The Cultivation of Transnational Cultural Capital in Childhood and International Education Mobility

Professor Susanne Yuk Ping Choi, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract

Scholars of migration and higher education have recognised the globalisation of social class stratification, as individuals and families mobilise resources to compete for better positions and higher status beyond national borders. In an era of intensified global competition for access to prestigious higher education institutions, how is class advantage transferred to the next generation? Combining the concepts of transnational cultural capital and concerted cultivation, this talk examines the role of parents in the multi-sited higher education mobility of Chinese individuals. It shows how parental capital and aspirations shape practices of concerted cultivation that foster their offspring’s transnational cultural capital from childhood onward, which in turn facilitates global higher education mobility. In doing so, the talk highlights the long-term, transnational process of intergenerational class reproduction, as well as the dilemmas, contradictions, and conflicts that emerge in this process.

Bio

Susanne Choi is a Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Gender Research Centre at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is also a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford until February 2026. Her research focuses on migration, gender, sexuality, family, inequality, and technology. Susanne has published extensively in leading international journals such as the American Journal of Sociology. Her lead-authored book Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family and Gender in China, published by the University of California Press, received an international award. Her second sole-authored book, Queer Resistance: Contesting State, Family and Inequality in Post-Socialist China, will be published by the University of California Press in August 2026. Susanne is currently working on several projects, including comparative research on technology and gender-based violence in four East Asian societies, feminist ethics of care and policy implications, and class and transnational educational mobility.

Joining Online
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