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Avery Benton, Independent Scholar, United KingdomAbstract
Traditionally, social mobility has been cultivated through elite educational institutions such as boarding schools and private academies. These physical spaces are embedded within national and class-based hierarchies all around the world. However, the rapid expansion of online schooling in a post-COVID-19 world has begun to disrupt these established pathways. This paper theorizes the emergence of a new form of transnational subjectivity. This is termed as digipolitanism, enabled by the digitization of education. As access to physical migration through education becomes increasingly restricted due to rising financial barriers (e.g., heightened VAT in the UK’s private education sector), families and students are turning to digital alternatives. British online schools now act as virtual conduits of cultural capital, allowing students to accrue the social and academic credentials associated with British education without territorial relocation. Attached capital rather than pure knowledge gained becomes more of a currency for the new socially mobile class looking abroad. Rather than mere substitutes, these online platforms may be constructing an emergent globally mobile class whose identity and aspirations are forged in digital rather than purely geographic space.
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Conference: ECE2025Stream: International Education
This paper is part of the ECE2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Benton A. (2025) Challenging International Social Mobility Narratives: The Emergence of the “Digipolitan” ISSN: 2188-1162 The European Conference on Education 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 743-752) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2025.58
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2025.58
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