Educational Restructuring and Social Boundaries: School Choice and Consumers of Education

Abstract

The chapter focuses on the implementation of the school choice reform in Swedish schools during the 1990s. The success of school choice, which is shown in the rapid expansion of the number of charter schools, is seen as a response to a “monopolistic policy”, i.e. a school policy that is not aligned with the expectations of certain social groups’ expectations of schools and education. This chapter contextualises the effects structural changes have on families’ possibilities of realising their future through education investments. It is related to the complex interplay between heightened levels of education, grade inflation and thereby an increasing difficulty of converting education and degrees into stable social positions. In addition, interviews of families are presented regarding their school choice, motives and expectations, as well as how they define themselves: “we” in relation to other social groups “them”, and the strategies they develop to in order to maintain or surpass the boundaries between “us” and “them”. It should be noted that the parents in the study all had university degrees, though one or both parents came from a working-class family. Their social position rested on an accumulated cultural capital. What expectations of school and education does this social mobility give rise to? Educational strategies, which “engine” the creation of boundaries between different schools, should be analysed from the perspective of the families’ social history in relation to structural changes.