“It’s About Exposure”: Elite Indian International Students and the Desire to Accumulate Cosmopolitan Cultural Capital (original) (raw)

Throughout their international education experiences, international students accumulate many forms of capital; economic, social, symbolic, cultural or otherwise. In the present study, prospective and returned international students in Mumbai, India, spoke often of their desire to ‘gain exposure’ by engaging with international education. This paper posits that ‘exposure’ is a form of cosmopolitan cultural capital that (re)produces class boundaries (Igarashi & Saito 2014; Weenink 2008), which allows the elite to maintain distinction between themselves and the middle class. Drawing from interviews with 46 students, as well as parents, education counsellors/agents and other industry representatives, this paper discusses how exposure as a form of cosmopolitan cultural capital is used by respondents as a marker of class that is mobilised to set classed expectations about the outcomes of international education. This paper finds that elite students use exposure as a form of cosmopolitan cultural capital to hierarchize the international student experience, ensuring that middle class Indian students do not realise true social mobility by engaging with international education.

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