Reproducing Privilege Through International Schooling in India

Across the globe, education has been an integral component of producing and reproducing privilege which may be understood from varied standpoints. However, the idea of privilege that this study tried to examine resonates closely with Howard (Learning privilege: Lessons of power and identity in affluent schooling. Routledge, 2008) and Khan’s (Privilege: The making of an adolescent elite at St.Paul’s School. Princeton University Press, 2011) contention that privilege is an identity that is developed and cultivated; it is the practice of “being at ease,” making oneself comfortable in diverse situations. In the Indian context, international schools are emerging as spaces for reproducing such forms of privilege. Such privilege needs the support of not just economic wealth or capital, but also other forms such as social and cultural capital. Drawing from an ethnographic study conducted at an international school located in Delhi, India, this chapter draws from a range of narratives that demonstrate how the reproduction of privilege is undertaken by the parents and the international school as well. The study uses testimonies of parents and students who are not typically hypermobile. Primarily belonging to privileged families, wherein wealth has largely been inherited as a legacy, the parental profiles and socioeconomic backgrounds of the students exhibited how privilege and international schooling can complement each other. Against this background, the chapter (emanating from a larger study) aims to understand how parent-informants have adopted educational practices and strategies by investing a significant proportion of their resources into choosing what they believe is the best education system for their children and thereby cultivating privilege among them. It attempts to argue that privilege in the case of international school choice-making is related to one’s class belongingness and that such a system of schooling is being accessed by the privileged classes to reproduce their privilege. The chapter also tries to examine how privilege is being developed and cultivated among students through international schooling.