of our interview taking place a few weeks before graduation, she emphasised that the English-taught courses had been ‘horrible’ during the academic year. The socialising had also been affected by her uneasiness of speaking in English:

(In the) beginning (I was) a bit shy and not confident with English and felt I was tired when I spoke English. Now it’s ok. My English is ok, I can read and write in English without problems.

English language had made her physically tired, emotionally shy and feeling non-confident at first. Over the course of the academic year, Angelica incorporated English as a linguistic and corporal disposition to the point that it became the main language that she and her friends socialised in although all of them were fluent in French. According to Bonny Norton (2016, 476), language and power are related, where language learners can invest in a target language (in this case English) to access social networks and ‘reframe their relationships with others in order to claim more powerful identities from which to speak.’

While framing language acquisition as a mere access point to unlock, or acquire, other types of resources would potentially work in the case of the bilingual strategists, it does not really capture the language usage in this example. Angelica went through a real metamorphosis over the year, culminating in having a two-hour interview completely in English where she expressed herself with ease and poise. It was not that she had acquired a technical linguistic skill and was able to have the interview without any stress. Rather, that she willingly had changed her mode of socialising from predominantly in French before arriving in Bruges to predominantly in English at the school.

At first sight, the profiles of the European inheritors seem similar to Angelica. They had also grown up in another country than their parents were born in, spoke the mother tongue of their parents fluently and did not have the nationality of the country they grew up in. There was one major difference compared to Angelica: their inherited and accumulated Europe-specific capital which bilingualism was part of. Their ease in switching between English and French had been incorporated into their habitus from early on, in an almost unconscious way rather than through a learnt, deliberate way as in Angelica’s case.

During my fieldwork, I only encountered one student who had made such a transformation and she happened to be a blue-collar student. I did however also meet an Italian student with working class origin who was perfectly bilingual in French and English while most students belonging to the upper and middle classes were not and struggled with French. Therefore, one cannot automatically draw a link between socioeconomic origin and bilingualism as symbolic capital. What can be said, however, is that within the social space of the College of Europe, being perfectly bilingual in French and English endowed students with symbolic capital and those students with already inherited European social and cultural capital could reap the benefits of this symbolic good effortlessly.

Concluding discussion

This article investigated the hidden social structures of language and linguistic practices at an international private boarding school. The departure point was the hypotheses that bilingual fluency in French and English will act as symbolic capital for both institution and its students but potentially create linguistic and symbolic hierarchies within the school. Both hypotheses were confirmed. A demonstrated bilingual fluency, through embodying the disposition of frequent code-switching was an integral part of when the school was presenting itself to the outside. The school’s bilingual status, seen from the administration’s side, endowed the institution with prestige i.e. symbolic capital by becoming more attractive for prospective students and differentiating itself from other institutions offering diplomas in European studies through positioning itself closer to European institutions where both French and English are official working languages. The school’s bilingual status, reconverted into certified international capital through a diploma upon graduation, simultaneously endowed students with social distinction as a group yet hierarchically divided them throughout the academic year. Linguistic resources were unevenly distributed amongst the student body, de facto creating internal symbolic hierarchies and dividing students into French-speaking or English-speaking communities outside the classroom. Embodying bilingual ease enabled students to bridge these symbolic hierarchies. Three modes of student attitudes towards bilingualism were identified. The students with most symbolic capital within the school were children of EU civil servants who had gone to the European school in Brussels. Their European habitus, through inherited and acquired Europe-specific capital matched the social world of the College of Europe. It was a ‘natural’ continuation of their previous schooling and they embodied the bilingual linguistic practice effortlessly.

Most students, however, had high volumes of cultural capital from their national schooling system but lacked inherited international capital. For them, bilingual ease was an investment which largely depended on their future career aspiration (European versus international career). While students’ bilingual attitudes and strategies correlated with their social positions, the former were not deterministically an effect of said social position. Indeed, the observed case of habitus transformation through a students’ embodiment of the dominant linguistic practice showcases that language really is an instrument of power – both on the individual level and within the social space of an international educational institution.

At the College of Europe, English and French were the two dominant languages, and symbolic power derived from a demonstrated ability to participate in merging them into one through frequent code-switching. The curious practice of frequent language alternations had symbolic value and social meaning which structured the social world at the school and of its students. This points to an alternative social use of language than merely the investment rational that is commonly found in the literature of international schooling studies as well as within sociology of education literature.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Uppsala Universitet, Department of Education; Anna Maria Lundins Travel Grant; Göransson-Sandviken Research Grant.

Notes

1 The yearly fee, at the time of the fieldwork of 2017–18 was 24,000 euros.

2 There is a second campus in Natolin, Warsaw but this study only focuses on the Bruges campus.

3 The field of Eurocracy (Georgakakis 2011, 331) is defined as ‘the permanent social space where there are people (some permanent, others part-time) competing to define European policies, norms, and instruments as well as the skills of legitimate definition.

4 Also known as Sciences Po Strasbourg.

5 Blue Book is the European Commission’s traineeship. MEP assistant is an assistant of a Member of the EU Parliament. EPSO is the entry test to get hired by the EU institutions. PLUX refers to Place Luxembourg in Brussels. DG are the European Commission’s Directorate-Generals.

6 Socioeconomic origin was measured in parents’ and grandparents’ occupation and education levels.