Who are the Globalizers? The Role of Education and Educational Elites

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of which societal groups are involved in transnational activities like cross-border mobility and long-distance networking. It is assumed that not all social strata are equally involved in transnational activities, and that one will find striking differences between different status groups. Given differences in opportunities, competences and contexts of occupational and social activities, the more educated can be considered the pioneers of border-crossing. The article scrutinizes this assumption looking at the German population and using a representative survey which focuses on different types of transnational activities. Furthermore, it relates the involvement in transnational activities to peoples’ attitudes asking whether those who are more “transnational” are also more open towards foreigners and more positive with regard to supranational political responsibility. Overall, the article sheds light on a new type of social differentiation, namely the link between social status on the one hand, and the social and geographical space people relate to on the other.

Appendix: Construction of the Transnationality Index

The transnationality index is an additive index and consists of three components, private transnational relations, short-term stays abroad and long-term stays abroad.

• 1. Private transnational relations (30%)

  Every respondent was asked whether he communicates regularly with foreign friends and/or relatives as well as with Germans living abroad. Detailed information about at most four foreigners in each of these three dimensions was gathered. The score of the sub-index “transnational relations” refers to the number of persons that are reported in the three categories, not taking into consideration the total number of possible contact partners. Each of the three categories increases the index at a maximum of 1, adding a value of 0.25 per person. For instance, an interviewee who declared he was communicating regularly with two foreign relatives and three Germans living abroad boosts the index by 1.25 (2 × 0.25 + 3 × 0.25). Thus, the sub-dimension “transnational relations” increases the index-value by 3 at most.

• 2. Short-term stays abroad (30%)

  Here we refer to the question as to how often the interviewee stayed abroad for a time-span less than 3 months during the last 12 months. The majority of Germans did cross the German borders during this period: 37.8% once or twice, 20.4% three times and more. Yet 41.8% of the interviewees declared that they had not set foot on foreign soil during the last 12 months. In terms of contributing to the index, respondents who stayed abroad more than twice increase the value by “3”, whereas one or two stays boost the value by “2”. If the response to this question was “never”, the value for this sub-index is zero. Thus, the highest value this sub-dimension can add to the index is 3.

• 3. Long-term stays abroad (40%)

  This sub-index takes into account all stays lasting 3 months or longer. While 5.2% of the respondents have spent 3 to 12 months of their life abroad, 6.2% had lived for one year or more outside the borders of Germany. Each interviewee could declare a maximum of five countries he had lived-in previously. For every country we collected information about the total span of time the respondent had stayed there. For example, if a person stayed twice in Brazil, once for a year and once for 4 months, the interviewer coded “Brazil, 1 year, 4 months”, not taking into account that the respondent lived there at two different times (with a possible interruption of several years or even decades). For the purposes of our calculations, all of the five variables containing information about the time spent abroad were aggregated. The sub-index scores as follows: “0” for no long term stays abroad, “2” for stays of an aggregate time of 3–12 months and “4” for all stays with a total time of 13 months and more.

In terms of calculation of the transnationality index, we summed the three subcomponents. Finally the results were rounded up. Thus the index ranges from 0 (= no involvement in transnational interaction) to 10 (= very high level of involvement in transnational interaction). Table 4.3 gives the frequencies of the index.

Table 4.3 Frequencies of the Transnationality Index