Transnational Human Capital and Social Inequality

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Within the context of globalization processes, the ability to act beyond the confinements of ones own nation-state which we refer to as transnational human capital is becoming increasingly more important. The first phase of this project focused on two aspects: First, we empirically examined the change of job requirement specifications from 1960 to 2010, based on a quantitative content analysis of job advertisements in German newspapers. Second, based on Bourdieus theory and data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we analysed class-specific access to transnational human capital, choosing the example of study-abroad programmes during school time, and its effects on the life course. The proposed follow-up project has two aims: 1) The results we obtained so far with regard to Germany need to be supplemented by international comparisons in order to determine more precisely the influence of contextual factors on the demand for, and the acquisition of, transnational capital; for this, we plan to extend the quantitative content analysis on more countries and analyse international survey data. 2) The completed analysis of the class-specific access to transnational human capital needs to be extended and deepened by qualitative interviews with parents. Only a qualitative analysis will make it possible to reconstruct the class-specific mechanisms of acquiring transnational human capital.