The role of internationalization in the schooling of Brazilian elites

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The role of internationalisation inthe schooling of Brazilian elites:distinctions between two classfractionsJoel Windlea & Maria Alice Nogueirab

a Centre for Social Sciences and the Humanities, FederalUniversity of Ouro Preto, Mariana, Brazilb Faculty of Education, Federal University of Minas Gerais, BeloHorizonte, BrazilPublished online: 11 Dec 2014.

To cite this article: Joel Windle & Maria Alice Nogueira (2015) The role of internationalisationin the schooling of Brazilian elites: distinctions between two class fractions, British Journal ofSociology of Education, 36:1, 174-192, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2014.967841

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.967841

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The role of internationalisation in the schooling of Brazilianelites: distinctions between two class fractions

Joel Windlea* and Maria Alice Nogueirab

aCentre for Social Sciences and the Humanities, Federal University of Ouro Preto,Mariana, Brazil; bFaculty of Education, Federal University of Minas Gerais, BeloHorizonte, Brazil

(Received 2 February 2014; final version received 11 August 2014)

This paper analyses tendencies that distinguish the internationalisationof education for two class fractions – owners of medium to largebusinesses and highly qualified university professors and researchers.We identify the importance of cosmopolitan cultural capital, particularlyfluency in English, in strengthening the position of both groups andgranting them access to an international field of power from which lessprivileged groups are excluded. Considering the diverging experiencesof the two groups compared with Bourdieu’s own findings of a highlevel of ruling-class cultural unity, we argue that these differences arereflective of the greater heterogeneity of the Brazilian ruling class.

Keywords: elite; Brazil; Bourdieu; cultural capital; social inequality;internationalisation; cosmopolitanism

Introduction

In Brazil, as in other Latin American countries, sociological knowledgeabout the lifestyles of the elites is incomparably smaller than that availableabout socially disadvantaged groups (Medeiros 2005; Heredia 2012), lead-ing the researcher into uncertain terrain. The scant body of research is char-acterised by a marked tendency towards qualitative work and the stronginfluence of the analytical model developed by Pierre Bourdieu. The presentpaper is situated within Bourdieu’s ‘cultural mode of class analysis’ (Savage2000), while responding to the call for an update that offers a better accountof both the specificities of contemporary capitalism and the particularities ofLatin America (Heredia 2012).1

Breaking with the prevailing economism, Bourdieu showed how a lessvisible type of social wealth – which he calls cultural capital – plays a cen-tral role in the constitution and reproduction of the ruling classes, because itperforms the essential function of legitimising (i.e. making acceptable in the

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2015Vol. 36, No. 1, 174–192, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2014.967841

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eyes of all) the privileged positions of the ruling class. Furthermore, heidentified two other types of even less perceptible social resource – socialand symbolic capital – that represent other forms of social advantage, like-wise built upon individual and collective habitus and holding value withinparticular fields. Analyses drawing on this framework have generated richinsights into educational inequalities, as well as concerns about the limitsand over-reach of the concepts of capital, field and habitus (see, for exam-ple, the works presented by Reay et al. 2004).

Following Bourdieu, we define elites as social groups who occupy thehighest position in the distribution of different kinds of wealth. We under-stand the position occupied in the global social space to be determined bythe structure of capital possessed by each group. Bourdieu proposes a dis-tinction between what he considers to be the two major ruling-class frac-tions, based on the type of resource possessed – economic elites (or‘dominant fraction of the ruling class’) and cultural elites (or ‘dominatedfraction of the ruling class’) – while acknowledging the preponderant roleof economic capital in contemporary societies. In addition to occupying dif-ferent positions in social space, each of these fractions display different ‘dis-positions’ that configure different lifestyles, expressed in child-rearing andschooling practices (Bourdieu 1979, 1989).

Recent work has shown how the relationship and relative integration ofcultural and economic elites, as well as their strategic reliance on academicsuccess, varies internationally (Kenway and Koh 2013). Indeed importantelements of the French case examined by Bourdieu diverge from the reali-ties of contemporary Brazil, where the economic and cultural unity of theruling class appears weaker (Almeida 2007). In the France of the 1960s,Bourdieu (1984, 62) was able to place the heads of industry and liberal pro-fessionals on a similar footing as ‘the most economically favoured fractionsof the ruling class’, enjoying similar success in monopolising access to thehighest prestige university courses, such as medicine and law. Brazil hasboth higher levels of wealth inequality, distancing liberal professionals fromeconomic elites, and an economic elite that experiences considerabledifficulties with schooling (Nogueira 2004).

Further, the power held by various fractions of the ruling class is definedby Bourdieu at a purely national level. The power of university professors,for example, is defined by their connections to, and distance from, ‘thefields of economic and political power on one hand, and on the other theintellectual field’ (Bourdieu 1984, 57). Bourdieu sees signs of their socialpower within France in government honours, memberships of learned acad-emies, control over admissions procedures for academic positions, and pres-ence in works such as Who’s Who. Academic prestige and recognition, andits connection with economic and political fields through advisory roles ingovernment and transnational commissions, is now heavily internationalised,particularly as a function of the global hegemony of US higher education

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institutions (Marginson 2006, 2008). The influence of the US model onBrazilian higher education is impressive, particularly through the policyinfluence of Chicago-educated economists, although some academic disci-plines, including sociology, continue to be primarily oriented towards Eur-ope in their international links.2

Finally, the relevance to Brazil of the concept of cultural capital can bequestioned both on the grounds that a different set of cultural norms prevail(Almeida 2007) and that a new ‘super rich’ class lacks the social cohesionof traditional ruling classes (Savage 2000). The inequalities between richand poor in Brazil are among the world’s greatest, with the country rankingamongst the 20 most unequal nations in terms of income distribution (CIA2013). This is reflected in a socially segregated schooling experience thatpotentially undermines the capacity of schooling to act as a unifying mecha-nism that transmits and legitimates cultural capital (Almeida 2007).

However, as Almeida notes, cultural capital is not just an explanation foreducational inequalities, but structures the kind of domination prevalent in agiven society, enabling ‘the unequal distribution of collectively producedwealth to be accepted both by those who benefit and those who lose out’(2007, 45). The symbolic order of the dominant culture defines what isgood, acceptable and thinkable, but its contents are arbitrary – being definedby the practices of those groups able to establish themselves as the rulingclass (Bourdieu 1987). The dominant symbolic order contributes to the inte-gration of the ruling class and distinguishes it from others, establishing a‘legitimate hierarchy of distinctions’ (Almeida 2007, 10). While differentgroups produce different symbolic orders, the interdependency of groupsfavours the unification of a market of symbolic goods (cultural capital).Formal schooling plays an important role in this unification, being alignedwith the dominant symbolic order and playing an important role in socialdestinies.

Since symbolic goods are transmitted from parents to children in earlysocialisation, with school subsequently legitimising as universal the prac-tices of ruling-class families, the educational practices of ruling-class fami-lies are of particular interest. In the Brazilian setting, such practices havebeen marked by a heavy investment in learning English and in internationaltravel to ‘first world’ destinations for educational purposes since the 1990s.3

Our argument is that cosmopolitan cultural capital (Weenink 2008), mostvisible in fluency in English, has come to occupy an important place in theorder of Brazilian symbolic goods. Its prestige is recognised not merely bythe elites, but by other social classes who have shown a strong appetite forcommercial English courses but who lack the means to undertake lengthyprogrammes of language study complemented by international travel – themark of elite English acquisition in Brazil. The rise of English as a prestigelanguage is not unique to Brazil, and on a similar time-frame (from the1990s) countries such as China have experienced massive growth in both

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demand and supply of English classes, beginning with elite suppliers andexpanding to lower-cost commercial suppliers (Hu 2007, 2009).

As Kenway and Koh (2013) have argued, new forms of capital only havemeaning with the emergence of a new field – in this case a transnational fieldof power. We argue that while the Brazilian ruling class gain access to thisincreasingly important field through cosmopolitan capital, the working classdoes not gain the same benefits from enrolment in low-end commerciallanguage courses. To some extent, this mirrors the division in global provi-sion of higher education services between elite sites selectively offering apositional good and mass commercial providers (Marginson 2008).

The positioning of Brazilian elites within a transnational field of powerenabled by cosmopolitan cultural capital is captured by the figure of the‘flexible citizen’, a term applied to the Hong Kong Business elite andChinese diaspora in South East Asia (Ong 1999). Ong writes:

Flexible citizenship’ refers to the cultural logics of capitalist accumulation,travel, and displacement that induce subjects to respond fluidly and opportu-nistically to changing political-economic conditions. In their quest to accumu-late capital and social prestige in the global arena, subjects emphasize, andare regulated by, practices favouring flexibility, mobility and repositioning inrelation to markets, governments, and cultural regimes. (1999, 6)

The first steps to such citizenship are found in western-style education andEnglish-language instruction at home, followed by a US college degree.Internationalisation strategies enable new generations to ‘deal with Westernelites through the acquisition of styles of self-presentation and speech’ (Ong1999, 95). Waters (2007) similarly notes the importance of an overseaseducation in the habitus of a transnational capitalist class in South EastAsia, while foreign degrees help to consolidate the position of elite groupsin nations such as China (Xiang and Shen 2009).

However, cosmopolitanism most clearly works as a form of capital when itis institutionalised through schooling, which can legitimise it as a desirableattribute, distribute it unequally to various social groups based on the othertypes of capital they possess, and link it to access to socially privileged posi-tions (Igarashi and Saito 2014). The cosmopolitan tastes of Brazilian univer-sity professors are of particular interest by virtue of their control overuniversity admissions, school examinations and textbooks. In assessment ofcandidates to the elite University of Campinas, for example, grading reportsreveal that professors evaluate most highly not merely display of knowledgebut personal attributes such as style, life experience, maturity, breadth, sophis-tication, subtlety and elegance (Almeida 2007). These can be understood asbeing enhanced by the demonstration of cosmopolitanism in light of profes-sors’ own high opinion of cosmopolitanism as a mark of the rounded person.

The remainder of this paper examines some of the divergences of theBrazilian ruling class from the class structure guiding Bourdieu’s analysis of

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France, considering: the relative heterogeneity of Brazil’s ruling class; theimplications of this heterogeneity for investment in cosmopolitan culturalcapital; and how cosmopolitan cultural capital, in particular English, func-tions as symbolic domination in the context of a massification of access tocommercial English courses. Recognising that cosmopolitan capital does notexhaust the basis of class power in Brazil, and that we cannot present herethe full range of positions within the Brazilian ruling class, we comparemembers of two contrasting class fractions before turning to a wider visionof class relations in Brazil.

Our first dataset comes from the late 1990s (Nogueira 2000), a timewhen elite private schools in Brazil were beginning to establish internationalpartnerships on a large scale. These data come from a section of the culturalelite, specifically with families (n = 37) whose parents (both father andmother) were highly qualified university professors and researchers in arange of fields,4 with the objective of examining the role of scholastic cul-tural capital held by parents, particularly knowledge of the world of formalschooling. The second dataset (Nogueira 2004) comes from interviews withmembers of the economic elite, specifically with families (n = 50) wherethe primary breadwinners (usually the father) were owners of medium-sizedor large businesses in the sectors of industry, commerce or services, seekingto identify the particular role of material wealth in the schooling of theirchildren. Collected in the mid-2000s, these data come from a time whenelite bi-lingual schools were opening and exchange and language courseprogrammes were consolidating. More recent research on the supply of pri-vate schooling (Aguiar and Noguiera 2012) supports the trends identifiedbelow for both economic and cultural elites, along with the intensificationover time of internationalisation as a distinctive and exclusive attribute ofelite education in Brazil. The final section draws on interview data (n = 20)from a study of the supply and hierarchy of commercial English-languagecourses in Brazil undertaken in 2012 (Windle 2012).

While comparing data collected at different points in time is problematicbecause social and educational conditions change, we believe that thetendencies identified in the 1990s have continued and intensified in thesubsequent period, enabling conclusions to be drawn about their generaldirection, albeit with caution. An example of the wider intensification ofinternationalisation is the massive growth in enrolment of students outsidetheir country of citizenship (from 1995 to 2004 the number rose from 1.3million to 2.7 million; OECD 2006), primarily thanks to growth in supplyin US and UK higher education systems (Marginson 2008). This develop-ment has opened up a wider set of options than those contemplated by thefamilies of university professors in our data.

Quotations and examples have been selected to exemplify the generaltrends distinguishing class fractions, but the two groups analysed are neitherentirely separate nor internally homogeneous. Furthermore, there exist

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differences in outlook between mothers, fathers and children that we areunable to fully address within the scope of our paper. Here we prioritise theviews of mothers, who usually played the most important role in educa-tional decisions. Nevertheless as children were often following directly inthe vocational footsteps of their fathers, fathers played a more direct role assource of information, role-model and support than in some other class frac-tions. Fathers who were university professors, for example, helped theirchildren to write research projects for scholarships and set them up withsuitable mentors.

National class structure and the divergence of economic and culturalelites

In Brazil, the Revolution of 19305 began a reconfiguration of the rulingclass, marked by the expansion of its social base. Starting from a smallgroup of land and slave owners in the colonial period, this base beganextending towards: the new urban bourgeoisie who emerged from the pro-cess of economic modernisation based on accelerated urbanisation and in-dustrialisation of the country and the development of industries that revolvearound it, such as commerce, banks and services; new occupations linked tothe extension of the economic and social functions of the state, with theresulting formation of an upper state bureaucracy that was accessed increas-ingly through public examinations; and new managerial occupations, withthe multiplication of senior executives and highly qualified professionals,who require academic qualifications, even though social capital remained ofprimary importance in determining access to this category.

Since the 1980s, however, there has been an exhaustion of the industri-alisation process led by the state, and a corresponding process of denation-alisation (expanding the role of multinational corporations), along with acentralisation of capital that creates a ‘super elite’ consisting of big businessowners in industry, commerce, transport, finance, media, and the whole pro-cession of occupations that revolve around them: senior executives of thefinancial, commercial, legal, marketing, and so on, sectors. Indeed, in the2000s, Brazil was among the 10 countries with the highest number of‘super-rich’ according to Forbes Magazine (Pochmann et al. 2009, 78).

The historical construction of the Brazilian ruling class has not resultedin the kind of cultural convergence that regularly sees the children of cap-tains of industry following similar academic careers to the children of thosein the liberal professions in settings such as the United States (Howard andGaztambide-Fernández 2010). In general, the academic pathways observedamong the children of business owners interviewed in the 1990s (Nogueira2000) diverged from conventional standards of academic excellence, basedon classic indicators of pass rates, length of studies, curriculum choices,schools attended, and academic distinctions. In contrast, the children of

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university professors constituted what might be called a ‘scholastic elite’Brandão (2012, 71), gaining access to the most high-prestige courses in elitepublic universities, leading to well-paid careers. The children of businessowners made up their relatively poor academic achievement with earlyintegration into the family’s economic activity.

University was the family goal for children in both class fractions, andboth fractions were successful in gaining access, albeit the children of busi-ness owners with greater difficulty and almost always to lower-prestige pri-vate universities. While three-quarters of the children of universityprofessors entered university at the regular age or before (i.e. at 17 or18 years of age), more than one-half of the children of business ownersinterviewed in the 2000s had fallen behind in their studies. While at univer-sity, almost all the children of professors included in the sample attendedschool during the day shift, but one-half of the children from the sample ofbusiness owners studied at night6 in order to reconcile studies with paidprofessional activities, which they began at around 15 years of age.7 Three-quarters of the children of university professors dedicated themselvesentirely to studies, beginning their professional life only after the comple-tion of university studies or even after postgraduate studies. School choicefurther reflects the heterogeneity within the Brazilian ruling class. While thepreference of university professors was for private schools reputed for theirhigh academic standards, business owners opted for establishments thatwere less demanding from an academic point of view and known for theirsocially selective and conservative environment.

The weaker educational investment and success of the economic elite isat least partly a reflection of the relatively weak connection between educa-tional attainment and economic and political power in Brazil. Whereas theeconomic and political elite of France and Singapore pass through a smallnumber of highly prestigious universities, such qualifications in Brazil donot, alone, confer access to such positions. Instead, economic elites focuson direct transmission of interest and involvement in the world of business.

What brings cultural and economic elites together, although for differentreasons, is a growing engagement with – and reliance upon – international net-works sustained through familiarity with English language, North America,and Europe. Increased mobility of capital and business structures draweconomic elites into a transnational community, while the global weight ofacademic production and funding draws high-level researchers to seek con-nections with US and European institutions. Participation in such networkscomes at a price, but as these transnational networks expand to offer evergreater contacts with others in positions of power, their benefits increase expo-nentially. At the same time, the costs of exclusion similarly rise (Castells2000).

As a consequence of different levels of reliance upon, and successwithin, formal education between business owners and university professors,

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we can anticipate that the new imperative to internationalise children’s edu-cation will produce different strategies to consolidate and increase privilege.We can also anticipate that such strategies will be directly influenced by therelative preponderance of economic and cultural capital.

Strategies of internationalisation

Internationalisation of the schooling of the two Brazilian elite fractionsoutlined above can be synthesised into the following strategies.

Travel

Extended overseas school exchange programmes

This strategy offers the benefit of prolonged contact with the ‘target’ cultureand language, enabling a high level of familiarity and fluency. It is moreappealing to university professors, in part because of its relatively low cost.

Short language courses and tours with hotel-style accommodation included

Economic elites favoured the greater comfort and luxury of this strategy,but also the shorter duration of the time away from home.8

Overseas holidays

Regular overseas holidays were more common amongst those rich ineconomic capital, providing familiarity with English and North Americanand European cultural settings even though education was not their primarypurpose.

Travel for work

Short-term travel for business as a whole family was common amongst theeconomic elite, as was extended overseas stay for the purpose of completingPhDs, post-docs and sabbaticals for Brazilian academics. The children ofacademics were enrolled in overseas schools during these periods.

Foreign language and culture education within Brazil

Use of bi-lingual or bi-national schools and schools with special languageprogrammes

Although the studies reported here do not include data on this strategy,other research (Aguiar and Nogueira 2012) show a preference for European-oriented schools amongst some members of the cultural elite, based on areputation for sophistication and humanist culture, and a preference for

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US-oriented schools amongst economically privileged families, based onopportunities to build social capital through contact with peers from similarbackgrounds.

Language study in Brazil

Both groups invested heavily in English classes outside school, as well asenrolling in bi-lingual schools or schools with additional hours of languagestudy. This strategy is discussed further in the final section of the paper

The educational travel strategies of business owners: mixed purposes

For the participants in our research, such strategies worked in conjunctionto generate cosmopolitan cultural capital, and none was the exclusivedomain of a given class fraction. Of the children of business owners, forexample, seven had undertaken short overseas language courses, four highschool exchanges, two courses linked to university studies, and one hadattended an overseas boarding school.

Family members were not always in agreement in relation to these strate-gies, with the position taken by mothers generally carrying the most weight.In the case of business owners, some mothers expressed reserve about thevalue of educational travel experiences. One son of business owners noted:

I thought about doing an exchange, but my mother was against it, she keptputting obstacles in the way. I already spoke English and she said ‘you won’tgain anything from it’ … In the end I went with my friend, and we went ona two month trip to England and came back. (David)

Thus, some mothers from this class fraction attempted to control theconditions and outcomes of their children’s international experiences tightly.As another observed about overseas travel:

I was in favour, but never for long periods. Because I believe that their realityis here, I think that whatever trip you do, even if it’s just from here to SaoPaulo, your mind opens frighteningly. So when it’s time to come back yourhead is there, in Sao Paulo, right? Your daily life is here [Belo Horizonte].What I think is important is to go to get to know it and to know that is goingon there, but not for long. (Francieli)

This reaction shows the ambiguity in the families of business owners inrelation to travel. They recognised the symbolic benefits of overseas travel,but were afraid that a long overseas stay might end up distancing (materi-ally and mentally) their children from their business destiny and vocation(the taste for business).

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Travel for leisure and business ended up being counterposed to – andmaking redundant – travel primarily for educational purposes. This feelingof redundancy extended from mothers to children. Daniela explained of thelack of interest of her son in high school exchanges in such terms:

That’s why he never spoke much about exchanges of six months or so, firstbecause he’s travelled overseas from a very young age, from the age of oneand a half he had already been, because Marcelo [husband] worked withexports, so he always came with us and me having a sister living overseas,they [our children] always went, so they are used to it, they’ve had a passportfrom the time they were tiny … The kid who wants to do an exchange, itsfirst because they want the chance to go overseas, you know, and this, for us,isn’t a new thing, they [our children] know various continents, have beenthere and so on.

Some business owners expressing this outlook identified their preference forfrequent, short-term travel for leisure as precisely a function of their eco-nomic privilege, acknowledging the value of lower-cost strategies for othergroups:

I think it’s valid [exchange], I think it’s valid for people who only have thatopportunity to be in different countries … Us, thank God, we have alreadyhad the opportunity to travel, to know other places. (Flavia)

While non-educational travel appeared to many to be able to suitably pro-vide educational advantage, particularly through English fluency, this benefitwas not necessarily a key motivator for travel. As one mother observed, herchildren have no need to build up a strong CV:

They never showed any desire [to study abroad] and neither did we. I person-ally believe that it was because they already had their own business. Theydidn’t need to leave the area much, to fight for something, their CV didn’tneed to be up there, stuffed with information. They have a place where theycan meet their potential, use everything they learned. So I don’t think thisstands them out. They have a business where they can work, they don’t needto be ahead in the labour market. Because this counts a lot in a CV, and Ithink maybe that’s it. (Gabriela)

With frequent holidays to the United States and low interest in academicbenefits, some educational travel could even become reduced to a search forexotic and novel destinations, such as Australia and New Zealand. Adriana,the daughter of business owners, reported of choosing a high schoolexchange destination:

Everyone was going to the United States and I didn’t have the least desire togo to the United States. I never tried to go to the United Sates. I knew thecountry, and I didn’t want it.

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Her mother expressed a similar view:

Adriana went to England and Felipe went to New Zealand, they chose thecountry that they wanted. From the beginning we were against the UnitedStates. Because it’s a culture that we have plenty of access to, right?

Another mother commented:My husband thought that Europe was interesting because it’s cultural, youget to know a lot of things, The United States is something that doesn’thave so much culture, so there [England], as well as language, there weretours, so she got to know lots of things in Europe. (Janine)

In all, the relatively weak educational investment and reliance on educa-tional brilliance of the Brazilian business elite is reflected in their interna-tionalisation strategies. Mothers in particular welcome the educationalbenefits of English fluency and familiarity with foreign cultures, but oftensee these as satisfied through non-educational travel, such as family holi-days. Extended travel for educational purposes is seen as a second-classoption for those who cannot afford routine travel at other times.

The educational travel strategies of university professors: academicadvantage and vocation-building

Whereas economic elites can directly pass their capital on to their children,cultural elites depend entirely on the education system to reproduce theirprivileged position in their children. Extended experiences in high-qualityoverseas education systems are therefore favoured by university professors,who do not face the danger of children abandoning a family legacy (in theform of business concerns). Extended experiences are also favoured becausethe costs of travel prohibit frequent trips for this group, and because themost affordable options available are high school exchanges and sabbaticals– both of which are usually six to 12 months in duration.

Some participants noted the financial sacrifice needed to pay foreducational trips overseas, and the compromises made on length of timeand destination. Catarina, an economics student, spoke of being able tospend only six months in the USA rather than a longer period:

My Christmas present was a box this size [respondent makes a gesture toindicate size]. When I opened it, it was a little ticket with the words ‘voucherfor an exchange trip’ … I couldn’t believe it … Except that, due to the price,the other one was more expensive, we ended up going with this six monthone. Because my parents didn’t have the financial ability to send me for ayear, do you see?

The most direct benefit identified by university professors in the conjunctionof internationalisation strategies they employed was advantage in academic

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examinations and selection processes. Mateus, an electrical engineeringstudent who lived in England from the ages of six to eight while his motherand father were respectively completing a PhD and Postdoc, observed:

When I passed the first stage [of the university entrance examination] I washoping to get through … Another part where I always get full marks is Eng-lish, because I was educated in English.

This benefit also accrued during university studies. Irene, for example, anarchitecture student and daughter of university professors, spent one monthstudying English in the United Kingdom, and then five months in Italy,studying Italian, art history, and the Renaissance. The trip contributed to herwinning a scholarship at a high prestige Brazilian university to complete aspecial research project on architectural history, paving the way for post-graduate studies.

Those rich in cultural capital were also able to benefit from, and extend,their social capital through personalised travel experiences, rather than‘mass’ or ‘packaged’ programmes. Francisco, a biology student, explainedthe travel he undertook while on leave from his Brazilian degree:

My parents always wanted to take us overseas. They thought it was extremelyimportant for all of their children to have a dose of Europe or the UnitedStates. And as my parents’ financial position began to improve after my fatherretired [from the university] and began another job he suggested to us, gaveeach of us children a trip abroad. My sister organised work experience in ahospital in Rotterdam, and I organised an English course in London … andwas able to, thanks to the help from an English university professor get workexperience for a month in the London zoo.

Overseas experiences furthermore formed (and confirmed) taste for particu-lar academic areas. Francisco’s work experience at London Zoo providedhim with an academic vocation:

It was what determined my life. Because I saw that I liked the zoo, breedingin captivity and that gave me lots of strength to pass the entrance examinationfor the Zoobotanica Foundation at the zoo here, which is where I am now.

More subtle dispositions, such as openness and tolerance, were also seen tobe cultivated through overseas experiences:

It really opens up the way you see other cultures. You begin to accept, to seeothers through different eyes. You leave your place and start to perceive andidentify cultural differences. (Mother, university professor)

For university professors and their children, therefore, international edu-cational experiences are the culmination of a dream that is deeply seated intheir cultural ideals and values. They are actively sought after for both their

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direct enhancement to academic pathways and their character-building role.However, even for this group, an overseas university qualification is adream that is only envisioned at postgraduate level. For economic elites too,despite the appeal of the US Ivy League, tertiary study overseas is mostlikely in low-status colleges or through MBAs. In this regard, the groupsstudied do not present the same level of internationalisation in theiracademic pathways that is typical amongst South East Asian cultural andeconomic elites.

The hypervalorisation of English

Perhaps the greatest benefit accrued by both of the class fractions examinedabove comes thanks to their carefully cultivated fluency in English, whichcan only be understood in relation to other social classes in Brazil. Cer-tainly, English functions as cultural capital because the culture of the rulingclasses becomes the dominant culture and enjoys universal prestige in adynamic of symbolic domination. Fluency in English becomes one of thosepractices legitimated as naturally superior, especially to those who lackaccess to it (Bourdieu 1993). However ruling-class interest in English andcross-class recognition of its value is driven not by merely internal factors.The Brazilian elites seek to position themselves within a global field ofpower defined by US hegemony. Fluency in English for Brazilian elitesinvolves children being able to ‘pass’ as First World citizens. One prouduniversity professor noted of his daughter, following an extended period ofstudy in the United States:

So she is absolutely fluent in spoken English, without any trace of an accent,she writes like a real American!

English is the global language of business, research and the Internet.This point is reinforced by the life experiences of elite groups, but is alsoheavily promoted by the Brazilian government and by commercial languageschools. Brazil counts 70 major commercial providers operating over 6000language schools (some offer other languages in addition to English), andthe sector has been growing at a rate of 15% per year. While this sectordemonstrates strong appetite to learn English, particularly to improveemployment prospects, 80% of even middle-class Brazilians declare thatthey speak no foreign language (EF 2014).

Within Brazil’s borders the potency of English as capital is determinedby limited access to the conditions required to attain fluency. This isbecause fluency usually requires a heavy educational investment of timeand money, in combination with international travel, that is unavailable tothe vast majority of Brazilians.

Without exception, participants from both business and academiareported placing their children in extra-curricular language courses from a

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young age as a matter of course. The undemocratic nature of access toEnglish is reinforced by its provision almost exclusively through suchcourses, with extremely limited opportunities provided through regular pub-lic schooling (Lima 2011). Even private schools lag in their provision oflanguage education and have begun sub-contracting their English classes tocommercial providers (Aguiar and Nogueira 2012).

The commercial language schools that cater to elite groups offer coursesfor children as young as three years old, with high-end providers such asRed Balloon specialising in this age group. The high-end courses forschool-aged children are typically of at least six to seven years’ duration. Insuch ‘quality’ language schools the emphasis is similarly on traditionalnotions of ‘English’ or ‘American’ culture and on exactitude in accent andfamiliarity with idioms. Perhaps the most prominent of the ‘quality’ lan-guage schools is Cultura Inglesa, whose motto is ‘English, with Culture’.9

The branch located in Belo Horizonte boasts of innovative methods withthe latest technology, as well as tradition – emphasised by a portrait of itsrecently retired director standing with Prince Charles. Charging amongst thehighest fees of any language school, most of its teachers hold universityqualifications, sometimes postgraduate qualifications. Cultura Inglesa is a‘bi-national’ network, emphasising its connections to Britain (theatre, film,visits from English artists, and of course the organisation of overseas trips)and without the gaudy commercial trappings of more recent franchises like‘Number 1’ and ‘Wizard’. Top-end language schools, of course, engage intheir own forms of self-promotion and benefit from catering to studentswho, as a consequence of international travel, do not rely exclusively onthem for contact with English.

The dedication to precocious and extended study of English reflects theinvestment of time as a key dimension of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986).Commercial language courses taken during childhood typically contributethe development of taste for international music, television programmes, lit-erature and so-on. They provide a fund of common knowledge within theelites that surfaces in the use of English words and phrases in daily conver-sation and online communication, essential to being socially included withinelite social networks. Wealthy neighbourhoods, such as the gated commu-nity of Alfaville near Belo Horizonte, use street names such as ‘AvenidaPrincesa Diana’ and ‘Avenida Picadilli’.

The prestige that goes with knowing English is demonstrated not onlyby knowledge of English words or the ability to produce phrases in English,but through possession of the correct accent and of total fluency in speaking(cf. Canagarajah 1999; Pennycook 2007). A strong Brazilian accent is anobject of ridicule. The cultural prestige of pronunciation that can only begained through long childhood years spent in top language schools and tripsabroad is evident in Brazil’s most widely popular cultural form: the teleno-vela. A wealthy family of medical doctors – the Khouris – around which

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the soap opera Amor à Vida (2013–2014) is centred embody such a socialposition. Whereas the generalised pronunciation of ‘hot dog’ in BrazilianPortuguese is something like ‘hotchi doggi’, members of the Khouri clanuse American pronunciation, usually with a fair amount of contempt at thiscommon street food. When arch villain Felix Khouri is made destitute andmust sell hot-dogs with his former nanny, he reverts to the ‘uneducated’pronunciation as he shouts his wares, the audience revelling in his reversalof fortune.

The symbolic dominance (legitimacy) of Brazilian elites is strengthenedby the frequent experience of failure to learn English experienced by work-ing-class populations either in low-cost intensive courses, or in the finalyears of public secondary schooling where famously ‘English is not learned’(Lima 2011). This linguistic domination is illustrated by the sentimentexpressed by many working-class students who speak, with shame,non-standard Portuguese (Bartlett 2007): ‘I don’t even speak Portugueseproperly, how can I learn English’?

Familiarity with English is therefore understood by Brazilian economicand cultural elites alike to be a basic lifestyle requirement. Further, fluencyin English holds value in the labour market for those who hold other quali-fications and executive positions. One language course teacher noted thatHSBC Brazil requires all managers to take the Test of English for Interna-tional Communication annually as part of their performance review. The testscores are used to determine promotion and bonuses. According to one tea-cher who had working in a number of language courses:

The difference between upper-class students and poor students, is that Englishis already a part of the reality for the upper-class students. For the working-class students, it is just a dream.

Conclusion

In this paper we have argued that there are some important differencesbetween class relations in Brazil and those analysed in France by Bourdieu,and that these have implications for the contemporary phenomenon of inter-nationalisation in the education of elites. Whereas analysis of educationalinequalities typically places economic and cultural elites together in a posi-tion of dominance, our research showed identified a number of divisions.Business owners, whose advantages are manifested in material wealth,struggle to transform this privilege into access to high-status universitycourses for their children. Such access is only guaranteed for the children ofthe second-class fraction analysed, highly qualified university professors. Inrelation to internationalisation, business elites show a preference for non-educationally focused, short-term and frequent travel. This fits with theirlimited investment in formal schooling, and parallel investment in strategiesaimed at integrating their children directly into the family business concerns.

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University professors, lacking in economic capital but with a strong attach-ment to cosmopolitan values and a heavy reliance on academic success toguarantee the future status of their children, favour longer-term travel moreexclusively dedicated to educational ends. These are the general divergingtrends we have identified, without here delving into the complexities offamily decisions.

We have identified common ground between the two class fractions byshowing how and why both business owners and professors have a particu-lar interest in, and dependence upon, internationalisation in order to estab-lish and maintain a position in a global field of power. We suggest that lessprivileged social groups, without cosmopolitan cultural capital accessiblethrough internationalisation strategies, are excluded from this field. Interna-tionalisation is enabled by, and becomes effective through, its combinationwith other forms of existing advantage – economic, cultural, social andpolitical. The belief amongst the working class, promoted by languagecourses, that learning English will in itself open the doors to privilegedpositions can be thought of as a form of symbolic domination to the extentthat it masks the extent of the true foundations of ruling-class power inBrazil.

While our paper has focused on the smooth and submerged workings ofa particular form of cultural capital, we acknowledge that class power is notbased on symbolic domination alone. Indeed symbolic domination is veryincomplete in Brazil, particularly as a result of its glaring social inequalities.The social order is both backed and threatened by violence, revealing a dis-rupted and unstable set of class relations that presents some of the featuresof the South African case, where the ruling class does not enjoy the level oflevel of recognition and prestige that many other national elites do(Burawoy and Von Holdt 2012). Further, while the examples we selectedhighlight distance between economic and cultural elites, other class fractionsdemonstrate, in different ways, the close relationship between the two inperforming ideological work directed at supporting the social order. In thisregard, we can think in particular of the ideological role of a cultural eliteworking in the major media corporations, such as Rede Globo, a sector thatis tightly integrated with interests of the economic and political elite.

Our analysis has pointed to the robustness of Bourdieu’s analytical cate-gories of capital, field and habitus within a framework of symbolic domina-tion. At the same time, we have shown that a number of assumptionsarising from his work – regarding in particular the cultural unity of the rul-ing class in its relationship to education, and the national boundedness ofthe field of power – do not travel well. We need to carefully consider ineach new application of Bourdieu’s framework how different class fractionsare positioned in national and international fields of power in relation to thekinds of capital that they cultivate and hold. We must also show how thispower is constituted through central institutions such as formal schooling,

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and more diffuse means such as prestige. With the intensification of interna-tionalisation in education and the growing hegemony of English, thequestion of how English fluency combines with and consolidates existingforms of privilege is key to future examinations of elites.

FundingThis work was supported by the CNPq (proc. 307172/2006-6) and an EndeavourFellowship (2012).

Notes1. Our engagement does not extend to covert holders of political power as

represented in the work of C. Wright Mills (1956), for example.2. As Bourdieu (1984) shows, academics are not a homogeneous group and

professors from different faculties and universities present different compositionof capital and connections to political/economic and intellectual fields.

3. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss other major developments, theprinciple one being the ever-growing importance of private schooling strategiesand the diversification of private schooling options.

4. We recognise that academic and scientific elites do not represent the totality ofcultural elites. High-level public servants (diplomats, judges, etc.), high-prestigeliberal professions (medical doctors, lawyers, etc.), well-known artists, and soon, doubtless make up other fractions of this group, whose relationship witheducation may vary. See, for example, Fourastié (n.d.) for a presentation of the‘spiritual independency’ of artists and their relative indifference to formalqualifications.

5. A crisis sparked by a collapse of the political settlement between rural oligar-chies of various states, resulting in the declaration of a new republic. It markeda break with the social order based on an agricultural exports and a shifttowards industrial development.

6. A phenomenon usually associated with working-class students.7. These activities constitute a real introduction to the world of business, under-

taken almost always in the family businesses. Their parents believe that trainingfor business should begin early and express a certain scepticism about thecapacity of school to prepare their children for the real world (of business) andto guarantee an advantageous economic position.

8. For an exception, see Jay (1997).9. Cultura Inglesa is something of an anachronism in taking Britain as its refer-

ence point rather than the United States, reflecting its foundation prior to WorldWar II when Britain was a more dominant presence.

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