Outward and upward Mobilities: The Global Dispersion of Students from South Korea

Education has long been the route to social mobility and educational qualifications persist as a legitimized marker of social class. In the 1970s and 1980s, South Korea experienced rapid growth in its educational system and economy which resulted in a large middle class (Jones, 2013; Koo, 1991). Currently, the middle class is contracting and income inequality is rising (Lee et al., 2013). What was achieved in one generation for a large segment of the population is now at risk of being dismantled, and the middle class faces harsh competition in the educational system to keep individual families’ futures secure. As Bourdieu (1984) argues, it is the educational system that ensures the social reproduction of the upper and middle classes, and that “academic qualifications and the school system which awards them thus become one of the key stakes in an interclass competition which generates a general and continuous growth in the demand for education” (132-133).

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