Status Strategies among Thai Elites:

International Education, Cosmopolitanism, and

Ideas of ‘The West’.

A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the Faculty of Humanities

2017

Kunnaya Wimooktanon

School of Social Science

2

Contents

Other Lists 5

Abstract 6

Declaration 7

Copyright Statement 8

Acknowledgements 9

Chapter1: Introduction 10

1. Distinguishing Thailand’s Elites 11

2. Thailand’s Elite and International Education 14

3. Outlining the Research 15

4. Chapter Summaries 18

Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework 23

1. Introduction 23

2. Research into International Education 25

3. The Family and Cultural and Social Capitals 35

4. International cultural capital 42

5. Cosmopolitanism and Global Reflexivity 48

6. Post Coloniality, Power imbalance, and the Perception of the Global Other 56

7. Conclusion 63

Chapter 3: Methodology 68

1. Introduction 68

2. Defining the ‘Elite’ 69

3. Rationale Behind Research Approach 74

4. Insider Status and the Positionality of the Researcher 77

5. Sampling Methodology 81

6. Data collection 86

7. Data Summary 90

8. Data Handling and Translation 99

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9. Data Analysis 101

10. Reflections on Methodology 103

Chapter 4: Family, Education Hierarchies, and Circuits of Education 106

1. Introduction 106

2. Family in the Thai context 109

3. Schooling and Attitudes towards Overseas Higher Education 111

4. Circuits of Education and Overseas Study 121

5. Filial Duties, Freedom from Families, and the Habitus 128

6. Conclusion 138

Chapter 5: Experiences of the Western Other as Cultural Capital. 142

1. Introduction 142

2. Escaping the K’la: Longing for Experiences of the Western Other 146

3. International Education as a Deterritorialised Cultural Capital 150

4. ‘Fitting In’ and Distinguishing the Elite’s Elite. 157

5. Conclusion 167

Chapter 6: International Education and the Thai Discourses of the West 170

1. Introduction 170

2. English Language and Distinction 173

3. Discourses of Progress and Hierarchy 181

4. Intellectual Bifurcation and the West 190

5. Conclusion 193

Chapter 7: Conclusion 201

1. Introduction 201

2. Theorising and Researching International Education 202

3. Families and International Education 210

4. International Education as cultural capital 212

5. International Education and the semi-colonial context. 214

6. Reflections on Researching International Education and Thai Elites 216

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Appendices 221

Appendix 1: Lyrics to ‘Duties of a Child’ 221

Appendix 2: Participant Profiles 222

Appendix 3: Interview Prompts 229

Appendix 4: Information Sheet 233

Appendix 5: Consent Form 235

Bibliography 236

Word Count: 81,083

5

Other Lists

Tables

Table 1: Description of the sample’s social networks 85

Table 2: Overall participant statistics 91

Table 3: Overseas schooled participants statistics 92

Table 4: International schooled participants statistics 93

Table 5: Overseas schooled participants statistics 94

Table 6: Participants Overview 96

Images

Fig. 1) participants mapped according to their network relationship

to the researcher

84

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Abstract The University of Manchester Kunnaya Wimooktanon Doctor of Philosophy Status Strategies Among Thai Elites: International Education, Cosmopolitanism, and Ideas of ‘The West’.

September 2017

International education has been practised by Siam/Thailand’s elite classes since the late 19th century. However, studies of this practice are few and far between. This thesis investigates the practice of international education among Thailand’s elites, examining international education as a strategy that is used to maintain or enhance an elite’s status through the importation of deterritorialised cultural capital.

This research employs in-depth semi-structured interviews of former international students, examining the logic and discourses behind the participants’ decision to study overseas, their perceptions and practices while studying overseas, and how they deploy their new-found cultural capital upon their return to Thailand. These narratives are then analysed with respect to historical references outlining the ways in which Siamese/Thai elites have employed western-derived cultural capitals as status symbols in the past. It demonstrates a link between these historical engagements with western modernity to the contemporary practice of international education among Thailand’s elite, influencing the participants’ assumption of a hierarchy of culture, with western tertiary institutions seen as being automatically superior to Thai institutions.

This study investigats the practice of international education as a strategy that has been influenced by the participant’s family, notably through the schooling choices made for the participants by their parents. Participants who have been schooled overseas or at an international school demonstrated higher levels of ease with the Western other, enabling them to engage more closely with the ‘source’ of Western culture, allowing them to show greater nuance in their consumption of Western things and practices. Their schooling history placed them at an advantage to participants who have been schooled in the Thai educational system, whose narrative shows a more anxious, deliberative, and by-the-book approach to their engagement with western culture.

This study confirms findings from previous studies into international practices. Specifically, it shows that narratives of openness to foreign others do not necessarily automatically indicate a cosmopolitan or globally reflexive world view, that these narratives need to be analysed within the context of the participants’ frame of reference. In the case of this thesis, the participants’ narratives of openness to foreign others, and their valuing of international education prove to be a reproduction of a culturally hierarchical frame of reference, with roots in the unequal relationship between Siam/Thailand and western colonial powers. This frame of reference results in the west being perceived as the source of modernity and progress. Moreover, this thesis also expands upon previous research into deterritorialised cultural capital, broadening the concept by bringing attention to the nuance between high cultural capital participants, and very high cultural capital participants. This thesis also demonstrates how Thailand’s intellectually bifurcated discourse of its relations to the west complicates the study of international education as a deterritorialised form of cultural capital. This finding demonstrates a need for an approach to deterritorialised cultural capital that is attuned to not just the nuances of a particular field’s western lifestyle myth but also the nuances in how that myth was constructed.

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Declaration

No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an

application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other

institute of learning.

8

Copyright Statement

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certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and she has given The University

of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes.

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Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s

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University’s policy on Presentation of Theses

9

Acknowledgements

My first heartfelt thanks and gratitude is to my supervisors, Doctor Wendy Bottero and

Doctor Bridget Byrne. Without them, I would not be in the position to write this final

piece of my thesis today. Their guidance, kindness, encouragement, and the occasional

stern words have made this thesis possible. I would also like to thank Doctor Alan Warde

and Doctor Sue Heath for attending to my annual reviews, their guidance helped to

improve and refocus my efforts at critical junctures of my research.

Further thanks goes to my family, whose kind words and support given from faraway

have helped me through the years this thesis has taken to produce, Specifically to my

Mother, Nareeluck for always believing in me, and supported and encouraged me from

the very first. To Steph, Mike, and Lou my dearest friends whose companionship have

kept me sane from the first days of my Master’s degree to today. To my adventuring

party: Sprocket the gnome wizard, Skraeling the half elf monk-rogue, Oskar the dwarf

cleric-warlock, Garydos the high elf fighter-paladin, and Lilith the dwarf Fighter-Ranger

(and your human players in the real world) and our gamemaster Luke. Our dungeon and

dragons sessions gave me a creative outlet, a radically different kind of story telling from

the thesis, and helped to refresh my head after a long week of writing. To the UK lindy

hop and blues dancing community, in particular to those in Manchester and the North

West, whose camaraderie and openness has made me feel welcomed in the UK, whose

participation at and organisation of countless events and festivals have helped made the

past 5 years infinitely more pleasant.

Lastly but by no means least, To the McElroy and Smirl families of Huntington, West

Virginia. Your stories, humour, and positivity relayed through your podcasts have made

the difference in times where the going got tough. Your podcasts and the online

communities that grew up around them have kept me company through many lonely

evenings spent working in front of my computer, and giving me the strength to keep

going.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

This thesis intends to address the question: what role does international education play in

the education strategies of Thai elites? The impetus for this thesis came from a personal

place. I am an internationally educated member of the Thai elite. I began this research as

a means through which I can start to question the assumptions regarding the practice of

international education that I, and many like my self, have lived by. Why is it that we

strive for an overseas education? Why is international education seen to be superior to a

Thai one? What is it about the Thai context that made us see international education this

way? Originally, this thesis started life as an inquiry into how overseas-educated Thais

managed their reintegration into Thai society, as can be seen on the participant

information sheet in appendix 4. However, as I researched existing literature and began

my fieldwork, I became more interested in a prior question. What status does

international education have for Thai elites? How could that status be understood?

Current literature on International students focused on students’ experiences while

overseas (e.g. Fritz et al., 2008; Hotta and Ting-Toomey, 2013; Ladd and Ruby, 1999),

while few focused on the motivations behind the students’ decision to study overseas in

the first place. This thesis will be analysing international education as a form of cultural

capital, using Bourdieu’s framework of capitals, fields, and habitus (Bourdieu, 2002, 1984,

1977) as a general framework, looking at international education as a culturally valuable

practice that aids in the reproduction of elite status within a Thai context. This study will

also be closely examining the source of the value of international education, arguing that,

rather than indicating a valuation based on a cosmopolitan world view (Beck, 2006;

Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002), giving value to connection to foreign others in general

(Pöllmann, 2013); the value of international education within a Thai context is based on a

specifically Thai narrative of the western other (Kitiarsa, 2010; Winichakul, 2000). In this

chapter, I will briefly discuss the Thai elites and the history of international education in

Thailand, showing its significance to the Thai cultural field. I will then outline the following

chapters and the general arguments of this thesis.

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1. Distinguishing Thailand’s Elites

Thailand is administratively divided into 75 Provinces and one Special Administrative Area

(Bangkok). The provinces are geographically grouped in in 5 Areas North, North-East,

Central, South and Bangkok (NSO, 2010). Bangkok is the most populous and densely

populated area in Thailand, with most of the country's wealth and power centralised

there. In the present, all bar one of the top 50 corporations listed on the Thai Stock

Exchange is based in Bangkok (Stock Exchange of Thailand, 2015), and the average

monthly household income in the city (41,000 Thai Baht) is higher than the average

monthly income for the top quintile nationally (37,154 Thai Baht) (National Statistics

Office, 2015). Bangkok alone accounts for 31% of Thailand’s Gross Domestic Product

(GDP) (Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board, 2015). In contrast,

the second largest contributor to Thailand’s GDP, the industrial province of Rayong

accounts for 7% of Thailand’s GDP (ibid). Marc Askew (2002) suggests that the

contemporary significance of the city stems from the historical practices of

Siam/Thailand’s elites, with Bangkok being both being an international port city and a

centre for the collection of taxes (ibid). This history of the centralisation of both ruling

and economic elites of the country in one city led to Bangkok’s pre-eminence over all

other cities in the country today. International education among this elite was not

commonplace until the late 19th century (Peleggi, 2002). historically, Siamese kings and

their ruling elites were justified in their position by the support of the Chinese Emperor as

the ‘son of heaven’ – a form of divine right (ibid). However, as the power and influence of

the Western imperial powers grew in South East Asia, a new discourse emerged. The old

discourse of divine right, supported by the now (in the late 19th century) dubious power

of a faraway emperor was replaced with a right to rule backed by the elite’s alleged

better understanding of Western civilisation and civilizational progress (Winichakul,

2000). The King and the aristocracy in Bangkok insisted on the right to rule because they

were more civilised, and more developed than the rest of the country (Peleggi, 2002;

Winichakul, 2000). Through this discourse, Bangkok has been further secured in its

position as nation’s ‘centre’. Now, not only is it the seat of Kings, but it is also the

epicentre from which ‘civilisation’ spreads to other parts of the country (Winichakul,

2000). Discourses of Western civilisation [siwilai] and civilizational progress [charoen]

cemented Bangkok’s centrality in the minds of its citizens, painting rural inhabitants of

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the provinces as resources for the city to exploit, and Bangkok as the educated, civilised

ruling centre of the nation (ibid).

Spiritually speaking, the city was the enlightened space, the most charoen, as

opposed to the jungles of the heathens. A rural village was remote from the

spiritual center and adjacent to the [wilderness]. It is very likely that this spiritual

hierarchy of space that preexisted the idea of siwilai had facilitated the spatialized

classification of siwilai in Thai thinking. In other words, the compatibility between

the two epistemic concepts provided the possibility for the ideas of comparative

siwilai space to be appropriated into local consciousness (ibid, p. 537)

This change linking Bangkok elite’s right to rule to a notion of civilizational progress

means that the elite’s right to rule changed in its nature, from being a right ascribed by

the heavens, it is now a right that was achieved through familiarity with the West and

Western culture and commodities. This change would have a profound impact on how

Thailand sees its relationship to the West as will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 6. When

considering how this ‘new’ idea of achieved status impacted contemporary status

hierarchy in Bangkok, Vorng’s (2011b) noted the importance of presentation and personal

attributes in the formation of status identity in Thailand, particularly among those who

seek to improve their status. Vorng discussed the ‘hi-so’ – a shortened version of the

English term ‘high society’

Driven by middle class desires and imaginations, a whole subculture emerged that

centres on mimicking what the middle class perceives to be, and the media

depicts as, hi-so. Aspirants to the “title” slavishly follow trends that dictate the

most desirable clothes, foods, accessories, activities, and places to socialize.

(Vorng, 2011a, p. 76).

Such displays are not only seen as a way to move closer to ones’ betters, but also serve as

a means to distinguish oneself from those who are relatively lower (Gullette, 2014;

Korinek et al., 2005). This focus on the consumption of status-maintaining/enhancing

goods and activities can be seen as a contemporary reflection of the previously described

shift in mode of status distinction from a system of heavenly-ordained order to a system

of achieved status through consumption of commodity and knowledge (Peleggi, 2002;

Winichakul, 2000).

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However, as Ockley has noted, it is important to bear in mind that in the Thai case, terms

such as ‘middle class’ are very loosely defined and contained many disparate groups. In

this thesis alone, a son of school teachers who was able to afford international education

through part time work overseas, and a participant who arrived in the interview in a

brand new European sports car both consider themselves ‘middle class’. However, Ockey

pointed out that the simple application of the term ‘middle class’ – commonly used in

English-language literature on recent political conflicts in Thailand (e.g. Baker and

Phongpaichit, 2015; Tejapira, 2006)1, ignores the fact that within the Thai context, there is

no well-defined definition of what constitutes a ‘middle class’ and that those who could

claim ‘middle class’ status have little in common.

There is no neat coincidence in Thailand between ‘middle-class’ structural

positions, such as those defined by educational credentials, occupational status

and income levels . . . the prostitute, the university professor, the bank manager,

the independent farmer, the owner of a Chinese traditional medicine shop, the

police officer and the soldier are all ‘middle class’ under various definitions, yet

they have little in common (Ockey, 1999, p. 256).

Vorng (2011) further developed this point, arguing that status hierarchy in Bangkok is a

complicated, multifaceted issue. She suggested that by using terms such as ‘middle class’

we underrepresent the social and cultural heterogeneity of the so-called ‘middle class’ in

Thailand. Additionally, Vorng’s research in Bangkok found that her participants does not

talk of status differentiation in term of structural categories, but rather in terms of

relative positioning (ibid, p. 686). This means that when discussing Thai status identity,

one needs to be mindful that a participant’s articulation of status usually reflect not their

place in the larger structure, but their relative positioning based on those they interact

with. This focus on status relative to others means that the network of people one

identifies with becomes an important part of one’s status identity. Treerat and

Vanichaka’s (2015) research in to elite networking through executive courses highlights

the importance of informal networks to Thailand’s elites. To quote one of their

participants:

1 These researches tended to portray Thailand’s political conflict as one between the urban middle class and

the rural poor.

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From the social perspective, the program is wonderful. It’s good for building

connections for information and support... the ties that bind are mutual interests.

Business people benefit in the long run. Meeting politicians such as ministers gives

them connections. When someone from their class is in government, they have

connections to some extent, creating opportunities for future deals. Politicians

also want to connect to businesses (Treerat and Vanichaka, 2015, p. 87).

These networks of alike individuals are mentioned several times in past literature, from

the highest levels of government (McCargo, 2005) to the mundane world of housing

developments (Fleischer, 2007). Status hierarchy in Thailand cannot be viewed through a

structural upper/middle/working class schema. Rather, current literature shows that

status hierarchy in Thailand operates on a system of relative comparison based on one’s

cultural capital and one’s outward consumption.

Even though it is difficult to discuss social classes with regard to Thailand given the above,

A contextual picture can still be seen through looking at economic and poverty indicators

for Thailand which suggests a significant level of inequality and concentration of wealth

within the country’s economic elite. To illustrate this, the top income quintile of Thai

Society earned 44.6% of the income in the country in 2015 which is more than the bottom

three quintiles combined (34.6%). This translates to the top 15.7% of the population (the

percentage of people in the top quintile) earning more than the bottom 67% of the

population combined (National Statistics Office, 2015). As mentioned earlier, the average

income for Bangkok is greater than the average income for the top quintile, it is

reasonable to assume that a significant proportion of the top quintile resides in Bangkok.

To put this inequality in to a global context Thailand’s Gini coefficient2is 44.5, ranking in

the bottom 1/3 of reporting countries (Central Intelligence Agency, 2016). This indicates

that the level of inequality in Thailand is significant higher than the global average.

2. Thailand’s Elites and International Education

From the mid-19th century, princes and government bureaucrats were sent to be

educated in the West, a practice which continues to this day with over 3,800 students

studying overseas at the Thai government’s expense as of October 2015. (Office of the

2 An index measuring income distribution, the higher the number the more equal the country. 0 is perfectly

uneven distribution, 100 is perfectly even distribution.

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Civil Service Commission, 2017a). The practice of international education grew beyond

government circles. It became increasingly common for members of the Thai elites to

send their scions overseas for an education at their own expense. To put this growth

beyond government circles in context, In 2015, approximately 27,000 Thai students were

studying overseas (International Consultants for Education and Fairs, 2015), which

indicates that an overwhelming majority, approximately 83% of Thais who were studying

internationally in 2015 are self-funded. In contemporary Thailand, many international

education agencies, paid for by Western universities, exist for the express purpose of

helping Thai students apply to Western universities. There are large annual fairs where

representatives of universities from around the world gather at convention centres in

Bangkok to sell their courses to potential students, with the USA, the UK and Australia

being the most popular destinations, accounting for 69% of the total number of Thai

international students in 2010 (Clark, 2014). To many Thai elites, as shall be seen in the

following chapters – an international education has come to be seen as not just a

desirable thing, but an essential thing. An international education is considered to be

necessary if one wishes to remain competitive in Thailand’s job market and gain a much

more prestigious and lucrative job in comparison to their domestically-educated peers. As

a point of comparison, in one of my past jobs before the conception of this thesis, I was

paid double that of my Thai-educated contemporary who was doing a similar job,

indicating the tangible benefits which can be the result of overseas education.

In this section, I have outlined the historical roots of the practice of international

education in Thailand, from its start as a custom of the royal family (Peleggi, 2002), to a

modern practice that is common among Thai elites. In the next section, I will discuss how I

will be approaching my research on elite Thai overseas education, briefly outlining my

theoretical framework, methodology, and analysis in the chapters to come.

3. Outlining the Research

I approach the research problem of ‘what role does international education play in the

education strategies of Thai elites?’ by splitting it into three separate, interrelated

questions

One, what is the role in of the family in international education strategies within

the Thai context.

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Two, how is international education operationalised as a mode of distinction for

elite Thais.

Three, how much has the contemporary Thai view of international education been

influenced by its semi-colonial past?

Past research on Thai international students is few and far in between. There has only

been one previous study that I was able to find published in English language journals.

Pimpa’s (2003) research into the influence of family on Thai students’ international

education choices was more in line with a form of market research, concerned with the

findings’ implications for the marketing of international education to Thai students (ibid,

p. 218). The same could be said about much of the existing research into international

education, often viewing students as customers and focusing on how institutions might

better market to or provide a better ‘product’ for international students (e.g. Fritz et al.,

2008; Ladd and Ruby, 1999). Rather than approaching the students as a potential market

needing to be studied, this thesis instead follows in the tradition of sociology of global

education, drawing on Bourdieusian theories of education as class competition and social

reproduction (e.g. Brooks and Waters, 2009a; Collins et al., 2016; Waters, 2006). This

thesis will be exploring the participants’ narrated experiences of international education,

looking into narratives of how the participants expected to benefit from their education,

how they perceived their experience of international education, and how they narrated

the impact that their overseas education had on their lives on return to Thailand. The

data collection for this study involved six months of fieldwork amounting to 23 in-depth

qualitative interviews with former self-funded international students in Bangkok (the

details of the sampling approach will be discussed in Chapter 3). I also conducted a review

of research into the historical relationship between Thailand and the West to provide a

contextual background for analysing participants’ frame of reference towards the West

(e.g. Herzfeld, 2010; Kitiarsa, 2010; Peleggi, 2002; Winichakul, 2010).

My data analysis relies on Bourdieu’s works on social and cultural capitals, and the role of

education in producing and reproducing these capitals (Bourdieu, 2002, 1984). I use

Bourdieu’s works as the basis of my theoretical framework largely because of its

demonstrated usefulness in analysing education as a site of social reproduction in existing

research (e.g. Archer et al., 2012; Ball et al., 1995; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990; Reay,

17

1998) Bourdieu’s framework is particularly useful in helping to understand how social and

cultural advantages are reproduced. In the case of this study, Bourdieu’s framework

helped in two ways. First to conceptualise international education as a form of cultural

capital, relating it to a larger system of cultural and social capitals that is used to

reproduce elite distinction and advantage (Bourdieu, 2002, 1984). Second, to provide a

framework linking the participants’ most often discussed theme – family – to a the

reproduction of social advantage (Bourdieu, 1984). Drawing on those who have also used

Bourdieu’s work on education, Ball et al.’s (1995) work is particularly useful for my

research, specifically, their consideration of how family background shapes habitus – an

individual’s set of deeply ingrained dispositions and world views. Differing habituses

produce different perceptions of and approaches to education, placing individuals in what

they refer to as ‘circuits of education’ (ibid). The concept of circuits of education is

particularly helpful for this thesis in that it provides a detailed framework for the

discussion of the role that family and schooling play in reproducing class advantages. In

order to discuss how international education is operationalised into a form of cultural

capital by the participants, I took a two-pronged approach. I analysed the participants’

narratives within the frames of cosmopolitanism (Beck, 2006; Nussbaum and Cohen,

2002; Savage et al., 2005) and deterritorialised cultural capital (Üstüner and Holt, 2010).

This two-prong approach will be used to discuss the two potential answers to the source

of international education’s value as a cultural capital in Thailand. These potential sources

being whether it came from the ‘internationalness’ of the education (i.e. the connection

between the participant and a global other) or if it came from the participant’s perception

of a specific foreign other. I used Savage et al.’s (2005)’s conception of global reflexivity –

a method to gauge how cosmopolitan one is through determining whether one’s frame of

reference is global or situated in a particular locality. This method will help analyse the

participant's discourses of openness and desire to experience foreign others. I have taken

this approach to assist in determining whether or not the participants’ discourses reflect a

cosmopolitan or a locally situated frame of reference. A cosmopolitan frame of reference

would fit into the concept of intercultural capital (Pöllmann, 2013) where the value of

intercultural interaction is derived from the intercultural nature of the interaction.

Through using Savage’s (2005) approach, I will demonstrate that the perceived value of

international education came from a specifically Thai frame of reference towards a

18

Western other. I will then show the usefulness of Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) concept of

deterritorialised cultural capital as an analytical approach to form a link between the

manner in which ‘the West’ has been historically constructed within the Thai frame of

reference, and the participants’ narratives of the value of international education.

Deterritorialised cultural capital is a cultural capital that has been appropriated from one

field which is then re-situated and reconceptualised in a different field (Üstüner and Holt,

2010). Within the framework of deterritorialised cultural capital, The participants’

reconceptualisation of the West is analysed in terms of colonial hybridity – the manner in

which colonial or semi-colonial populations appropriate and redeploy objects and

practices of colonial powers. Colonial hybridity can take the form of resistance (Bhabha,

2004) or used as a means of internal control and domination (Canclini et al., 1995).

With this approach, this thesis examines the practice of international education as a form

of cultural capital. By using both cosmopolitanism and deterritorialised cultural capital as

analytical approaches to the data, I will be building a comparative analysis, discussing the

source of the cultural capital value of international education, whether it came from the

nature of the interaction, of the specificity of the destination countries.

4. Chapter Summaries

In Chapter 1, I briefly situate the contemporary Thai practice of international education

into the larger historical context, linking the practice of seeking overseas education to the

Siamese/Thai elite’s adoption of Western notions of civilisation and progress as a mode of

distinction. I also outline the overarching analytical theme of this thesis, focusing on

unpacking the concept of international education as a source of cultural capital. In

Chapter 2, I give an account of this thesis’s theoretical underpinnings. I first discuss the

nature of past studies on international education and note that the majority of the

studies surveyed were performed with an eye to improve pastoral care for international

students and to better cater to this particular group of ‘customers’ (e.g. Fritz et al., 2008;

Ladd and Ruby, 1999). I then discuss the lack of studies focused on the historical and

structural influences that shape students’ experiences. After identifying this gap in the

existing body of research, I establish a general analytical framework using Bourdieusian

accounts of cultural capital, taste, and reproduction of advantage (Bourdieu, 2002, 1984;

Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). I focus the outlining of this framework around the theme of

19

family. For Bourdieu, the family is the locus of inculcation of cultural competencies

(Bourdieu, 1984), and the framework provided by his writings has been particularly

influential in research on education and family (e.g. Archer et al., 2012; Ball et al., 1995;

Reay, 1998). Chapter 2 then focuses on work that extends Bourdieu’s concept of cultural

capitals to interactions beyond the limits of a single national field. These studies argue

that in a global context, cultural capital needs to be examined as intercultural capital

(Pöllmann, 2013) or deterritorialised cultural capital (Üstüner and Holt, 2010). However,

the ideas of intercultural capitals and deterritorialised cultural capital require an

appreciation of the context of cultural globalisation, of global inequalities and

postcolonial social hierarchies. Therefore, I also examine theories of cosmopolitanism

(e.g. Beck, 2006; Nava, 2007; Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002; Savage et al., 2005) and

postcolonial literature regarding the cultural interaction between the coloniser and the

colonised (e.g. Bhabha, 2004; Canclini et al., 1995; Carrier, 1995; Chatterjee, 1993;

McClintock, 2013), including discussions on Thailand’s semi-colonial status (Herzfeld,

2010; Jackson, 2008). With this framework, I provide an analysis of the participants’

discourses on the cultural capital value of international education that is situated within a

specifically Thai frame of reference that has been informed by a history of unequal

interaction with the West.

In Chapter 3, I outline my research questions and the methodological approach taken to

answer them. This approach consisted of 23 primary tranche interviews with former

international students in Thailand, and four secondary tranche interviews with current

Thai students in the UK to confirm the findings of my primary tranche. I discuss how

eliteness is defined for the purpose of this thesis, and the problematic nature of trying to

define a social elite for sampling purposes, unlike political or economic elites which could

be defined by their official positions within their respective organisations. Instead of

defining a strict criteria for a social elite, I instead relied on my participants to identify

their peers, with my original participants being identified through my existing social

networks. I argue that in-depth semi-structured interviews of a snowball sample is the

best method for studying my target population, as semi-structured interviews help to

focus on the facets of the participants’ narratives that are most important to them. I

discuss the use of a snowball sampling method as a means to leverage my existing

connections within the target population and overcome barriers to entry into a difficult to

20

reach group. I also discuss my positionality as an insider researcher and the benefits and

challenges that brings to my research. Aspects of data handling and translation was

discussed in terms of the social nuances of the Thai language, and that it is critical for the

researcher to be fluent in the language that the interview is conducted in. I demonstrate

how, by using in-depth interview, and a transcription process that is sensitive to the

nuances in the language of interview, I was able to produce an illustrative sample of my

target population.

Chapter 4 is the first of my empirical chapters. Here I utilise the participants’ most often

discussed topic - family - as a point of entry to my dataset, demonstrating the importance

of familial habitus and strategies to my sample’s educational routes. This chapter also

establishes the importance of the participants’ frame of reference to both their

perception of international education and their interaction with otherness while

overseas. I demonstrate that the sample can be split into three groups based on their

schooling background, which has impacted their approaches to international education.

These groups are participants who were overseas schooled (OS) and international

schooled (IS) (having been schooled in an international school in Thailand). And finally,

participants who were Thai schooled (TS). I discuss these distinctions as differences

between the participants’ circuits of education (Ball et al., 1995; Brooks and Waters,

2009a). Those participants who were educated in an international circuit of education (OS

and IS participants) narrated a sense of ease with international education, often

describing their decision to study at an overseas university as a natural progression of

their educational path. Meanwhile, those participants who were in a domestic circuit of

education (TS participants) expressed a much more deliberative, calculative approach to

their international education choice. TS participants’ approach was reflected in narratives

of their experiences studying overseas, with TS participants’ deliberate move from a

domestic circuit of education to an international one causing a feeling of unease and a

distinct awareness of being away from ‘home’. The result of this is a narrative that

indicates a sense of freedom from role expectations of home. This is discussed in terms of

a break from reality, or of a liminoid experience (Turner, 1974). I also discuss all

participants’ narratives on ‘coming home’ which exposes the role that the family play in

anchoring the participants’ frame of reference to a Thai field and demonstrating the

deeply-ingrained nature of the discourse of the family as a key part of Thai culture.

21

Chapter 5 focuses on the participants’ narrative of hierarchy of universities and culture

which were exposed in Chapter 4. In this chapter, I consider these narratives in terms of

how they reveal international education to be a form of cultural capital. I discuss the

participants’ narratives of their desire to experience and explore the wider world as a

benefit of an international education. I argue that, while on the surface this narrative may

suggest a cosmopolitan imperative behind their desire to experience foreign others, these

narratives are still deeply embedded within the Thai frame of reference. Given this, I

discuss the participants experience in terms of deterritorialised cultural capital (Üstüner

and Holt, 2010), where the participants’ ‘Western lifestyle myth’ (Üstüner and Holt, 2010,

p. 39) impacted their perception of the Western-ness of their education. I demonstrate

how this perception acts as international education’s source of value as a cultural capital.

This is in turn discussed within a specifically Thai context, illustrating how the practice of

international education is couched in the participants’ desire to gain cultural capital from

a source that is seen to be more ‘civilised’ and ‘developed’ than Thailand. I also argue

that, due to my sample containing more elites than Üstüner and Holt’s (2010), I am able

to expand on Üstüner and Holt’s conception of how deterritorialised cultural capital is

employed. I suggest that, in addition to the distinction between how low cultural capital

and high cultural capital individuals operationalise their deterritorialised cultural capital

(Üstüner and Holt, 2010), there is also a difference between high cultural capital

individuals and very high cultural capital individuals.

Chapter 6 takes the discussion of deterritorialised cultural capital and expands upon it by

discussing how the specificities of Thailand’s ‘Western lifestyle myth’ and Siam/Thailand’s

past engagement with the West has impacted the value of international education as a

cultural capital. I demonstrate the importance of interpretive frames through a

comparison of the differences in the narratives of British international students in Brooks

and Waters’ (Brooks and Waters, 2009a, 2009b) research and those of my own. I then

discuss the source of this difference, linking them with narratives of the West prevalent in

Thailand as identified in historical research (Herzfeld, 2010; Jackson, 2008; Kitiarsa, 2010;

Peleggi, 2002; Winichakul, 2000), demonstrating a link between the participants’

narratives with narratives that were part and parcel of what McClintock (2013) considers

imperial commodities. I also argue for caution in the application of deterrorialised cultural

capital as an analytical frame, particularly within a field that has been intellectually

22

bifurcated. Intellectual bifurcation causes a split of the social world into a material half

which can be improved by Western things and ideas, and a spiritual half constitutive of

the national we/us which cannot (Chatterjee, 1993; Winichakul, 2000). I suggest that

fields with bifurcated discourses regarding the West requires an approach that is attuned

to not just a particular field’s Western lifestyle myth but also how that myth was applied,

and the implication that the field’s bifurcation has on where and when deterritorialised

cultural capital is/is not valued within that given field. Thus this thesis provides a

development of Üstüner and Holt's (2010) work, expanding on their concept of

deterritorialised cultural capital. Further, it serves to confirm Snee’s (2013) conclusions,

calling for a focus on participants’ frame of reference in analysing narratives of openness

to foreign others.

23

Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework

1. Introduction

In studying the relationship between Thai elites and foreign education, I am putting

forward three questions to be considered, the first question is: ‘What role does foreign

education play in status reproduction for elite families in Thailand?’ Namely, what makes

these families encourage, support, or in one case coerce, their adult children to study

overseas? What are the advantages that they see in doing this? Given the participant’s

and their family’s desire for them to study abroad – the question becomes, why is this

type of education a desirable thing? Given the extensive sociological literature on the role

of education as cultural capital in processes of class reproduction, an inquiry into the

desirability of foreign education needs to be framed around the perceived benefit of

foreign education, and why it is seen to provide a degree of elite distinction with a

Western education understood as superior to a Thai one. Therefore, the second research

question is ‘How does international education function as a mode of distinction for elite

Thais?’ Finally, given Thailand’s past relations with the West (as will be discussed in this

chapter), there needs to be an accounting for how Siam/Thailand’s history has coloured

the participants’ views of the West. Because of the need to study the impact of this past

relationship on the way current perceptions of Western education has been created, the

third and final question is: ‘To what extent has Thailand’s semi-colonial experience

shaped the participants’ perception of Western modernity in general, and Western

education in particular, as a mode of distinction?’ These questions are important because

taken together, they provide an insight into a facet of the Thai elite, a population about

which sociological studies are few and far in between. Additionally, these research

questions provide an opportunity to demonstrate the applicability of postcolonial analysis

to a population that was not officially colonised but existed under the shadow of a

superior Western ‘other’. Finally, within the frame of these questions, I examine the

impact of Thailand’s historical context on the creation of the Thai elite’s understanding of

modernity and consider how that, in turn, impacted their view of foreign others. These

insights are significant because they provide a contribution to an under-studied and – as

will be discussed in the methodology chapter – difficult to access group with an outsized

socioeconomic impact on their society. Additionally, these insights will provide additional

24

contributions to further integrate post-colonial/post-semi-colonial societies into existing

understandings of the development of modernities, and the manner in which different

variations of modernity interact with each other.

With these three questions as the basis for this thesis, I shall build a theoretical

framework by first sketching out past studies into international students. I will

demonstrate that there has been a lack of focus on the historical and structural influences

that shape students’ experiences. After outlining the existing research into international

students, I then establish a general analytical framework for this thesis by using

discussions of the family (also the topic most discussed by my participants) as a means to

apply the relevant facets of Bourdieusian (and Bourdieuisan-influenced) account of

cultural capital, taste and the social reproduction of advantage to the study of

international students. I will be discussing how this is possible by looking at how the

family has been utilised in the past as an entry point to study more complex subjects with

in that society, enabling a broader examination. I shall point out a significant shortcoming

of the Bourdieusian approach in its application to my research, which is that Bourdieu's

original work was focused on the study of a single society, and national fields, rather than

the relations between societies. I consider some extensions of Bourdieu’s framework,

which argue that in the global context we have to examine how cultural capital might

accrue as ‘intercultural capital’ or ‘deterritorialised cultural capital’. However, accounts of

the value of ‘intercultural capital’ or ‘deterritorialised cultural capital’ is dependent on the

connection between cultures, and seeing value in that connection, or in practices and

commodities from other cultures, as such, it only make sense in the context of the

globalisation of culture, and also global inequalities and postcolonial cultural hierarchies

of value. In bringing up this key shortcoming in Bourdieu’s framework, I shall also argue

that theories of multiple modernities and cosmopolitanism can help bridge this

conceptual gap and allow Bourdieusian concepts to better apply to situations that involve

multiple societies. However, mixing Bourdieusian concepts and cosmopolitanism

concepts alone cannot provide a satisfactory framework for this research. As I have

mentioned above, I want to also examine the influence of historical power imbalances

upon contemporary relations between societies. I discuss this imbalance by integrating a

Bourdieusian analysis with an account of the experiences of those elites whose societies

have been shaped by their relations with a more powerful, colonialist foreign other. I

25

situate this analysis within the postcolonial experience, to show that postcolonial

hierarchies of values and culture have impacted the framing of my participants’

interaction with foreign others, and how that interaction produces and reproduces

cultural capital within the Thai field. In doing so, this thesis provides an insight into how

members of a private and influential section of Thai society see themselves on the world

stage, and how that vision of themselves impacts the way they interact with the world-at-

large.

2. Research into International Education

As Waters (2006) notes, the rise of an international education market has created a multi-

billion dollar industry, with more than two million people currently pursuing education

‘abroad’. With a growing market for international HE, education research has increasingly

examined study abroad, but with a main focus on the impact on the receiving institutions

and how they manage the integration of international students. Within the current body

of research, there is a shortage of attempts to situate the students’ experiences within

the context of how their frame of references was constructed. Some of the studies that

will be mentioned in this section (Brooks and Waters, 2009a, 2009b; Collins et al., 2016;

Waters, 2006, 2005) have recognised the need to situate students experiences, often

adopting a Bourdieusian influenced analysis, and have showed the potential of such an

approach. These studies have taken a more student-centric approach and approached

their research regarding how international students’ perception of their respective

institutions or host countries impacted their overseas education choices. However, the

field largely concentrates on the institution as the analytical axis, examining how the

students adjust to the institution at the centre of the research. These studies have

focused more on how international students integrate with the institution as a basis for

considering the implications for the pastoral care and recruitment of international

students.

When looking at the early development of the field, research into the experience of

international students in the post-second world war period focused on their trajectory of

satisfaction or integration with their host institution or country, with Lysgaard (as quoted

by Ward et al., 1998), for example, proposing U-curve model (where the vertical axis

indicates satisfaction and happiness and the horizontal axis indicates time). The premise

26

of the U-curve model is that after an initial period of easy adjustment/excitement at a

new experience, the international student experiences a ‘crisis’ where they feel homesick

or unhappy, after which they readjust and start to feel better again. Gullahorn and

Gullahorn (1963) extended this argument to the idea of a W-curve in the international

student’s experience, a model which also encompasses the ‘reverse culture shock’ of

returning home, an identical process to the original ‘culture shock’ experienced by the

sojourner. However, these early models were heavily criticised for being weakly

supported by other data from the field, which fails to show the presence of the supposed

initial ‘honeymoon phase’ (Anderson, 1994; Bochner, 1982; Hotta and Ting-Toomey,

2013; Ward et al., 1998). Church (1982) went as far as calling such models ‘weak,

inconclusive and over generalized’ (p.542). Overall, the literature in the field has criticised

the U and W curve models as being mere conjectures unsubstantiated by evidence, and

more recent studies have moved away from applying such models. However, many

studies still discuss ‘international students’ as a monolithic group (e.g. Fritz et al., 2008;

Hotta and Ting-Toomey, 2013; Ladd and Ruby, 1999). The common difficulty within the

methodological rationale of much work in the area is that the focus has never been on

the students’ motivations and practical orientations (and how this might affect their

experience and vary by student group), with the objective of these studies instead often

being the improvement of pastoral care for international students. Such work often refers

to psychological texts regarding the impact that being in a new and strange place might

have on international students, and with a focus on what more educational institutions

could do for the students. For example, Fritz et al. (2008, p. 252) state that ‘The multi-

level advantages of having international students in our academic institutions, […] ought

to be reflected in a multicultural educational system that strives to identify and address

the needs of its international consumers’. Similar statements have been made in the

findings of other research. As such, the purpose of this research is to benefit the

institution to serve international students better. It is therefore unsurprising that the

question that these studies seem to pose is ‘how can we make sure students adjust to us

[the institution]?’ rather than the question of ‘how do the students adapt to their own

particular international education circumstances?’ Given an objective to find information

that was useful to the institutions themselves, these studies view the issue of

international students as a matter of assimilation, framing the question of study overseas

27

as a problem of getting a multitudinous minority to fit into the (comparatively) culturally

uniform mainstream of the host institution/society. I will not be engaging with these

literatures to any significant degree as my research is more focused on how Thai elite

students’ social backgrounds, contexts, and motivations influenced their overseas

education choices, and their perceptions of their experience of international education.

Instead, I focus more on those studies that have taken the students’ personal experiences

into account (Hotta and Ting-Toomey, 2013; Rog, 2015; Ward et al., 1998). These studies

approach the research question of overseas study through the idea of cross-cultural

transition (Ward et al., 1998) and identity negotiation (Hotta and Ting-Toomey, 2013;

Rog, 2015). These contributions view a student’s initial experiences of overseas study as a

form of dialectical negotiation between the culture of the student and the national

culture of their host institution; analysing the students’ experience as an active clash

between the student’s expectations of how the world around them ought to be and the

reality of how it actually is. However, this focus creates a problem. The problem of the

dialectic that is applied in these studies is exemplified in Ting-Toomey’s identity

negotiation approach,

[In] Any effective intercultural cross-boundary journey, members of the host

culture need to act as gracious hosts while newcomers need to act as willing-to-

learn guests. Without collaborative efforts, the hosts and the new arrivals may

end up with great frustrations, miscommunications, and identity misalignments.

(Ting-Toomey, 2005, p. 221)

The main assumption of this model is that both hosts and ‘newcomer’ are equal partners

in a form of dialectical engagement to reorient and realign their identities with each

other. However, this is a rather idealised assumption, which neglects both the

institutional clout of HE institutions and the global power imbalances of international

education. It is a problematic proposition, in that a conversation on an equal footing is

difficult in an uneven field of power, as shall be considered further in the discussion of the

postcolonial context of international education which will come later in this chapter.

Perspectives which focus on cross-cultural transitions /identity negotiations do not

consider the global power relations which provide the broader context which shape how

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international students experience and perceive (and are treated by) the host

communities in which they study.

Another body of research (Brooks and Waters, 2009a, 2009b; Collins et al., 2016; Waters,

2006) has focused more on the experiences of the students themselves and, sitting more

squarely within the sociology of education, draws on Bourdieusian theories of education

as class competition and social reproduction. These studies, unlike the previously

mentioned ones, deal more with international students’ motivations for choosing to

travel overseas for their education in the first place and are not focused on producing

best practice for the pastoral care of international students. Rather, such work is focused

on a more generalised study of the motivations behind why students chose to study

overseas, and in the case of Waters and Collins et al., their perceptions of how their

overseas education has impacted their lives afterwards. These studies also shows that in-

depth discussion with students can show the structural factors which came to influence

their decisions.

Waters’ (2006) research, for example, examines Hong Kong students who studied in

Canada. Her approach was to contextualise the student’s initial decisions within their

social field. She found that the literal, overt meaning of the credentials that they gained

was not as significant as the situated nature of the credential-granting body. For her

students, the value of the credential came from the fact that it was a degree from

Canada, rather than the fact that it was a degree from Canada. The fact that the

experience of earning that credential was situated in a Western context offered much

more cultural capital than the degree’s academic content itself. Waters’ Hong Kong

students outlined a number of reasons for valuing a Western degree more highly. Partly,

this was because of the perceived advantages of acquiring good English language skills

whilst studying abroad. However, there was also a widespread belief of the inadequacies

of formal education throughout East and SouthEast Asia, with the suggestion that the

Hong Kong system emphasised rote-learning and examination success, whilst the

Canadian system was thought to promote more innovative, creative learning, fostering a

distinctive ‘personality’ and sense of ‘style’ (Waters, 2006). Waters found that in Hong

Kong, there was a prevalent perception that local employers preferred graduates of

‘overseas’ universities. Waters (2006) also found that the value of the participants’

29

overseas credentials resided in particular networks of mutual recognition, as part of their

membership of an exclusive network of ‘overseas’ students and graduates, with a

substantial cohort of overseas-educated graduates working in the financial district of

Hong Kong. Her data suggests that, in line with Bourdieu’s (1984) argument regarding

how elites retain their status, this network of ‘Overseas graduates and their families are

instrumental in maintaining the value of their credentials’ (Waters, 2006, p. 187) with

these overseas graduates operating as a sort of self-replicating elite. Waters sees

overseas education as a response to credential inflation as educational opportunities for

all social groups expanded in Hong Kong, middle-class parents were forced ‘to step up

their investments so as to maintain the relative scarcity of their qualifications and,

consequently, their position in the class structure’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 133). Their status-

maintenance mechanisms work in the form of a ‘durable network of more or less

institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (Bourdieu, 2002,

p. 286) that operate to recognise and legitimise credentials that members of the network

see as valuable.

Waters also touches on the idea of the alignment of ‘choice’ in education with spatial

mobility, as something that reflects one’s socioeconomic status (in that the more

resources and knowledge of the world one has, the more mobile one can be). This point

was reinforced in her subsequent research collaboration with Brooks (Brooks and Waters,

2009a, 2009b) which examined the international mobility of UK students. In this study,

Brooks and Waters integrated the idea of the value of an overseas credential being

relative to the social network in which it was deployed, with the concept of ‘circuits of

education’. Drawn from Ball et al’s (1995) work on the classed nature of educational

choice, the idea of circuits of education refers to the idea that families from different

classes have different social and cultural capitals, which shape their habitus and

expectations, and their views and choices of education. Ball et al. identify two distinct

‘discourses’ of choice in London: a working-class one dominated by the practical and the

immediate, and a middle-class one dominated by the ideal and the advantageous, which

results in different patterns of choice in children’s schooling, and so different ‘circuits of

education’ along lines of class . These circuits are comprised of the kind of schools and

post-secondary (if any) education these families considered as acceptable and reasonable

choices (Ball et al., 1995). Ball et al. see the activities of middle-class parents as

30

supporting Bourdieu’s argument about the ‘jockeying’ for position which is key to middle-

class cultural reproduction. A working-class family is in a different ‘circuit’ than a middle

or upper-class family, with their circuits more geographically limited and constrained

compared to more privileged families who make wider geographical choices and have

higher expectations and standards of what they deem to be acceptable (ibid). From this

starting point, Brooks and Waters extend Ball et al.’s argument to suggest that there are

also international circuits of higher education, arguing that ‘a minority of highly privileged

young people are making their HE decisions within a global rather than national circuit’

(Brooks and Waters, 2009a, p. 201). In essence, Brooks and Waters view international

higher education as part of a larger global social system of inequality and privilege, with

HE choice affected by family’s economic and cultural capital, their habitus, and their

social circles.

A significant difference between Brooks and Waters’ (ibid.) study and Waters’ earlier

(2006) research is that in the former, the participants are students from the West, going

to another Western country; in the latter, the participants of the study are students from

the East going to a Western country. There are marked differences in the way the two

groups of students perceive foreign education – with British students viewing

international education in places such as Harvard or Yale as an ‘acceptable’ alternative

and on a par if they were not able to get into Oxbridge, a ‘movement “sideways” to a

similarly ranked institution in another country’ (Brooks and Waters, 2009b, p. 202).

Whereas in the case of Waters’ 2006 research, her Hong Kong students saw foreign

universities as the superior choice to anything domestic. This difference was not

discussed in depth in either study (though Waters does briefly explore some of this

reasoning, as previously discussed). These studies, however, show that there is a

fundamental difference between the way Western students interact with international

education within the West and the way that post-colonial students interact with Western

education. This thesis aims to examine the reasoning behind why East-to-West students

view overseas education in this manner in much greater details.

Aside from the above research, there is also a body of research into International

students from the perspective of migration studies. Ackers’ (2005) paper considering ‘the

relationship between highly skilled scientific migration (HSM) and the transfer of

31

knowledge within the European Union (EU)’ (Ibid, p. 99) discussed how an individual’s

past movement as students influences their likelihood to move internationally as a HSM.

A very high proportion of scientists moving at doctoral and post-doctoral level had

experienced some form of undergraduate mobility and often used the networks

developed then as the basis for future mobility (Ackers, 2005, p. 108).

Ackers argued that, even though the majority of undergraduates will not seek higher

qualificaitons, undergraduate mobility should still be examined as a part of a biographical

approach towards the study of HSM. To this end, Ackers has noted that relationships and

networks built during a HSM’s undergraduate career informed their future mobility (ibid).

This idea formed a part of Acker’s primary recommendation of a holistic and biographical

approach to studies of migration. Acker’s works fits well within Ball et al.’s concept of

circuits of education (1995), in that an individual’s past education history can inform and

influence their future life choices. This is relevant to this thesis as it indicates the

importance of a biographical approach in the study of migration and movement, that the

decision to migrate from one place to another involves more than just an individual’s

deliberative and calculative decision at one point in time. This idea has also been

supported by King and Ruiz-Gelices’ (2003) study in to experiences of Europeans as a

student and its effect on their later life . Along the same lines as Ackers (2005), Baláž and

Williams expands on the idea of using an approach that encompasses a person’s

biography by suggesting a ‘total human capital’ approach (2004, p. 219) in the study of

student migration. Specifically, Baláž and Williams explained their approach as:

[A] broader understanding of Student Migration and Human Capital Transfers

competences – which looks beyond learning in the formal place of education –

and will consider the extent to which students have been able to use these for

economic purposes after their return to Slovakia (Baláž and Williams, 2004, pp.

119–220)

Baláž and Williams further expanded on this by contextualising the concept of ‘total

human capital’ in terms of its use in the study of the circulation of expertise and

knowledge. They noted that ‘There is a need to look at a range of competences, rather

than narrower measures of qualifications and formal courses of studies’ (ibid, p. 234) as a

means to uncover other motivations to studying abroad among their participants.

32

Through this, Baláž and Williams found that the main motivation to study in the UK for

their Slovak participants was not the qualification or the course of study, but rather the

ancillary benefits that they would receive through studying in the UK such as improved

English ability, self-confidence, ‘openness to learning’ and ‘flexibility’ (ibid, p. 234). Aside

from Baláž and Williams (2004), Beech (2014) approached the problem of dealing with

the multiplicity of influences on an international student’s decision through Said’s

concept of imaginative geographies, a concept which posits that the powerful west

produces an imagined representation of the east through which perceptions of the east is

mediated (Beech, 2014). Beech asserted that this approach can be used with east-to-west

gaze in the same manner as it was applied by Said for west-to-east gaze (ibid). However,

Beech’s approach does not fully address the impact of the power disparity in the East-

West relationship, save to say that it made her participants see western universities as

‘better’ (ibid, p. 172). This lack of discussion of the power difference is problematic as will

be discussed later on in this chapter.

The surveyed literature also highlighted the inherent problem in treating international

students as a singular, monolithic category. Madge et al (2015) suggested in their paper

that the treatment of international students as a singular category reproduces the West’s

internalised desire for continuing dominance.

‘This is a troubling picture indeed, which can recycle racist repertoires and clichés

of western presence and others’ absence, waiting to enter the ‘light’ of the

western ‘teaching machine’. Thus critiquing the ‘marking’ of the international

student, challenging normalizing conceptions that present the internationalization

of HE in ways that objectify and homogenize students and acknowledging how

‘knowledge’ has itself altered because of these educational agents, is an important

political project (Madge et al., 2015, p. 684).

What Madge et al. discussed in the latter sentence of that quote links the issue of the

homogenisation of students to the importance of considering the student’s circumstances

and history. Madge et al.’s paper calls for further understanding of international students

as ‘educational agents’, in that they themselves have the agency to perceive and and

create their own knowledge from their perception of their educational experience. These

studies from a migration studies perspective have illustrated the importance of a

participant’s life course to their international mobility choices. As such, we would need an

33

approach that takes in consideration how the participant’s specific world view regarding

international mobility was created and how that view has come to impact the

participant’s international education choices.

Throughout the development of research into international education, one can see a

divergence between studies with an institutional focus and those that are student-

focused. The former have a business-like objective of trying to improve ‘customer’

experiences, while the latter focuses more on the lived experiences of the students, their

motivations and expected social outcomes. Research in this last strand has offered

several analytical possibilities: showing the potential of looking at international education

as a means to maintain social advantage by producing and reproducing social capital (the

potential resources inherent in being members of a particular social network) as well as

generating cultural capital (the social advantage generated by credentials and the cachet

that comes with the knowledge of particular forms of culture which are considered

valuable) (Bourdieu, 2002). Given that the discussions within the mentioned migration

studies literature pointed to the impact of an individual’s biography on their international

migration decision, the analytical posibilities mentioned above would also provide an

avenue to study the effect that an individual’s biography has on both the decision to

study overseas, and their experience of it. The motivations of both West-to-West and

East-to-West international students and their families are based around the idea of

maximising their social and cultural capital. However, there is a clear difference with

regards to the way that cultural capital is perceived. Whereas West-to-West students see

overseas education as going to an acceptable, similar alternative to institutions at home,

East-to-West students see it as going somewhere that is better than anything available at

home. The research of Brooks and Waters (2009a, 2009b) and Waters (2006) presents

both a guide and an opportunity. These studies show the value of analysing international

education in terms of social and cultural capital, as well as circuits of education. The

comparison between Brooks and Waters (2009a, 2009b) and Waters (2006) also shows

the discrepancy between West-to-West and East-to-West international students, with a

difference in the definition of what constitutes an international circuit of education. In

Brooks and Waters (2009a, 2009b) the international circuit of education only

encompasses top-tier international universities that would be equivalent to top-tier

universities at ‘home’. In Waters (2006) and Collins et al. (2016), East-to-West students

34

seem to perceive ‘their’ international circuit to comprise any Western university. This

creates an opportunity to study the reason behind this difference between West-to-West

and East-to-West students. This difference raises the issue of the possible impact of past

colonial/imperial relationships on the way East-to-West students perceive ‘their’

international circuit in comparison to the way West-to-West international students see

theirs.

Because of the questions posed in the review above, my theoretical framework is based

on an intention to explore the differences I have identified in the research of Brooks and

Waters (2009a, 2009b) and Waters (2006). I first determine what part of Bourdieu’s

theoretical framework provides a starting point for this analysis, as well as considering

some of the limitations of his approach for considering study overseas. Bourdieu’s

approach, in particular his account of cultural capital, habitus and field, has limitations for

the study of how cultural capital is deployed across multiple social fields, and the

individuals who cross fields. I shall therefore augment Bourdieu’s framework with

discussions of ‘intercultural’ or ‘deterritorialised cultural capital’ as well accounts of

cosmopolitanism, in order to more fully analyse the global dimensions of study abroad.

Finally, the issue of the discrepancies in power that are inherent in study abroad, but

which are not addressed by the application of cosmopolitanism within a post or semi-

colonial context (semi-colonial as Siam/Thailand was never officially colonised) will be

dealt with through a discussion of postcolonial theories. Specifically, I focus on theories

that deal with how the West is perceived within post-colonial societies and what has been

done to intellectually and culturally resist this onslaught.

In the next section, I first discuss the family as a point of entry in discussing my

application of the Bourdieusian analytical frame. Family and familiality are essential to the

construction of educational choices, through the influence of habitus, family capitals and

the educational circuit that one is born into (Ball et al., 1995). My data also shows a link

between a participant’s earlier schooling and how they perceive international higher

education and the Western ‘other’. As early education is a choice made by parents, this

shows the importance of a family’s impact on a child’s post-secondary education choices

further on in their life course.

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3. The Family and Cultural and Social Capitals

The family has been shown to be an excellent entry point into researching educational

choices, with a substantial body of research drawing on Bourdieu’s account of how class

background shapes people’s habitus, and so acts as an influence on their educational

choices, aspirations and tastes. Bourdieu’s discussion of the role of education in class

competition is well known, but to briefly summarise, Bourdieu argues that cultural

knowledge and educational credentials are valued assets in the competitive struggle for

advantage, and so are a form of cultural capital. Cultural capital occurs in three forms:

‘institutionalized’ by academic qualifications, ‘embodied’ in the attributes and

dispositions of the person, and ‘objectified’ in material objects (Bourdieu, 1986). Bourdieu

argues educational credentials have become increasingly important, creating a ‘shift in

upper-class inheritance practices from one of direct transfer of property to reliance upon

the cultural transmission of economic privilege: investment in education gives upper-class

offspring the chance to appropriate family privilege and wealth through access to the

more powerful and renumerative institutional positions’ (Swartz, 1997, p. 181). In

Bourdieu’s framework, access to educational credentials is increasingly vital to

maintaining social position, and investment in education is a key strategy in class

competition (Bourdieu, 1984). Cultural capital does not just result from investment in

education, people’s prior levels of cultural capital also shape their educational choices,

and affect their chances of success in education. I have already discussed research on

higher education choice which emphasises the role of class habitus in this process, with

choices affected by alignment between habitus and field. Ball et al’s (2002) research

shows that working-class applicants to university fear feeling ‘out of place’ in elite

institutions, so instead apply to less elite institutions where they feel more likely to fit in

with ‘people like us’. Habitus guides individuals to choose class-differentiated routes and

rewards, adjusting their aspirations to what is ‘realistic’. Bourdieu believes such choices

are social instincts which ‘function below the level of consciousness and language,

beyond the reach of introspective scrutiny or control by the will’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 467).

Numerous studies have found a link between one’s family’s levels of social and cultural

capital and the way one perceives what ought to be one’s own educational choices. This

ranges from studies on the likelihood of a child’s interest in science (Archer et al., 2012)

36

to the various studies on the range of postsecondary education choices that a person

might see as a reasonable choice (Ball et al., 1995; Reay, 2005). First, however, to locate

family and kin relations within Bourdieu’s theoretical framework I briefly discuss how he

has conceived the family in his various past works. This is important because, to discuss

family/parental impact on one’s later education choices, there needs to be a clear picture

of how exactly the family affects the participants. By looking at the family in a broader

scope, I will situate Bourdieu's analysis of the family within his broader body of work, and

examine how that is relevant to my participants’ specific situations).

For Bourdieu, the class conditions of one’s upbringing shape one’s tastes and ambitions

as a person grows up, which means that the choices people make in the future are also

likely to be class-differentiated. These class-differentiated choices (including educational

choices) tend to reproduce position in the social order. The concept of habitus is key here.

Bourdieu argues that through these family conditions, external structures become

internalised, leading to (largely unconscious) tastes and aspirations which maintain class

distinctions. Bourdieu calls this habitus, ‘a set of relatively permanent and largely

unconscious ideas about one’s chances of success and how society works that are

common to members of a social class or status group. These ideas or, more precisely,

dispositions, lead individuals to act in such a way as to reproduce the prevailing structure

of life chances and status distinctions’ (Swartz, 1997, p. 197).

The key parts of Bourdieu’s framework discussed here are ‘Distinction’ (1984), his work

on the role of econmic, social and cultural capitals in class distinction, his later work

expanding and clarifying his account of capitals (Bourdieu, 2002) and ‘Reproduction’, his

work with Passeron on social reproduction and education (1990). In ‘Distinction’,

Bourdieu discussed the significance of the family’s role in the reproduction of the social

structure, and the relationship between family and academia. Here Bourdieu identifies

two modalities of ‘cultural competence’ – two different ways in which one can become

competent in a social practice. This is related to his discussion of habitus and its

alignment with field. One key aspect of how habitus affects our chances of success is the

question of how well people’s habitus fits the social field in which they find ourselves in.

Bourdieu believes social action is most successful when it occurs in the same field that

shaped a person’s habitus, when we act with the right ‘social instinct’ of how to behave,

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or habitus is ‘aligned’ with field. The first mode of cultural competence is ‘total, early,

imperceptible learning, performed within the family from the earliest days of life and

extended by a scholastic learning which presupposes and completes it’ (Bourdieu, 1984,

p. 66). The second mode of competence is less dispositional and more strategically and

reflexively acquired, a ‘belated, methodical learning not so much in the depth and

durability of its effects-as the ideology of cultural 'veneer'‘ (ibid, p. 66). The first mode

shows the place of family in education; it provides a model in which the things one

vicariously learns in early life within a family setting leads to the normalisation of

practices and privileges, giving that person the ease needed to perform within the social

fields that the family exists. The second mode shows a more deliberative, reflexive form

of education taken on later in life, that the person might learn, but which does not

become deeply ingrained enough to create a normalised sense of ease that an earlier

‘imperceptible’ form of socialised learning provides. This aspect of Bourdieu’s framework

will allow me to explore the relevance of family to later life performance in overseas HE.

In particular, it will allow me to explore how participants who were educated in

international schools in Thailand or in schools overseas (and so who acquired their

competences of Western culture through ‘total, early, imperceptible’ experiences) were

better able to cope with Western higher education compared to those who went to Thai

schools who had to learn these competencies more ‘methodically’ and reflexively, later in

life.

An empirical discussion of how the first modality of cultural competence is inculcated and

benefits higher status children can be found in Khan’s (2010) study of an elite boarding

school in America. In the practices of the school and the competences students acquired

there, Khan identifies how a child learns to embody eliteness through imperceptible

learning which provides a sense of ease in the elite social field. In Khan’s words, ‘[what]

students cultivate is a sense of how to carry themselves, and at its core this practice of

privilege is ease; feeling comfortable in just about any social situation’ (Khan, 2010, p. 15).

Khan’s work provides a modern, empirical example of how to use Bourdieu’s first

modality of cultural competence as a means to understand elites. His study shows it as

something that is inculcated from an early age, by both school and family. In another

piece of theoretical work expanding on Bourdieu’s first modality of social competence, (or

embodied tastes) Holt (1997) explores how embodied tastes became a critical and

38

distinctive feature of eliteness. Holt’s reasoning is that as popular cultural objects

themselves become more acceptable to the elite and elite cultural objects become more

accessible to the masses, the simple act of consuming a thing in and of itself is no longer

be sufficient as a means of distinction. As a result of this, elites came to emphasise the

‘distinctiveness of consumption practices’ (ibid, p. 104) rather than the object or content

being consumed. In other words, the emphasis is now on how one consumes a cultural

object/practice rather than what one consumes. As Holt argues, knowing which are the

‘right’ restaurants to go to can be picked up ‘methodically’ from restaurant guides, but

embodied elite distinction instead entails simply ‘being in the know’ (from social

networks, ‘innate’ embodied tastes etc.). On this basis, Holt criticises David Halle’s

analysis of the difference in household art tastes between different social classes (Halle,

1993). Halle argued that the overlap between art choices of the lower and upper-classes

suggests there is not a gap in cultural capital between those classes (ibid). However, in

Holt’s view, Halle’s interpretative frame emphasised between-class similarities and shied

away from ones that might have marked them as different. Halle looked at similar things

that people have and liked, but not why they liked them, nor did he track the specificities

of each genre (e.g. if landscape paintings, what sort of landscape? Where from? By

whom? Are they original or reproduction?). This means that Halle did not take in to

account how each respondent was consuming the culture (Holt, 1997).

Erickson (1996) attempted to operationalise cultural competence as working knowledge

of a particular set of cultural objects: books, artists, etc. Erickson was working from the

assumption that ‘the most useful cultural resource is a little working knowledge of a lot of

cultural genres combined with a good understanding of which culture to use in which

context’ (ibid, p. 224). Particularly, in today’s world of readily available information, such

knowledge would be easy to find. However, just because one knows of artists, books,

sports teams, etc. does not mean that one knows the ‘correct’ way or context in which to

use them. In short, Erickson’s approach has no means to deal with or measure the ease

with which one deploys these knowledges. If we look back at the previous quote from

Bourdieu and the empirical work done by Khan, ease is the critical component of

embodied tastes. Ease is essential because ease means that when one deploys cultural

competence, it is done naturally and without a need for thought.

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Given the population I drew my participants from, this idea of embodied taste operates

as a means for ‘true’ elites to distinguish themselves from those merely ‘pretending’ to be

elites. Although Holt’s study is not about education, the use of embodiedness as a means

to differentiate within an elite group will become useful in this thesis, as I distinguish the

accounts of those whose earlier schooling was in international schools and overseas

schools compared to those who went to Thai schools. The overseas and the international

schooled narrated their own experiences of international HE as more ‘authentic’ and as

embodying a certain degree of Western-ness, while those who went to Thai schools did

not. The idea of embodied ease in an international field permits a a more nuanced

analysis of the differences within an elite group itself.

As we have seen in discussing these empirical accounts of cultural knowledge and

competence, it is apparent that a researcher needs to be careful in assessing people’s

cultural knowledge as we must also take into account questions of embodiment and ease.

As shown in the criticisms of Erikson (1996) and Halle (1993), both ignored factors like

context and the way a participant consumes cultural items. In the context of this thesis,

an alertness is required to questions of how cultural competences are acquired and

embodied, in order to examine how different participants go about their overseas

education and explore how this can be a means for distinction amongst the

internationally educated.

Several other studies into education choices have also used the family as an analytical

entry point, linking upbringing to choices made later in life. Coleman (1988) discussed the

category of ‘family background’ in his research on educational achievement and argued

family background could be broken down into three types of capital – financial, human,

and social capital. Coleman explained the first two in straightforward terms; financial

capital is the physical, economic resources that a family has, while human capital is the

level of education and know-how of the parents. However, Coleman’s conception of

social capital seems to differ from that of Bourdieu. Rather than conceiving social capital

as status acquired through social networks (Bourdieu, 2002), Coleman conceives social

capital as familial bonds. The more bonds there are between parent and child, the higher

their social capital (Coleman, 1988). However, if we apply a Bourdieusian frame to the

reading of Coleman’s conception of ‘family background’ – Coleman’s account of human

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capital could be seen in terms of Bourdieusian embodied cultural capital. The parent’s

education and disposition described in Coleman's family background are part and parcel

of their cultural capital. Coleman’s concept of social capital can also be seen as a

simplified form of Bourdieusian social capital. While Coleman outlined the importance of

the social bond between parent and child he neglected the social cachet of being a part of

an elite network (Bourdieu, 2002).

Archer’s more recent work on the influence of family habitus and capital on student

uptake of science subjects in the UK, also shows a link between one’s familial habitus and

whether an aspiration towards the sciences is ‘thinkable’ (Archer et al., 2012). In their

research, Archer et al. used a concept they refer to as the ‘family habitus’. This is a

specific deployment of the Bourdieusian concept of habitus, a set of deeply ingrained

dispositions, formed by one’s past experiences that in turn impact one’s perception and

appreciation of the world around them (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990, p. 53) within the

family sphere. Archer’s usage of family habitus covered not just the conscious

identification, and attachment one has to one’s family, but also included the values and

everyday practices that existed either because of the family or are in place to reaffirm

that affective bond (Archer et al., 2012). Using this concept, Archer et al. argued that

childhood upbringing is critical to later life choices regarding science education. In their

research, they found that British middle-class white and South Asian families tended to

have more access to quality scientific resources and that they were more likely and able

to support their children’s interests, so that a choice of science subjects was more

‘natural’ and comfortable.

Other studies into education have also highlighted the cultivation of the in-depth form of

cultural competence that develops embodied tastes and ease. For example, Nash’s study

of New Zealand high school students stresses the importance of class background and

social advantages on the development of a student’s ‘educated habitus’, which in turn

influenced whether or not they felt able and wanted to succeed in school (Nash, 2002).

Reay and Ball (1998) studied how class habitus impacts on how involved parents are in

school choices among British children. In general, they found that working-class parents

allowed their children much more freedom whereas middle-class parents tended to act

more like an ‘expert’ in the matter and guided their children to the ‘correct’ options

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under an illusion of freedom and reasonable choices (ibid). As I have already discussed, in

an earlier paper, Ball and other collaborators (1995) argued that class habitus and

embodied tastes impact class reproduction through what they termed educational

‘circuits’. In their research, Ball et al. found that families of a particular class tend to

choose from schools within a particular circuit, often with varying geographical

restriction. The more privileged parents, made their wider educational choices with a

wider geographical reach with more diverse options. Robson and Butler (2001)

successfully deployed the concept of circuits of education in order to illustrate how the

embodied form of cultural competence amongst middle-class Londoners influenced their

education circuits. As we have seen, Brooks and Waters (2009a, 2009b) expanded the

concept to consider ‘global’ circuit of education for those British students whose families

were privileged enough to consider foreign universities as reasonable options. As can be

seen from the above, there is a strong case for considering how family habitus relates to

the formation of social and cultural capitals which then affects later life educational

choices.

Most of research so far discussed, with the exception of Brooks and Waters (2009a,

2009b) and Waters (2006) are either studies of a domestic population being domestically

educated, or of a migrant population being domestically educated. Not much research

has been conducted on the impact of family on those who travel overseas for education.

With a few exceptions, those studies conducted on international students (as shown in

the previous section) tend to focus more on the student as customers of an institution. By

using family as a frame of reference to discuss distinction and cultural capital (specifically,

the difference between unreflexive, embodied cultural capital gained earlier in life and

the more reflexive cultural capital gained consciously later in life), I intend to bring not

only the social but also the (inter)national context of a person’s experiences of foreign

education into my analysis. My research expands on the work conducted by Brooks and

Waters (2009a, 2009b) on ‘global’ circuits of education. Brooks and Waters’ account of

global circuits requires us to think about trans-national elites whose pursuit of economic,

cultural, and social capital extends beyond educational institutions within their own

country’s border. To do so, my research not only examines people who have spent their

entire lives in the ‘international’ circuit, but also those who have been in a national circuit

who have consciously decided to ‘cross’ into the international circuit of education. This

42

allows for a examination of Bourdieu’s two modalities of cultural competence, comparing

those who started their childhood within the international circuit of education and who

have had ‘total, early, imperceptible learning’ within the field of international education

(Bourdieu, 1984, p. 66) with those who have crossed to the international circuit of

education later on in their lives and whose knowledge of the international education field

is from ‘belated, methodical learning’ (ibid. p.66). However, as previously mentioned,

research using Bourdieu’s concepts tend to focus on the social relations within a single

geographical area. But we also need to consider how cultural competences and cultural

capital translate across national ‘fields’. As such, I intend in to bring in literature on

cosmopolitanism and multiple modernities to discuss the geographical situatedness of

education (as discussed in the first section) as a source of international education’s value

as a form of cultural capital. However, first it is necessary to consider some limitations of

Bourdieu’s when for considering ‘international cultural capital’.

4. International cultural capital

One way of thinking of overseas education is as a more global form of cultural capital, in

which studying abroad operates as a form of status consumption, and as a mode of

distinction. From this perspective studying abroad has value not just in intrinsic

educational terms, as embodied and institutional cultural capital (in terms of specific

training, acquired dispositions and knowledge, or qualifications) but also because the

study occurs overseas, and so acts as a status marker by virtue of the economic, cultural

and social capital required to achieve admission to an international institution. This puts

international education into a broader framework of international status consumption. As

Üstüner and Holt (2010) note, some cultural globalisation research has examined

international status consumption in ‘less-industrialised’ countries (LICs), and they argue

that in such countries there is both a value in acquiring ‘Western’ consumption goods

which are seen as high status, but also in being able to do so when others in their country

cannot.

O’Dougherty’s (2002) study of the Brazilian middle-class in Sao Paulo describes

how American goods and leisure (e.g., trips to Miami and Disney World) occupy

a central role as status symbols. Belk (2000) argues that the new black elite in

Zimbabwe draw upon the status symbols of the highest echelons of the middle

43

class of the United Kingdom and the United States. Chaudhuri and Majumdar

(2006) have recently proposed an explicit rendition of global trickledown, noting

that as the Indian economy liberalized and the mass media exploded in the

1990s, a symbolism-dominated consumerism Oriented around the intensive

pursuit of Western possessions became dominant. They also note that new

forms of cultural capital seemed to be appearing as well and call for a context-

specific theory of both trickle-down and cultural capital in LICs, a charge that our

study seeks to answer (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 38).

For Üstüner and Holt, one reason such research adopts a ‘global trickle-down model’ is

because this corrects the most ‘glaring weakness’ in Bourdieu’s theory when it is applied

to international forms of cultural capital, the problem being that Bourdieu assumes the

field of consumption field is bounded within single countries, whereas for this thesis,

there is a need to understand status consumption and cultural capital in a global context

which involves field crossing. However, Üstüner and Holt see trickle-down theory (the

idea that consumption status practices trickle down from richer to poorer individuals in a

process of emulation, in this case internationally) as too simplistic because global trickle-

down assumes that everyone competes using the same strategy, ‘ignoring Bourdieu’s

insight that different class factions use different status consumption strategies’ (Üstüner

and Holt, 2010, p. 38). My research shows that more and less privileged fractions of the

Thai elite have different Orientations to their international education and that it is

deployed as a ‘status good’ rather differently, so it is necessary to think about how

international cultural capital works across, and within, national contexts.

There are several ways of thinking about cultural capital in an international context. One

is Pöllmann's (2013, 2009) notion of ‘intercultural capital’. Extending Bourdieu’s

arguments, Pöllmann argues that ‘In an ever more interdependent world’, intercultural

capital is an ‘increasingly significant type of cultural capital and marker of sociocultural

distinction’ (Pöllmann, 2013, p. 1). Intercultural capital, is defined as the ‘personal

reservoir of intercultural experiences and skills (e.g. experience of living abroad,

intercultural friendships, and language skills) that enable the respective individual to

competently engage in intercultural encounters’ (2009, p. 540). Pöllmann makes similar

criticisms about the limits of Bourdieu’s framework for understanding global patterns of

44

cultural capital, arguing ‘What distinguishes cultural and intercultural forms of capital is

their relative degree of field-transcendence. For Bourdieu, capital, in its various forms,

constitutes “an energy which only exists and only produces its effects in the field in which

it is produced and reproduced” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 113) and, consequently, tends to lose

force with increasing distance from the field(s) of its (re)production. Intercultural capital,

to the contrary, functions as a potent marker of sociocultural distinction within a wider

range of contexts of (re) production and is likely to retain, or indeed enhance, its

exchange value when “moved” across more distant fields’ (Pöllmann, 2013, p. 2).

For Pöllmann, the value of intercultural capital emerges because it crosses national

cultural fields, and such capital provides ‘a set of economically viable skills that allow their

bearers to successfully compete in global markets’ but Pöllmann is less interested in the

transferability of intercultural capital into economic capital (‘the relative competitive

advantage a businessperson might gain by speaking several foreign languages for

example’) than in the potential impact of intercultural capital on ‘intercultural tolerance

and understanding in contemporary multicultural societies’ (2009, p. 540). Whilst

emphasising the potential of intercultural capital for status competition and distinction,

Pöllmann also frames intercultural capital as a more general social good, more in line with

Beck’s notion of cosmopolitanism, arguing that ‘Knowledge about other countries and

cultures, language skills and critical engagement with the ‘Other’ are likely to increase

students’ and teachers’ intercultural sensitivity and competence’ (Pöllmann, 2009, p.

540).

Pöllmann acknowledges the role of power and advantage in affecting people's capacity to

realise intercultural capital, however he does not examine the role of global inequalities

in generating power differentials across national cultures. But, we cannot understand

intercultural capital, or international status consumption, without considering the power

differentials which make, for example, some countries - particularly Western countries - a

more prestigious and valuable source of international education than others.

As Üstüner and Holt note, Cultural globalization research includes a substantial literature

on consumption in LIC countries such as Russia (Oushakine, 2000; Patico, 2005), China

(Fleischer, 2007; Watson, 1997), Georgia (Manning and Uplisashvili, 2007), India

(Mazzarella, 2003), Niger (Arnould, 1989), Trinidad (Miller, 1998, 1997), Belize (Wilk, 2006),

45

and Turkey (Öncü, 1997; Üstüner and Holt, 2007). Üstüner and Holt argue that such work

shows that there has been a surge of new consumers in countries such as Mexico, Russia,

Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, China, India, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Indonesia;

countries where economic development has produced increasing numbers of small

business owners, professionals, and managers with substantial discretionary incomes

who are increasingly engage in global consumption. However, it is essential to take into

account global power inequalities to understand such consumption.

From a theoretical vantage point, what makes status consumption among these

LIC classes distinctive compared to the Western societies is the influence of

global power relationships. In both sociology (e.g., Portes, Castells, and Benton

1989; Wallerstein 1974) and economic anthropology (e.g., Mintz 1985; Ong

1999; Wolf 1982/1997), scholars have detailed how the core nation-states

structure production and labor in the semiperiphery. Because the West, and

particularly the United States since World War II, has dominated these countries

economically, politically, and culturally (Escobar 1995; Krasner 1985), these

power relationships influence the structure of the consumption field. As we

detail above, the cultural globalization literature has demonstrated persuasively

the tremendous cultural power of the West in a wide range of LICs. (Üstüner and

Holt, 2010, p. 40).

Work on global status consumption has tended to focus on periodising the onset of

Western influence on status consumption, rather than examining the particular

mechanics of status competition in such countries, and Üstüner and Holt (2010, p. 38, 40)

argue that it is necessary to extend this perspective to ‘examine how the West’s global

cultural power reshapes how status consumption operates within semiperiphery LICs’.

They do note however that cultural globalization research demonstrates that rather than

literal emulation of Western consumption practices the Western lifestyle adopted is often

‘a myth constructed within the national discourse of the LIC’ (2010, p. 39). This question

of the ‘mythic’ nature of the West (and varying degrees of familiarity with the West) is

something I will discuss in my empirical chapters.

Üstüner and Holt’s own research is on Turkish global status consumption, and they argue

their study shows classes competing through consumption in order to claim higher social

46

standing. They identified different consumption strategies depending on subjects’ levels

of cultural capital—with those with less cultural capital emphasizing ‘pecuniary displays’

whilst those with higher cultural capital ‘focused on cultural sophistication’, in line with

Bourdieu’s theory (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 52). However, in their study, global status

consumption also works differently to Bourdieu’s account. Because global cultural capital

is ‘deterritorialised’ it has to be learnt (rather than dispositionally acquired) and is never

an embedded aspect of the field, or wholly embodied in the habitus in the way Bourdieu

suggests.

The term habitus is intended to capture this habituated dispositional aspect of

status consumption: tastes and practices accumulate, they are not learned, and

they are expressed without thought, never strategically. We show that cultural

capital accumulation proceeds very differently in Turkey, requiring sustained

proactive “work” that extends well into adulthood. Acquisition is heavily reliant

on education, but of a different sort. In Turkey, elite childhood education defines

the most important cultural asset to be perfect command of the English

language (or, occasionally French or German), not Turkish language, literature,

or history (Acar and Ayata 2002). This Western focused education is itself a

powerful form of cultural capital, and, just as important, it builds the pathways

allowing HCCs [those with higher cultural capital] to learn the Western lifestyle.

[…] As a result of this strategic acculturation process, the expression of cultural

capital operates, not through Bourdieu’s habitus, but rather through a strategic

“by-the-book” pursuit of tastes that have been explicitly defined and circulate in

the discourse. HCCs work industriously to transform their habitus-instilled

tastes, a process that in Bourdieu’s (1984) analysis is indicative of lower cultural

capital. As a result, we demonstrate that HCCs tend to be reflexively insecure

about their ability to successfully deploy the Western lifestyle in a manner that

yields cultural capital. (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 52- 53).

Üstüner and Holt’s research highlights the importance of interpretive frames to the

perceived social/cultural capital values of practices and commodities produced by a

foreign other. Üstüner’s and Holt’s concept of deterritorialised cultural capital

provides an analytical pathway to understanding how the participants’ habitus impact

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the way they perceive foreign others, and how cultural capitals gained overseas can

become localised within their ‘home’ fields. Rather than assuming simple emulation,

deterroralisaiton allows researchers to give greater importance to the consumer’s

interpretive frame by focusing on the impact of the restitution of those practices and

commodities. By locating the value of Western practices and commodities in its

interpretation, deterrorialised cultural capital allows for the application of colonial

hybridity – The concept of how colonial/post-colonial populations appropriates and

reinterprets practices and commodities of the colonisers as a form of resistance

(Bhabha, 2004) or as a means to exert internal control (Canclini et al., 1995). These

concepts will be discussed in greater detail later on in this chapter, however, colonial

hybridity’s applicability to deterritorialised cultural capital demonstrates how the

concept can be used to extend Bourdieu’s framework of cultural capitals to

intercultural contacts, allowing for an analysis based on the encounter between the

participants’ habitus and a foreign other.This thesis’s focus on elite individuals will

also provide an additional nuance to Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) argument. Üstüner and

Holt (ibid)’s sample of HCCs does not include individuals who have had pre-university

schooling overseas. By their own description (ibid, p. 48), their HCC participants

appears to be similar to my Thai-Schooled participants, who’ve had limited interaction

with the West prior to their university sojourn. This provides an interesting

opportunity to compare between high cultural capital individuals and very high

cultural capital (VHCC) individuals. In chapter 5, I will be asserting that VHCC

individuals distinguishes themselves from HCCs through their ease with Western

modernity, that Üstüner and Holt’s (ibid) assertion of ‘that HCCs tend to be reflexively

insecure about their ability to successfully deploy the Western lifestyle in a manner

that yields cultural capital’ (ibid, p. 53) does not necessarily apply to VHCCs.

While the concepts of international cultural capitals might provide a satisfactory

analytical frame for my sample’s approaches to international education, these

concepts need to be contrasted with other concepts that deal with interactions with a

foreign other. The fact that my participants' narratives have a distinct surface

cosmopolitan tones, expressing desires to connect with and experience a foreign

other connect with ‘the wider world’ I will also be bringing in concepts of

cosmopolitanism to provide a contrasting frame with deterritorialised cultural capital.

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5. Cosmopolitanism and Global Reflexivity

The general agreement within the surveyed literature on cosmopolitanism gave it a broad

definition as a mode of thought and action that presupposes a world view that defines

the local as a part of an interconnected, interdependent network that forms the global,

which gives the individual sense of belonging that is global (Beck, 2006; Calhoun, 2008;

Nava, 2007; Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002; Savage et al., 2005). I am bringing

cosmopolitanism into the analysis as even though my participants did not explicitly

mention the idea of being cosmopolitanism, many expressed cosmopolitan ideas (it

should be noted that the Thai word for ‘cosmopolitanism’ is an uncommon one and

unused outside of academic circles). As we shall see in Chapter 5, the respondents

expressed a desire to seek out and understand the foreign other, a desire not to be

limited to a single locality, a desire to experience and explore things and places foreign.

Because of these sentiments expressed by the participants, theories of cosmopolitanism

would allow for an analysis of the participant’s perception of their social field-crossing

experience in addition to the previously mentioned concepts of international cultural

capital, providing a contrasting analytical frame. Past studies by Collins et al. (2016), and

Waters (2006) have demonstrated the importance of the situatedness of the learning

experience. That is, where the education is taking place is equally as important as the

education itself within the context of East-to-West international students.

Cosmopolitanism’s approach to the relationship between the local and the global would

help provide an analytical framework for my participants’ narrative of their international

education experience, enabling an avenue of analysis of the participants’ narrative of

international experience and openness that is often attached to their description of the

benefits of an international education. There have been various deployments of

cosmopolitanism in existing literature. In its broad essence, cosmopolitanism is an idea of

focusing on the world as a whole, and of acceptance – or perhaps even celebration – of

diversity (Beck, 2006; Calhoun, 2008; Nava, 2007; Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002; Savage et

al., 2005). The key split in the application of the concept is in how one operationalised the

concept in their research methodology. This conceptual homogeneity means that there

are several weaknesses inherent within a significant proportion of current cosmopolitan

literature that did not take a more critical standpoint. Chief among these weaknesses is

the neglect of the impact of historical power differences on the construction of an

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individual’s frame of reference, and how they in turn influence people’s perception of the

local and the global. To provide a critical perspective on cosmopolitan and international

cultural capital perspectives (the latter mentioned in the previous section), postcolonial

ideas will be brought in to bolster the framework to allow for a better understanding of

the role of the power inequalities between historically colonising and historically

colonised/colonisable countries have in the construction of people’s conception of global

others.

Within the surveyed literature, cosmopolitanism has been conceived as a normative idea

of how we might achieve the world where societies are more cosmopolitan. This concept

was later used as a baseline for studying cosmopolitanism as a phenomenon and as a

conceptual framework for a call to action. Beck (2011), Nava (2007, and Savage et al.

(2005) used cosmopolitanism as an ‘ideal’ end-goal as a part of research into global

connectivity. Nussbaum and Cohen (2002) used cosmopolitanism as a desirable goal for

an argument for a change in educational practice. In Nussbaum’s work ‘for love of

country’ (Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002), she called for an education system which would

make people more cosmopolitan and create ‘global citizens’ by teaching them to put local

interests and issues within a larger, more global context. However, Nussbaum and

Cohen’s work has been conceived largely as a call to action, rather than providing tools

for the construction of a generalised definition of cosmopolitanism. Thus, I will be

concentrating the remainder of this section on works which have discussed

cosmopolitanism more as a means to understand contemporary social phenomenon

rather than a means to forward a social agenda.

Beck (Beck and Sznaider, 2006) proposed ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ as a

methodological approach that focuses on the interconnectivity of human societies rather

than what he terms as ‘Methodological Nationalism’ – the assumption that ‘[humanity] is

naturally divided into a limited number of nations, which organize themselves internally

as nation-states and externally set boundaries to distinguish themselves from other

nation states’ (Beck and Sznaider, 2006, p. 3). The focus of Beck’s argument is that in an

interconnected world where issues and information transcend borders, an analysis that

concerns itself with the happenings within a single nation can no longer be satisfactory or

sufficient (ibid). Beck proposed a method to study a world that is already interconnected.

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Beck has conceptualised cosmopolitanism as a consequence of technological

development, specifically the speed at which information and people can spread (Beck,

2011). These globalising forces create what he calls a ‘cosmopolitan imperative’ – an

incentive for social change to occur within a given society (Beck, 2006).This process is a ‘

Non-linear, dialectical process where the […] global and local are to be conceived, not as

cultural polarities, but as interconnected and reciprocally interpenetrating principles’

(ibid, p. 72-73). To Beck, this is an internalised, dialectical process wherein a person’s view

of their relationship with the foreign other changes from an independent, isolationist

viewpoint to one of interrelation and interdependence. To Beck, this process occurs

internally and is catalysed by global forces such as international trade, global risks that

transcend national borders such as climate change, and technologies that allow for more

intermingling of culture and identities (Beck, 2006).

Ultimately, this model provides a useful framework for a study of international education,

a conceptualisation of a cultural turn towards seeing interconnectedness as a source of

cultural capital. However, Beck’s approach left several questions unanswered.These

questions concern not so much the process of cosmopolitanisation itself, rather, it is the

assumed end point of the process. While the idea that technological advancements and

global risks are the driving force behind an increase in awareness of global others is one

that fits well with my research, the lack of consideration for the power imbalances behind

international relations is problematic. This reservation notwithstanding, the application of

the idea of information networks and dissemination of information leading to more

people becoming more aware applies well to this thesis. As Chapter 5 will show,

technological advancements made it much easier for those without traditional social

resources available to the established elites to have access to foreign education.

Another variation on the application of cosmopolitanism to social research is Nava’s

approach of conceptualising consumption as a driving force behind the

cosmopolitanisation of people’s world views (Nava, 2007). Nava’s study is historical and

focuses on the Selfridges department store in early 20th century. Nava (2007) asserts that

one becomes a cosmopolitan through participation within a commercial space. Her

argument is because businesses must entice people in to buying things, they would

present an image of foreignness as something wonderful and inviting that one should

51

accept into one's life. By participating within these spaces be it through shopping, dancing

the Tango or taking in a showing of Scheherazade by the Ballet Russe (Nava, 2007). Nava’s

approach recognises the role that commodities play in the spread of culture and

awareness of the foreign other. Given the commoditization of education – that is the

treatment of education as a commodity, to be bought and sold according to the demands

and perceived benefits to the consumer, cuch a conception of cosmopolitanism could be

useful. Nava’s conception of commerce-driven cosmopolitanism enables the analysis of

the way international students weigh up the costs and benefits of international education

before parting with their money to ‘buy’ their education. Despite this, Nava’s approach

leaves some questions to be answered. Nava assumed that a business would help in

expressing foreignness as something positive and inviting that one ought to welcome

into one's own life through every day, mundane consumption – is a problematic

proposition. Nava’s assumption ignores the power context of the exchange, which is, in

essence, a member of a colonising society consuming artefacts and culture from a

colonial other that has been alienated from its context and recontextualised to suit the

consumer. Specifically, the fact that the – white, British (albeit American-owned in

Selfridge’s case) – businesses are the ones with the power to mediate this cultural

encounter, picking and choosing what to represent and placing it within their

essentialized Orientalist contexts. Nevertheless, this concept of commoditised

cosmopolitanism would be useful, providing that it is suitably contextualised within

participant’s (the ‘consumer’) specific context -that is that of an imbalanced, postcolonial

field of power. Whereas Nava treated cosmopolitanism as a discourse that can be

produced and reproduced through a specific practice, Savage et al. (2005) has taken a

more nuanced view of cosmopolitanism, examining his sample’s discourses and

discussing how cosmopolitan they have become in terms of their reflexivity.

Savage et al.’s (2005) research into globalisation and belonging in Manchester is an

interesting case of a practical application of the normative conception of

cosmopolitanism. Savage’s deployment of cosmopolitanism is different from both Beck

and Nava; Savage used the idea of cosmopolitanism as a baseline to measure how

cosmopolitanised his participants are. Savage’s conception came from a similar root to

Beck’s in that he conceives the world of a network of interdependent localities, though

Savage’s conception comes from Appadurai’s (1996) ideas of cultural flows and

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movements, in that the cause of globalisation stems from the movement of people,

technology, capital and information (Savage et al., 2005) ). It is these flows that cause the

spread and intermingling of culture that causes a process of cosmopolitanisation (ibid.).

Savage’s view of the cosmopolitanisation process enables a graduated view of

cosmopolitanism, allowing for a comparison between how cosmopolitan one person is

compared to another.

Savage conceives of a local that is a centre of change, which is embedded within a

network of localities which act upon each other (ibid). This focus on network and relation

within the network allows Savage to conceive of cosmopolitanism within a framework of

‘global reflexivity’. Savage’s concept of global reflexivity refers to one’s self-awareness, to

be able to evaluate one’s ‘lives, thoughts and values from a perspective that did not take

English referents as the implicit frame for judgment, but which was able to place them in

some kind of a broader global comparative frame.’ (Savage et al., 2005, p. 191). Savage et

al. distinguish between two general levels of global reflexivity – first a ‘shallower’ kind

that could be described as a general awareness of ‘otherness’ – ‘the ability to place local

affairs in to a broader frame of comparison extending outside of [their home

country]’ (Savage et al., 2005, p. 191). Individuals with what Savage terms as a ‘shallow’ kind

of global reflexivity would still be using their ‘home’ as the reference point (ibid).

Whereas those who have a ‘deeper’ form of reflexivity which allows people to ‘look at

their lives, thoughts, and values from a perspective that did not take [home] referents as

the implicit frame for judgement, but which was able to place them in a broader global

comparative frame’ (ibid, p. 191). In conceiving different levels of global reflexivity,

Savage's framework can be used to discuss the nuances in my participants’ narratives of

the foreign other, adding discussion on the nature of their reflexivity towards foreign

others in to my analysis. Savage’s (2005) notion would be useful in providing a conceptual

framework for the difference between those participants in my research who have fully

embraced the culture of their host countries and those who have a level of reliance on

the local Thai community by explaining this phenomenon with regards to their

Orientation towards foreign others. However, while Savage’s concepts of global reflexivity

allowed for multiple ways to engage with foreign others, he based his study on a single

definition of cosmopolitanism, Lamont and Aksartova (2002) on the other hand, explored

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different conceptions of cosmopolitanism among participants from different social

classes.

Lamont and Aksartova (2002) had a critical deployment of cosmopolitanism in their work

on race relations amongst the working-class. Rather than looking at what they refer to as

‘remarkable’ experiences that are common amongst the elite, of whom Lamont and

Aksartova assert that the current literature focuses too much on (ibid). Lamont and

Aksartova’s study differentiates itself from this by focusing their effort on working-class

men, and in so doing they found a different form of cosmopolitanism at work amongst

the working-class (ibid). Lamont and Aksartova studied the experiences of inter-racial

relations in France and the United States. Their study suggested that working-class men

also experience a form of cosmopolitanism – one which does not share the same

framework as the elites which has often been the focus of the existing literature. (Lamont

and Aksartova, 2002). Although not directly related to this thesis, Lamont and Aksartova’s

empirical work highlights the fact that different forms of engagement with the global are

possible, that different populations perceive the foreign other differently and as such

come to terms with them in a variety of ways, leading to different – and thus multiple –

forms of cosmopolitanism. This is supported by Delanty’s (2006) theoretical work,

wherein Delanty asserted that when internal processes (e.g. how one perceives the

world) is the driving force behind one’s view of cosmopolitanism, there must exist

multiple kinds of cosmopolitanism (Delanty, 2006). Delanty supported this assertion with

a notion that different forms of cosmopolitanisms cannot all be explained ‘in terms of a

single, Western notion of modernity or in terms of globalization’ (ibid, p. 27). Delanty

further explained this by conceiving of cosmopolitanism as ‘multiplicity of ways in which

the social world is constructed in different modernities’ (ibid, p. 27). This implies that the

way in which one engages with the social world, be it one within one's society or the

larger, international social world is dependent upon how one’s modernity – that is the

‘institutional and ideological patterns’ (Eisenstadt, 2000, p. 2) of one’s society that has

been constructed. This is relevant to this thesis not only because its potential for

explaining how the participants’ interpretative frame impacted their perception of

education overseas, it is also relevant because the idea of multiple modernities is also the

common thread between the Beck (2006), Savage (2005), and Lamont and Aksartova

(2002). That is, for their conceptions of cosmopolitanism to work, there must exist

54

multiple forms of modernities– as all three assumed a social world with multiple

modernities each being based on their specifics geographic and socio-historical realities.

The social changes the world has seen since the end of the second world war have made

it clear to Eisenstaedt that developing societies are not adopting the ‘homogenizing and

hegemonic assumptions of this Western program of modernity’ (Eisenstadt, 2000, p. 1).

Rather than developing down a uniform route, societies define and organise its structures

differently. This occurs both regarding the internal power relation between different

parts of the structure and the definition of what constitutes that particular social

structure (e.g. how does one define family: just the nuclear family or the entire clan?).

These institutions go through reconstitution after reconstitution as the actors within that

society change; this results in each given society creating their own modernity (ibid). Beck

argued that, though there are multiple modernities, their very interconnectedness means

that the material and structural basis for these modernities are largely the same (the

global nature of certain consumer goods, global distribution of information, that there is

such thing as ‘family’ for example) (Beck and Grande, 2010). However, the meanings

imbued in those materials and structures are different – giving us different variations on

modernity, if not necessarily a plurality of modernities(ibid). This form of modernisation is

predicated upon a reflexive form of modernisation, that modernisation is a result of

purposive thought and reflection (Beck and Grande, 2010; Eisenstadt, 2000). Beck and

Grande argue that, because of the different ways societies reflect upon their interaction

with modernity and the global other, multiple variations on the theme of

cosmopolitanism are born in addition to the multiple varieties of modernity with these

various cosmopolitanisms being specific intellectual strategies that a particular group uses

to deal with a global other.

I have thus far built an analytical framework around Bourdieu’s distinction between the

embodied and reflexive modalities of cultural competence (1984). This was then placed

within a framework which internationalises the application of cultural capital (Holt, 1997;

Pöllmann, 2013). Also, cosmopolitan concepts have been utlilised to provide a contrasting

perspective to those of international cultural capitals. Within the context of this thesis,

cosmopolitanism could be considered as a cultural capital which can become embodied

through education. This was previously demonstrated at St. Paul’s school in Khan’s

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research where the students are taught to appreciate and embody a wide ranging

taste (Khan, 2010). When considered alongside Savage’s concepts of global reflexivity,

Bourdieu’s modalities of cultural competence can be applied in the discussion of how

globally reflexive an individual has become, in that cosmopolitan tastes cultivated at a

much younger age will be much more embedded within the person’s habitus (Khan,

2010). I have shown here how the idea cosmopolitanism can be used in conjunction with

Bourdieusian modalities of cultural competence. Specifically, the use of ‘deep’ and

‘shallow’ global reflexivity (Savage et al., 2005) within the context of the difference

between embodied tastes and reflexively acquired tastes. Despite these potential

benefits, there remains a problem with the application of cosmopolitanism to this

thesis. Cosmopolitanism as a concept itself has its weaknesses in its relationship to power

imbalances. The discourses in the research above assume a relatively flat power structure

– it has not discussed the impact of historical power relations upon the way people and

societies relate to the global. As a result, cosmopolitanism also has difficulties in dealing

with perceptions of hierarchies of culture that can arise from an uneven field of power:

how this imbalance might impact how one interacts with the global other; and the

differing interpretation that might result, as discussed in the section on international

cultural capitals. As such, the context in which an interaction occurs would become

relevant to the interpretation of narratives of that interaction, as found by Snee (2013) in

her research of gap year travellers. In her research, Snee found that on the surface, her

participants articulated ‘a desire to learn about and understand the local, reflect on global

issues and experience what places are ‘really like’(ibid, p. 158). However, when placed in

context, she found that ‘there is a greater tendency towards more habitual ways of

consuming places using pre-established notions of value’ (ibid, p. 158). This demonstrates

a need to discuss the participants’ interpretative framing of their interaction in the

analysis of narratives of experiences of foreign otherness. As such, in the next section, I

will discuss postcolonial literature as a means to account for the impact that the historical

global power structure might have had on participants’ interpretive frames.

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6. Post Coloniality, Power imbalance, and the Perception of the Global Other

The first point to consider before any discussion of postcoloniality in the context of this

thesis can begin is how – or could – postcolonial theory be applied to a research field site

that never has – officially – been a colony of a Western power? I would argue that it can,

within certain contexts. Existing historical literature had shown that successive

Siamese/Thai governments had voluntarily chosen to place themselves within the British

imperial sphere of influence. Britain’s influence can be seen in the mid 19th century when

the English language was made a part of Thai curriculum. This something that has been

attributed to The Third Rama (r.1828-1851) (Foley, 2005; Wongsothorn et al., 2002).

However, this education was initially restricted to the elite – members of the court and

those who deal with Westerners (ibid). It was not until the 1920s that English would

become a part of the national curriculum (Baker, 2008). The adoption of English

education for the elites by the Third Rama coincided with the waning influence of

Imperial China and the rise of influence of the Western powers – in particular, Britain – in

the Siamese court (Winichakul, 2000). After the death of the Third Rama, the Fourth

Rama (r.1851-1868) began a process of royally-led modernization and Westernisation

that would continue until the end of the Seventh Rama’s (r.1925-1935) reign, after which

successive civilian and military governments would take up the mantle to continue the

project themselves (Peleggi, 2007). During this time, Britain continued to exercise

influence on the development of modern Thailand after replacing China as Siam’s main

commercial partner in the mid-19th century (Skinner, 1957) (Winichakul, 2000). This

British influence can be seen in the way the Siamese/Thai state presents itself. From the

way Thailand drives on the British side of the road, to the striking similarity between the

uniform of Thai Royal Guards and those of the British Household Division.

The reason for this turn towards Britain rather than another imperial power could be a

subject for a major academic inquiry in and of itself and not something I would concern

myself with here, save that it had happened. In turn, - as suggested by Peleggi (2002) this

move towards Britain has placed Siam/Thailand within the ‘Victorian ecumene’ – ‘a

discursive space that was global, yet while nurturing nation-states that were culturally

highly specific’ (Breckenridge, 1989; 196). Breckenridge refers to the Victorian ecumene

as a ‘discursive space’ for the cultures it encompasses – albeit a space dominated by the

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British (ibid). Breckenridge suggests that within this space, according to British ‘rules’ a

new set of global elites are created with Britain at the pinnacle (ibid). For the colonial

subjects, ‘superior’ British objects and practices are used as means to create social

distinction amongst themselves. The social value of these objects backed by the greatness

and might of the British Empire (ibid). By ‘buying-in’ to the ecumene, the Siamese elites

gain a new cultural currency, that of British progress and civilisation to replace their old

currency based on Imperial China’s former dominance (Peleggi, 2002). The Siamese royal

family adopts English education, tastes, technology, style of colonial governance, and

more in an attempt to maintain their position and to create an appearance of being an

equal to the European royal and imperial houses (Kitiarsa, 2010; Peleggi, 2002;

Winichakul, 2000). This royal-led development eventually led the elites of Thai society to

adopt British and Western affectations. These affectations were in turn adopted by

commoners (Winichakul, 2000). This adoption of Western ways by the common people of

Thailand can be seen in Moerman’s (1964) study of the use of Western commodities as a

source of social distinction in rural Thailand.

Bottles of Coca-Cola may look the same, but only in Thailand can a minor official,

by drinking it, signal the fact that he is more progressive than the simple villager

who drinks only water yet less exalted than the district officer who can afford beer

(Moerman, 1964, p. 32).

Thus, because of this voluntary association and the associated power imbalance that

existed between Siam/Thailand and European imperial powers, Siam/Thailand could be

considered to be a ‘semi-colony’ and that post-semi-coloniality could be studied in a

similar context as postcoloniality (Jackson, 2008). Jackson argues that ‘while remaining

politically independent, Siam/Thailand was subjected to international legal, economic and

cultural pressures that placed it in a colony-like relation to the imperial West, constituting

a power/knowledge nexus amenable to some forms of postcolonial analysis’ (ibid, p.

148). Specifically, Jackson referred to Bhabha (2004), and Garcia Canclini’s (1995) work on

cultural hybridity – the blending of the culture of the coloniser and the colonised – as

points of entry for post-colonial Theories into the Siamese/Thai field.

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Bhabha (2004) and Canclini’s (1995) work engages with the idea of colonial hybridity from

different perspectives. Jackson described Bhabha’s conception of hybridity as culture as a

form of resistance (Jackson, 2008). Bhabha points to the idea of colonial mimicry as a

direct manifestation of this hybridity. Colonial mimicry is when colonial subjects

appropriate the culture of the coloniser as a means of resistance to colonial control

(Bhabha, 2004, pp. 120–121). The mimicry is ambivalent – what Bhabha terms a

‘recognisable Other’ is desired by the colonial powers, yet at the same time, it is

disruptive involving a doubling where the colonial subject is ‘almost the same, but not

quite’(Bhabha, 2004). Language and education are key routes for colonial mimicry.

Jackson argued that this idea of hybridity and colonial mimicry could be applied to the

Thai notion of siwilai [civilised] as a ‘hybrid discourse manifesting Thai elites’ subaltern

resistance to Western imperialism’ (Jackson, 2008, p. 149). Kitiarsa (2010) and Winichakul

(2000) have also discussed how similar discourses have been used as a means to

appropriate colonial ideas and objects. In contrast to Bhabha’s view of hybridity as (albeit

ambivalent) resistance, Jackson has also asserted that, in accordance with Canclini’s view,

hybridity could also be seen as a means of control. Canclini (1995) discussed hybridity

regarding its role in internal cultural domination. He described a form of hybridity that is

not entirely heterogeneous but takes a form of ‘multi-temporal heterogeneity’ (ibid, p.

47) in which modernization ‘rarely operated through the substitution of the traditional

and the ancient’ (ibid. p.47). Thus, hybridization does not necessarily occur evenly across

the board and certain elements of the coloniser’s culture may be selected and hybridised

whilst others are left untouched (ibid). This gives the elites within that colonial society an

opportunity to “take charge of the intersection of different historical temporalities and

try to elaborate a global project with them” (ibid, p. 46). Canclini constructed here a

hegemonic notion of hybridity that has been constructed in favour of the elite that allows

them a level of control over the rest of society through selectively hybridising aspects of

the coloniser’s culture that would be of benefit to them. Jackson also sees this second

notion of hybridity as another way that the concept of siwilai is used as a justification for

the Siamese/Thai’s elite’s right to rule (Jackson, 2008). This has been explored in further

detail by Winichaikul (2000) where he discussed how exactly the notion of siwilai and

colonial forms of governance had been used as a way to support the legitimacy of the

ruling classes.

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From the above, Siam/Thailand can be seen as a form of self-colonising semi-colony. A

polity whose ruling class saw acceptance and mimicry of the imperial powers as a means

to preserve their power and avoid direct colonial rule. Because of this self-imposition of

colonial methods and hybridities, as discussed by Jackson (2008), Winichakul (2000), and

Kitiarsa (2010), postcolonial analysis can be brought to bare on the analysis of the

relationship between Siam/Thailand and colonial powers. Specifically, this raises fruitful

avenues for considering how the meeting of cultures in this relationship has produced

images of the West which have been hybridised and reconstructed,and for the case of

this thesis, how that hybridised image has, in turn, impacted the participant’s frame of

reference towards the foreign other.

One part of the above discussion of hybridity that I would like to examine further is the

selective nature of the hybridity described by Canclini. In particular, I am interested in its

potential applicability to the seemingly contradictory ways that this thesis’s participants

discuss the benefits and drawbacks of their Western education experiences after they

have returned home and how some advantages of a Western education seems to apply

only in some fields. For example, while Thai-ness can be critiqued in relations to the

workplace, none of the participants would critique it in relations to their family (further

discussion in chapter 6). To expand on this idea of hybridity, I look towards Chatterjee’s

research into colonial histories (1993), specifically in the rise of Indian nationalism.

Although published a year before Bhabha’s ‘The Location of Culture’ (1994) and two years

before Garcia Canclini’s ‘Hybrid Cultures’ (1995), Chatterjee’s research can be seen as an

analysis of the logic behind an Elite’s selective hybridity. Chatterjee discussed the idea of

intellectual bifurcation as a form of defence against and reaction to intellectual

domination (Chatterjee, 1993). Intellectual bifurcation is – in essence, a strategy for

intellectually dealing with a powerful but suspicious imperial ‘other’. One that is a

potential source of material comforts and wealth, and at the same time an existential

threat (Chatterjee, 1993). In Chatterjee’s research, the West presents an undeniably more

advanced industrial economy – that provides both an opportunity and a threat. To take

advantage of the opportunity and ameliorate the existential threat – Chatterjee suggests

that Indian nationalists bifurcate the social word into two halves – the spiritual and the

material (ibid). Winichakul (2010) also suggests the same of Thai nationalists. The spiritual

realm consists of that which is constitutive of their national identity – their essence which

60

cannot be sullied by things Western, let alone ‘improved’. Then there is the material

realm where Western modernity is not only accepted but embraced as a sign of material

progress and advancement (Chatterjee, 1993). This bifucatory logic could be seen as a

form of pedagogic action. As noted in Bourdieu and Passeron’s reproduction, pedagogic

action is a means for a power to impose meanings while at the same time hide the power

relations at its base – and by doing so gives the aforementioned power further legitimacy

(Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). In other words, it is a means to impose and reproduce

meanings that would help to reinforce the power and position of the imposers. This

would be relevant to this thesis in discussing the possibility of how international

graduates are propagating the value of international education themselves. When

considered alongside Garcia Canclini’s (1995) work, intellectual bifurcationism could be

seen as a similar form of selective hybridity, with those in power using pedagogic action

to determine what part of Western modernity is acceptable to them based upon how

these elites perceive Western modernity.

When Chatterjee’s work is considered regarding pedagogic actions, it can be read in a

way to state that those who control the nationalist discourse can impose and define what

falls into one category or another. Winichakul (2000) have used Chatterjee’s conception

of bifurcationism in the study of the development of the Siamese/Thai elite have noted

that this bifucatory discourse is what allows the established elites to capture the West's

imperial gaze and turn it inwards. In the Thai case, this is done by posing the colonial

powers as materially superior but morally inferior. This allows the Siamese/Thai elites to

use Western modernity as a means to legitimate their positions within the existing power

structure (Winichakul, 2010, 2000). Chatterjee's (1993) work, combined with Bhabha’s

(1994) and Garcia Canclini’s (1995) forms a part of the analysis that would show the

differences in how West-to-West and East-to-West international students view

international education. The value of an international, Western education to elite Thais

can be seen as a means to gain command of Western modernity and siwilai. This gives

them the right to define the terms of hybridization of Western modernity for local

consumption. At the same time, how the participants deploy their newfound social and

cultural capital can also be analysed within the context of existing bifurcatory structure,

revealing where the limits of the existing structures are.

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All the above literature contains the basic idea of the relationship between two

categories – the Orient and the Occident. Orientalism and its resultant counter,

Occidentalism are the two lenses by which one views another – the Orientalizing gaze of

the coloniser, and the Occidentalizing gaze of the colonialized. In Orientalism (Said, 2003)

Said argued that a feminised, romanticised idea of the East is produced in Western

centres of power and creates a particular understanding of the Orient. This

representation, Said argued, is critical for understanding both how the West sees the

Orient, and, perhaps more signficiantly, how the West sees itself (ibid). Orientalism, thus

produces a collective notion of Europe in opposition to an imagined Oriental other. The

key elements of this idea are that Orientalist mode of thought reinforces the us/them

binary that reified the rhetoric of the split between the Occident and the Orient (ibid).

This also created a Western sense of superiority which, in turn, justifies and maintains the

domination of the Orient by the Occident (ibid). Said also noted that his notion of

Orientalism is not merely just a method of domination, but also a way to exert exclusive

Occidental control on the interpretation and examination of the Orient; and in so doing

dictated an image of what the Orient is (ibid). This ideological control does not only

include what was Oriental; but also who was an Oriental, unilaterally and simultaneously

ascribing homogeneous labels and characteristics to diverse groups of people who

become ‘known’ in particular ways. However, Bhabha’s interpretation of hybridity and

Chatterjee’s conception of intellectual bifurcationism suggests that there is a way that the

colonial subject can and does resist the terms of the relationship between the Orient and

the Occident that was being set by the West. Bhabha’s idea of hybridity shows that

Western ideas and commodities are not taken in their entirety, or without alteration.

Rather, they are translated, situated and hybridised by colonial subjects (1994). In

Chatterjee’s view, by bifurcating the world into the material and the spiritual, the colonial

subject has also reconstructed the West into something that is less of an existential threat

to themselves (Chatterjee, 1993). These ideas show that Orientalism carries within itself

the means for its opposition. By casting the world as an opposition between the Occident

and the Orient, Orientalism has left room for an ideology of Occidentalism to develop in

the Orient. The idea of Occidentalism is important to this thesis because it enables a

framework that allows for hybridity and the agency of colonial subjects to interpret the

way they see the West without necessarily accepting Western ideas wholesale.

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‘Occidentalism’ itself is still a contested term – according to reviews by Bakhshandeh

(2015) in his book on representations of the West in Iranian media, and in de Sousa

Santos's (2009) study of the canonical way the West has been conceived, and the place of

alternative interpretations. Most of the studies into Occidentalism centre around the

question of whether it is ‘Orientalism in reverse’ or not. In general, according to de Sousa

Santos – Occidentalism can be broken down into two categories.The first casts

Occidentalism as an exact opposite of Orientalism (Buruma, 2005; Chen, 1992). The

second cast Occidentalism as a mirror image of Occidentalism, the means by which the

image of the West is perceived, interpreted, and reconstructed then used as a tool to

undermine Orientalism (Carrier, 1992; Coronil, 1996). The first category of Occidentalism

as a simple reversal of Orientalism – a view which has been criticised for ignoreing the

power imbalance between the Orient and the Occident (Bakhshandeh, 2015; Buruma,

2005; Carrier, 1992; Coronil, 1996). The second version of Occidentalism is subtlely, but

critically different. It is not the exact opposite of Orientalism, but rather a mirror image of

Orientalism. This difference is key because an opposite suggests something which

substantively identical, but oriented back towards the first object. A mirror image, on the

other hand, represents a reflection or a reaction. In this way, Occidentalism is different

from Orientalism in that it is not an action but rather a response to a particular set of

ideologies. Within this interpretation, Occidentalism is portrayed as an opposing idea of

Orientalism, which does not originate from a position of power – but rather from a

subversive position, a means to counter a domineering ideology from a powerful other

(Carrier, 1995, 1992; Kitiarsa, 2010). A specific example of this would be Kitiarsa's study of

the development of the concept of the ‘farang’ in Thai discourse. She suggests that

'farang', a term used in Thai to refer to someone from the West is more than just a term

of reference, that the farang has been created by the Siamese/Thai elites as a ‘superior

and suspicious other’. According to Kitiarsa, the Siamese/Thai elite, by adopting 'superior'

Western ways, hope to mitigate the imbalance in the power relations with the farang

(ibid). They hoped that, through this quest for sivilai, the farang would see them as a

cultural peer, rather than as an inferior (ibid).

Thus postcolonial theory can offer a dynamic view of the relationship between colonial

and postcolonial subjects on the one hand and the West on the other. Notions of

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hybridity and Occidentalism bring to the forefront questions of attitudes towards the

west which can, as we shall see in the following chapters, be ambivalent and bifurcated.

7. Conclusion

I have shown that in order to answer the research questions posed in the introduction, I

have created a theoretical framework based on Bourdieu’s (Bourdieu, 2002, 1984) accounts

of cultural capital, tastes, and the social reproduction of advantage. Combined with

works that expand upon Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital and apply it to a global

context. The concept of ‘intercultural capital’ (Pöllmann, 2009) working from an approach

that gives value to the intercultural nature of a global interaction and ‘deterritorialised

cultural capital’ (Üstüner and Holt, 2010) that approaches interactions with foreign others

as a cultural capital by looking at how specific foreign others are perceived as the source

of value.

I began by outlining the field of international education, showing a shortage of studies

that situates the students’ experiences within their frames of reference. The reviewed

literature could be split in to two different groups. The first group are studies that treat

‘international students’ as a monolithic group (Fritz et al., 2008; Ladd and Ruby, 1999).

These studies’ focused on how the institutions could better serve the international

student as a ‘market’. Their focus was largely on improvement on pastoral care for

international students. As such, these studies are more relevant to understanding how

universities could better serve international students, rather than the understanding of

the experiences of international students. As such, I then demonstrated how this study

will be following in the footsteps of another body of research that focused more on the

experiences of the students themselves, and sits within the field of sociology of education

(Brooks and Waters, 2009a, 2009b; Collins et al., 2016; Waters, 2006). I discussed how the

difference between how the British participants in Brooks and Waters (2009a, 2009b) and

the Hong Kong participants in Waters (2006) perceived international education indicated

a difference in how west-to-west and east-to-west international students perceive

international education. This raised the issue of how the participants’ frame of reference

impacted their view of international education, and the possible impact of colony-

coloniser relationships on this difference. As such, I have argued that there is a gap in

existing literature on international education, a need for more studies that take in to

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consideration the international students’ frame of reference, and how that frame of

reference impacted their relationship with international education.

In order to do this, I based my theoretical framework around Bourdieu’s concepts of

cultural capitals, tastes, and the social reproduction of advantage. I argued that

Bourdieu’s concepts have proven itself valuable in the study of education as a site of

reproduction of social advantages, with many existing research in to education taking

advantage of Bourdieu’s analytical framework (e.g. Archer et al., 2012; Ball et al., 1995,

1995; Khan, 2010; Reay, 1998). I based my analysis on Bourdieu’s notion of modalities of

cultural competence, one that is associated with early childhood education and

inculcation which creates an ‘imperceptible’ normalised sense of ease, and one that is a

more methodical form of later life learning that provides a ‘cultural veneer’ which is not

as in-dept as the first modality (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 66). Key to these aforementioned

studies is the role that family and schooling play in the creation of a person’s habitus, and

the deeply ingrained discourses which guides their actions and perceptions. Of particular

importance to this thesis is Ball et al.’s (1995) concept of ‘circuits of education’ that was

expanded to include an ‘international’ circuit of education by Brooks and Waters (2009a,

2009b). I argued that the concept of circuits of education would help in analysing the

differences between participants who spent their schooling in an overseas or an

international school verses those participants who were schooled in the Thai educational

system and ventured in to the international circuit of education later on in life. However,

I’ve shown that as this thesis focuses on international education, which involves the

connection between different social fields, there is a need to look at approaches that

expands on Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital to internationalise cultural capital.

In this section I discussed how by looking at international education as a global form of

cultural capital that operates as a form of status consumption as a mode of distinction, I

can look beyond international education as in terms of intrinsic, educational terms, but

also as a form of status marker by virtue of that education occurring overseas. I

highlighted two main ways to internationalise cultural capital that is relevant to this

thesis. The first is Pöllmann’s (2009) concept of ‘intercultural capital’ which is similar to

literature on cosmopolitanism, wherein Pöllmann argued that intercultural capital

emerged because the ability to interact across cultural fields has become an economically

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valuable skill. Pöllmann’s operationalisation of intercultural capital is similar to Beck’s

(2006) general conception of the cosmopolitanisation process. The second is Üstüner and

Holt’s (2010) account of ‘deterritorialised cultural capital’, which aligns itself more with

research into cultural globalisation. Üstüner and Holt focused more on how cultural

capital from the west can become deterritorialised, that is removed from its field of

production and resituated into a different field, wherein that field’s ‘western lifestyle

myth’ influenced how that deterritorialised cultural capital is perceived. Üstüner and

Holt’s research highlighted the importance of interpretive frames to the perceived

social/cultural capital values of practices and commodities produced by a foreign other. I

argued that the both of these concepts would provide valuable avenues of analysis,

allowing for an examination of my participants’ narratives for the discussion of the source

of value of international education as a cultural capital, whether it came from the

intercultural nature of the education, or because of how their destination countries are

perceived in Thailand.

As Pöllmann’s concept of intercultural capital relates to cosmopolitanism, I then discussed

the idea of cosmopolitanism as a mode of distinction. Specifically, I described how I

intend to use cosmopolitanism to expand on Pöllmann’s concept of intercultural capital,

providing the thesis with an alternative analytical frame to that of deterritorialised

cultural capital. I first generally defined cosmopolitanism through an amalgamation of the

reviewed literature on cosmopolitanism (Beck, 2006; Calhoun, 2008; Nava, 2007;

Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002; Savage et al., 2005). I discussed the ways in which the

concept has been used in past research in to people’s interaction with foreign otherness. I

focused on Savage et al.’s (2005) more nuanced approach to cosmopolitanism. I argued

that their operationalisation of cosmopolitanism in terms of levels of global reflexivity

would be useful in analysing the participants’ narratives, and determining whether they

are situated within a global or a local frame of reference.

I argued that both for intercultural capital and cosmopolitanism, there is insufficient

theoretical engagement with global inequalities, that cosmopolitan analytical frames tend

to assume a relatively equal field of power, and that it has weaknesses in dealing with

perceptions of heirachies and power imbalance. To that end, I brought in several

postcolonial ideas to address this weakness. I first argue that although Thailand has never

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been officially colonised, there is still immense inequality in power in Thailand’s

relationship with the west, as such Siam/Thailand could be considered as a semi-post-

colonial country (Herzfeld, 2010; Jackson, 2008). I looked in to postcolonial literature that

would apply to the interaction between postcolonial countries and the west. I discussed

the ideas of colonial hybridity, or the ways in which colonial subject appropriates the

cultural practices of the colonisers (Bhabha, 2004; Canclini et al., 1995). Bhabha (1994)

conceptialised hybridity as a means to understand and resist control by the coloniser

(Bhabha, 1994) while Canclini’s (1995) concept focused more on how hybridity is used by

the colonalised elite as a means to exercise internal control, to pick and choose what part

of western modernity will enhance their position, and reject those that will undermine

them. I argued that Canclini’s concept of hybridity meshes well with Chatterjee’s (1993)

concept of intellectual bifurcationism, a stratergy for dealing with a foreigner other that is

similtaniously an existential threat and a potential source of progress and advancement.

Bifurcationism splits the world into two arbitary halves, one which is constitutive of the

national identity and therefore could not be improved by western things and practices,

and a material half which would readily accept the west with open arms(Chatterjee,

1993) . I argued that Canclini’s notion of hybridity can be used to understand how this

bifurcation operates as a form of pedagogic action. In addition, discussions on how

Thailand’s unequal relationship might have impacted their perception of the west would

also help in the analysis of my participant’s ‘western lifestyle myth’.

Going forward, I will be using Bourdieu’s (1984) concepts of cultural capitals, and

modalities of social competence as the basis of my analysis, assisted by concepts that

expanded the usefulness of cultural capital to the global arena (Pöllmann, 2009; Üstüner

and Holt, 2010). With Savage’s (2005) works on forms global reflexivity, I will be able to

examine the nature of the participants’ narratives of openess to foreign others, and

determine if their narratives reflect a global or a local frame of reference. To further

understand the participant’s discourses on the west and examine the source of the

participants’ ‘western lifestyle myth’, I will be examining the participants’ discourses

regarding the west alongside historical literature on Siam/Thailand’s relation with the

west, using Bhabha’s and Garcia Canclini’s conceptions of hybridity along with

Chatterjee’s idea of intellectual bifurcaitonism. In sum, this will create a theorethical

framework which will permit the study of international education as a form of cultural

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capital, and determine whether the participants’ discourses on the benefits of their

international education reflects a globally reflexive, cosmopolitan world view, or a

reproduction of existing Thai discourse regarding the West.

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Chapter 3: Methodology

1. Introduction

In the previous chapter, I argue that in order to examine the link between the Thai elite,

foreign education and the role it plays in boosting and maintaining elite status in

Thailand, It would be necessary to study how international education operates as a

cultural capital, and how that cultural capital is operationalised in the Thai context. In this

chapter, I will be furthering the previous chapter’s conclusion by demonstrating how

these issues have been approached and operationalised within my research

methodology. My research questions are as follow:

One, what is the role in of the family in international education strategies within

the Thai context.

Two, how is international education operationalised as a mode of distinction for

elite Thais.

Three, how much has the contemporary Thai view of international education been

influenced by its semi-colonial past?

In the previous chapter, I have highlighted the importance of the context of a

participants’ narrative to its interpretation. As such, the methodological approaches that I

have taken will need to show sensitivity to the nuances within the participants’ narratives

and possess enough flexibility to react to the participants’ narratives in order to discover

the contexts behind key narratives.

To answer these questions, I carried out 23 one-on-one interviews with former

international students in Bangkok who have gained at least one degree-level qualification

in an Anglophone country. These participants were found through a snowball sampling

method, which was adopted to provide depth of access to a population with a high

barrier to entry. Four further interviews were conducted with students who, at the time

of the interview, were still studying in an Anglophone country. These further interviews

were to determine whether there would be any narrative difference between those who

are talking about the ‘current chapter’ of their lives, and the primary group of participants

who were recalling a ‘past chapter’ in their life. Anglophone countries were specifically

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chosen firstly as a means to minimise cultural variations between destination countries

and secondly, the countries that had the most influence on Thailand’s ‘modernisation’

were the United Kingdom and the United States (Kitiarsa, 2010; Moerman, 1964; Winichakul,

2010, 2000). During the fieldwork, I was able to leverage my status as an insider to gain

access to several social networks and participants within them. With the help of a few key

participants/non-participating helpers, I began reaching further into the network using a

snowball sampling method.

The data was recorded in such a way that preserved as much of the paralinguistic and

socio-cultural contexts and much as possible through the use of a system of codes and

symbols to denote paralinguistic cues. There is a significant amount of nuance in the Thai

language that could change the meaning of a word that would be lost if improperly

translated; I will be discussing these and how they could impact the context of a

particular quotation. I also will be demonstrating how I came to determine that a general

qualitative approach which uses semi-structured interviews where participants were

found through a snowball sampling method was the best course of action for this thesis. I

will also discuss the details of how those interviews were carried out with a focus on

interview technique, how the participants were found, and the challenges and

advantages involved with being an insider-researcher with relations to interviewing and

participant recruitment. I will also be discussing the potential consequences of being an

insider-researcher, the role of objectivity in social research, and the feminist critique of

that objectivity.

2. Defining the ‘Elite’

In Thailand, international education has been seen as a reserve of the society’s elite.

Overseas is where one goes when local institutions can no longer provide enough

prestige. Past studies into Thailand’s relationship with the west have consistently

positioned western education and consumption of western goods with eliteness (e.g.

Kitiarsa, 2010; Moerman, 1964; Peleggi, 2002; Winichakul, 2000). Therefore, before I

discuss the methodology of how I conducted my research, there needs to be a discussion

of who was the target population of my research. Only after that will I be able to discuss

the rationale behind my approach to researching this particular population, the

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implication of my insider status upon that research approach, and the practical details of

my research processes.

Defining who and what constitutes a society’s elite has been a subject of discussion with

no one clear method emerging (Hughes and Cormode, 1998; Moyser, 1987). Given the

nebulousness of the term, there is no one single tried and true method of identifying

‘elites’. Who are the ‘elite'? The politicians? Industrialists? Bankers? They are all elite in

their particular way, in their particular fields. As such, for this thesis, ‘elite’ will be defined

along a more general Bourdieusian line as individuals within a particular social field who

have managed to amass a notably significant amount of economic, social, cultural and

symbolic capitals (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 79). The reasoning for a discursive view of an elite is

that this thesis’s research questions refer to a social elite, unlike a political or economic

elite, whose official positions would make them easy to define and identify. For these,

ranking is more explicit and straightforward than the more nebulous ‘social elite’. In other

words, for this thesis ‘elites’ are defined in terms of how much power they have to

control social discourses and determine tastes through their action. Admittedly this is still

an imprecise notion. However, this is only a starting point from which I will be discussing

the suitability of different past methodologies used in identifying elite groups.

There have been three main methods used to identify elites in past research, each with

their benefits and drawbacks. I will be considering these in the context of how ‘elite’ was

defined above. These methodologies can be placed into three main categories; decisional,

positional, and reputational methods. Decisional methodology refers to a method where

eliteness is determined by who makes what decision in official policy, and who has an

influence on how those decisions are made. This method was used in Dahl's (1961) study

of power and governance in New Haven, CT. Dahl (ibid) operationalises eliteness as

having the ability to influence or make official decisions that have an impact on a

community or society as a whole. The positional methodology is the most common way

to identify an elite individual – wherein the researchers would identify persons who

occupy positions of importance in the sectors relevant to the research. (Moyser, 1987)

However, both of these methodologies rely on a very structural view of eliteness, that in

both of these methods, researchers would be equating eliteness with control over

physical resources, be it through control of government policy or direct personal control

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of institutions or businesses. The third and final method, the reputational method as used

by (Hunter, 1959, 1953). The method involves consulting experts in that area and asking

them to identify people whom they consider to be the elites of that particular field.

However, reviewers of his research have questioned the arbitrariness of his methodology

and the way he chose his ‘experts’ (Anderson, 1959; Banks, 1960; Hammond, 1960).

In my initial definition of ‘elite’ for this thesis, I have chosen to give specific importance to

defining eliteness as the ability to control discourse and influence socio-cultural norms.

These are informal, symbolic powers – as defined by Bourdieu, Symbolic power is a

“power to construct reality which tends to establish a gnoseological order; the immediate

meaning (sens) of the world (particularly of the social world)” (Bourdieu, 1979, p. 79).

This is not the sort of power the previous research mentioned above were largely talking

about; they were mostly interested in political elites rather than social elites.

Considering the above, the decisional method could be discounted as this thesis is not

focused on the political elite. The reputational method, while showing some promise in

its ability to identify elites beyond simple official categories and positions suffers from the

shortfall of its very arbitrariness. The final general method left is the more commonly

used positional method. However, as it was originally intended to be used with those with

official, explicit positions. For this approach to be viable with a nebulous conception of

social elites, there needs to be some consideration for field site context and the nebulous

nature of the character of social elites before a more precise method can be formulated.

To identify social elites of a particular social field, we need to consider local contexts and

how eliteness has been constructed locally by bringing elements of the reputational

methods. However, rather than asking who is elite as the conventional reputational

method would, we ask what is an elite. What sort of reputation does someone need to

have to be considered a member of the elite? After that is established, I then begin to

search out those with what I have identified as being ‘elite’.

In determining what ‘eliteness’ is in a particular context, there needs to be a

consideration for how symbolic power manifests itself, how are individuals of high

economic/social/cultural capitals seen? How do those capitals translate into power in the

Thai context? In existing research on Thai elites and eliteness in Thailand, the idea of

moral authority, face, and cultural capital was at the centre of these inquiries. Persons'

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(2016) research points to the centrality of face and prestige to status in Thailand. Face, in

a Thai context is not limited to conspicuous consumption of the finer things in life. It

involves the conspicuous parts of one’s being, things that people can know/see about

your person (for example; your job title, the university you have graduated from, et

cetera), the more face you have, the higher the society’s you climb on society’s ladder.

Also, Moerman's (1964) ethnographic fieldwork in rural Thailand points to how proximity

to western practices and commodities enhances one’s prestige. Access to Western-ness

and western modernity has been a part of the Siamese/Thai elite’s status games since the

reign of the fifth Rama (r.1868 -1910) (Peleggi, 2002). One’s command of practices of

western modernity and how close one came to that source of modernity plays a

significant role in how elite you become (Winichakul, 2000).3 Other studies referencing

elites and eliteness in Thailand also highlights the role that cultural capital and prestige

play in the perception of eliteness in Thailand (Funahashi, 2016; Jory, 2015). These studies

also emphasise the role the west and western things play in the perception of eliteness in

Thailand (Moerman, 1964; Persons, 2016; Winichakul, 2010, 2000).

The historical connection between Thai elites and western practices and commodities is

why this thesis focuses on western education as a source of prestige and elite status, and

why a key criterion for participant eligibility for this thesis was ‘having studied in the

west’. In addition to this, I wanted to focus on a population who have made a conscious

decision to spend a significant amount of economic capital to attain what they view as a

desirable cultural capital. As such, the choice was made to include only participants who

either paid for their education or would have paid for their education4. To give context to

what I mean by ‘significant’, the cost of an MSc Marketing at the Alliance Manchester

Business School for academic year 2015/16 plus a year of living costs at the rate required

for a UK Tier 4 Visa5 amounts to 31,680 GBP (19,500 GBP Tuition + 1,015 GBP/month

living costs for a year) (Alliance MBS, 2016; Government Digital Service, 2016) Which is

roughly 1.5 million THB. To put this in context, I will compare this cost to the salary of a

typical Bangkokian corporate executive. Robert Walter PLC’s Global Salary Survey (2016)

3 This will be further discussed in chapter6

4 There were two participants who have received scholarships after they have already decided to study

overseas had have already paid/prepared to pay for their education. 5 Also known as a Student Visa

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recorded 2.2 million THB or 44,000 GBP6 annually as the lowest salary for a Director of

Marketing at a private company in Thailand. This means that the total cost of a western

education is a little under a year’s salary for a newly appointed corporate executive. This

shows that while such an education is by no means a cheap option; it is not out of reach

of a Thai elite. It is not unheard of for a wealthy Bangkok family to have at least a year’s

salary saved that they might spend on a child’s education. However, when compared to

the national average household cash income of 431,760THB or 8635 GBP annually

(National Statistics Office, 2015), This shows that without a scholarship, funding a child’s

western education is significantly harder for an ‘average’ family rather than a family in the

socio-economic elite.

Also, in order to achieve a relatively uniform and controlled sample, I have restricted the

participants to those who have studied in an ‘English-speaking country’ only. This was

because, from the Thai perspective, countries in the Anglophone west are all viewed to

be largely the same and representative of ‘the west’ as a whole to the extent where

English is often referred to as bhasa farang – or farang7 language. This was due to the

particularly significant role that the United Kingdom (in the 19th century) and later the

United States (in the 20th century) played in Thailand’s relationship with ‘the west’ and

their roles as the main ‘foreign other’ in the Thai imagination (Kitiarsa, 2010; Moerman,

1964; Peleggi, 2002; Phumisak, 1976). This can also be seen today in the fact that the

majority of the participants saw their options for overseas education as a choice between

The UK and the USA.

Because of the reasons outlined above, and the influence British culture historically had in

Thailand as described in the previous chapter, this thesis shall define its sample group as

“Thai citizens who have self-funded a study at a degree programme in an English-speaking

country.” By doing this, I Operationalise ‘eliteness’ as a group that is willing to use their

economic capital to reproduce a form of social distinction based on cultural capital

derived from western education.

Given the likely population size of a social elite in a country of 68 million people (National

Statistics Office, 2015), achieving a statistically representative qualitative sample would

6 THB to GBP conversion done at 50 THB/1 GBP

7 Thai slang meaning westerner of European origin (further discussion of the term in chapter six)

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have been a significant undertaking – particularly for one researcher operating within a

six-month timeframe. As such, my sampling is intended to be more illustrative than

representative – in that, I am only seeking to provide an in-depth picture of a very

particular practice within a very specific segment of a population rather than a

representative ‘big picture’ analysis (Mason, 2002, p. 126). I will be discussing the

limitations of my sample later on in this chapter.

3. Rationale Behind Research Approach

As discussed in the previous (theoretical framework) chapter, this thesis examines the

way international education is perceived by Thai elites, and how that perception impacts

their education strategies. The aforementioned research questions can be broken down

into three key themes of inquiry. Family and the reproduction of cultural capital,

encounters with a foreign other as a cultural capital, and the influence of the post-semi-

colonial context on the previous point. The question now is what type of data would best

answer the questions posed, and best represent the key themes mentioned above. To

answer this question, I will go back to what has been noted in the previous chapter. Past

research has taken note of the differences in attitudes towards and perception of

international education between east-to-west international students and west-to-west

international students (Brooks and Waters, 2009a; Waters, 2006). The previous chapter

also discussed how I will be using Bourdieu’s framework of capitals, fields, and habitus

(Bourdieu, 2002, 1984, 1977) as the main theoretical frame, with the participants’ narratives

being analysed using deterritorialised cultural capital (Üstüner and Holt, 2010) and

cosmopolitanism (Beck, 2006; Delanty, 2006; Savage et al., 2005) as interpretative frames

contextualised by postcolonial theories (Bhabha, 1984; Canclini et al., 1995; Chatterjee,

1993). All of these theories and the past research discussed in the previous chapter were

designed to examine contexts and narratives. Discovering how the participants perceive

international education and the context in which international education was perceived

by them. As such, this thesis will be best served by a type of data wherein the participants

describe and give meaning to things (qualitative), rather than the researcher counting and

measuring things the things that the participants say (quantitative)8.

8 Definition of quantitative and qualitative data taken from Norman Blakie’s ‘Designing Social Research’

(2009)

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There are and have been many definitions of what exactly does ‘qualitative’ in qualitative

research mean, Denzin and Lincoln (2003) noted that what constitutes qualitative

research changes with the epistemological paradigm of the era and the researcher.

However, despite these challenges, Denzin and Lincoln was able to formulate a basic

definition for qualitative research

Qualitative research is situated activity that locates the observer in the world. It

consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible.

These practices transform the world, They turn the world into a series of

representations, including field notes, interviews, photographs, recordings, and

memos to the self. At this level, qualitative research involves an interpretive,

naturalistic approach. This means that qualitative research study things in their

natural settings, attempting to make sense of or to interpret, phenomena’s in

terms of meanings people bring to them (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003, p. 4)

Qualitative research is about the researcher observing, then transforming and

interpreting that which they have observed. By transforming, Denzin and Lincoln meant

that whatever is observed – be it an interview or an experience during an ethnography –

is transformed from an experience of the now to recording of some fashion. Because of

this transformative and interpretative nature of qualitative research – there is a need for

the researcher to be systematic, and adhere to that system rigorously as to maintain

consistent transformation and interpretation (Mason, 2002). That is not to say that this

means being rigid and structured. Rather, it means consistency in applying a

methodology, and consistency in analysing the data gained through that methodology. In

addition to this reasoning, when looking at past research for my theoretical framework,

there was a common theme amongst previous research that was most similar to my own.

These studies were all qualitative studies with a focus on eliciting description and

meanings from their participants (Brooks and Waters, 2009a; Collins et al., 2016; Khan,

2010; Waters, 2006).

To accomplish the goal of these in-depth interviews, I have decided on semi-structured

interviews as a data collection method. As I would be attempting to collect data on the

participant’s narrative of their experiences of the west, I chose to follow Mason’s

suggestion (2002) in using a “thematic, topic-centered, biographical or narrative

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approach” (ibid, p. 62). The questions were prompts, invitations to a conversation around

a topic to give the participants a chance to recount their stories in full. At the same time, I

followed a loose outline of subjects to be discussed, each with a series of possible

questions attached. The questions were to both act as a guide to keep the interviews

similar to each other and to provide the participants with an idea of what sort of

questions will be asked during the interview. However, the majority of the interview time

was taken up by follow-up questions based on items that the participants raised as a

response to the prompting questions. When the participants had no more to say, I would

move on to the next topic on the list. This method allowed for the collection of detailed,

and in-depth data. Detailed and in-depth data is important particularly given the lack of

sociological studies of the Thai upper classes. There have been some studies from a

historical perspective (Peleggi, 2002; Phumisak, 1976) and political science perspective

(Funahashi, 2016; McCargo, 2005). The closest piece of work was Pearson’s (2016)

ethnographic research on leadership in Thai society with a focus on the role of face within

the Thai system of cultural capitals. With few other works to draw on for context, the

interviews for this research needs to be in-depth and detailed enough to be mostly self-

contextualising.

I have also considered using focus groups as a data collection strategy rather than

individual, one-on-one interviews. However, I felt that given the importance of

face/perception of others to Thai elites (Persons, 2016), people in a focus group would be

more likely to give face-saving answers rather than a more honest response in an

anonymous, one-on-one interview. This is especially important given the interconnected

nature of networks of Thai elites; it would have been challenging to arrange a focus group

where no one knew/knew of anyone else in the group. As such, the participants would

likely feel that the things said in the room may not remain a secret. Had I held a focus

group, I would not have found out about how one of the participants became an active

member of the student wing of the local communist party during his/her time overseas,

for example.

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4. Insider Status and the Positionality of the Researcher

When participants or other interested parties ask about my research, the comment “you

are basically studying yourself, are you not?” was the most common one. In a way, that is

true; I would have made an ideal candidate for my research. I was sent to school in New

Zealand when I was 9, returned to Thailand at 18 for university; I completed my first

master’s degree in Edinburgh and my second Master’s degree in Manchester. My family

also has extensive connections within Bangkok social elite. My research was informed by

my desire to know more about myself. Why was it so critical that I was educated

overseas? Why did people ooh and ahh when one of my friends – while on a TV show –

revealed that he has a PhD from a British university? It was these questions about what

was so special about western education and the western educated that brought me to

this research – we ‘know’ that it is a good thing, but how did we ‘know’ it? What is it

exactly that we ‘know’? This was where I started from, a point of reflection and

reflexivity, reconsidering assumptions that were thought to be true despite the lack of

reflexivity on the issues. However, when studying a social group, the relationship

between the researcher and the participants and how it might impact the research

process needs to be considered. Given that for this research, I am in essence, studying my

peer group (a Western-educated, upper-class Thai researcher studying participants who

are also Western-educated, upper-class Thais). There were both advantages and potential

pitfalls of researching so close to – quite literally – home. In this section, I will be

discussing the nature of being an ‘insider-researcher’, the advantages that that has

brought and how I have made use of them, plus the potential pitfalls and how they were

planned for and minimised.

Adler and Adler (1987) categorised three types of membership roles for the researcher

based on proximity to the participants in ‘Membership Roles in Field Research’ (1987);

peripheral, active, and complete memberships. Peripheral membership is the “most

marginal and least committed to the social world studied” (ibid; p.36). While a peripheral

member-researcher become group members, they do not perform roles of group

members, nor do they participate in the core activities of that group (ibid). Active

members assume a more central role than the peripheral member-researchers and

perform a functional role within the group they are researching and rather than simply

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interacting with participants as group members, they interact with them as colleagues

(ibid). Complete members similar to active members on the surface. However, the key

difference is in the role expectations that the participants/participant groups have on the

researcher. While peripheral and active member-researchers are still seen as interlopers

by the participant/participant groups, complete members are seen as group members

first, and researcher second. Participants assume that the complete member-researcher

shares their norms and mores and see them as an individual on the inside of the group’s

we/us and not an outsider trying to get in (ibid).

Because of my history within the Thai Elite, my relationships with its members and more

crucially – their perception of me as a part of their we/us, I fit the description of

“complete member researcher”(Adler and Adler, 1987). Being an insider is more than just

being accepted as a part of a group. Being an insider means that the insider is seen to

have the right to be in that space. That right was not granted by their being allowed in,

that right was always there by their virtue of their very being, and there was no question

of allowing or disallowing. For an insider, their habitus, their ways of thinking and being

sits in congruity within the socio-cultural space that they are in (Hage, 2006). The

importance of insider status, or at the very least insider viewpoint is that in the social

sciences – unlike natural sciences – the object of analysis can and does make their

interpretation of the world (Bryman, 2012) and as such these interpretations must be

taken into consideration. In addition to this, Lofland and Lofland (1995) argue that in

order to acquire sociological knowledge, one must “take the role of the other” (ibid., p.

16). To understand a social world, one needs to understand the ways of thinking and

perception of that particular world. By being an insider, the researcher shares in the

participant’s worldview (Hage, 2006) and would be able to give a more contextualised

account of the research. Chiener's (2002) reflection on being a native ethnomusicologist

and Kanuha's (2000) discussion on variations of insider statuses provides a good account

of the practical advantages of being an insider-researcher. Chiener’s (2002) work found

that her insider status has given her greater access than she would have gotten had she

not have been seen as a complete insider by her participants. Kanuha also found the

same in his research. The point here is that, as an insider-researcher, my participants saw

me as a peer, a curious local rather than an interloper coming in to study them. While my

insider status has caused small complications that required delicate handling as will be

79

discussed in the ‘data collection’ section, it also gave me several advantages. It has given

me an avenue into a usually closed off social world of the elite, as demonstrated by the

complete lack of response from the clients of the international education agency that was

helping me recruit participants (discussed below). Was I an outsider-researcher, I would

have been stuck, as an outsider-researcher would have entered the field as a “person

without history who can only adapt with difficulty to the categories that are normal there

and whose loyalty remains dubious” (Wolff, 2004, p. 198). This was how Wolff described

a researcher who was completely alien to the field arriving in an area as an unknown.

They are ‘without history’ within that field, which causes the participants to question

their loyalties. As I was an insider of my field site, however, I had a history there, to the

participants I am a known quantity, and my family has been Bangkokians for several

generations, I am part of a family with an established, known presence within the city.

Even if they do not know me personally the potential participants or their friends and

relatives could connect with me through their social network ‘Kunnaya, – you know, –

khun Nareeluck’s boy. She works for [another person]. She was at [a social event]’. Even

though I have been out of Thailand for two years by the time of my fieldwork, my family

was still there, and I was able to connect to participants through that connection and my

old undergraduate networks.

However, with such proximity to the participant, there is the question of whether this is a

good thing or not. Should I have maintained a ‘proper distance’ between myself and the

participants? Such distance would have been impossible given how well I fit into the

mould of my ‘ideal participant’. Hammersley and Atkinson (2007) argued that a

researcher should not become completely an insider of a group they are researching, that

there needs to be some distance between the researcher and the participants. They claim

that it is within this ‘space’ between the researcher and the participants that analytical

work gets done, that without this space, a sociological work can only be “little more than

the autobiographical account of a personal conversion.” (ibid; p.17) However, the idea of

the researcher being separate from the community received challenge from feminist and

ethnic minority researchers (e.g. Harding and Norberg, 2005; Kanuha, 2000; Roseneil,

1999). The counter-argument is that researchers – like other members of their society

could not possibly detect and correct all “assumptions and practice that shape the

interests, conceptual frameworks, and research norms of social sciences” (Harding and

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Norberg, 2005, p. 2010). By trying to attain these goals, researchers ignore the influences

that informed their perceptions and modes of thought. Also, the basis of all social

research are relationships; it needs the researcher – as a person – to relate to someone

else, as such the researcher’s personhood – their subjectivity needs to become a factor in

this. Even when Mills was explaining the Sociological Imagination, he discussed the

importance of using one’s subjectivity in doing sociological research, “use your life

experience in your intellectual work: continually to examine and interpret it. In this sense

craftsmanship is the centre of yourself and you are personally involved in every

intellectual product upon which you may work.” (Mills, 1959, p. 196) In addition to Mills,

many feminist researchers believe that as research is by its nature a social act, and

because of this it is crucial for researchers to examine their subjectivity and how it

impacts their research (Harding and Norberg, 2005; Roseneil, 1999).

In the case of this research, my insider status not only means access to the target

population or the impossibility of ‘exiting’ the field. It also means a set of criteria that an

outsider researcher who have managed to gain access would not have to face. my

position within Thai society means that unlike with an outsider researcher, the participant

or potential participant would either be aware of their status relative to me, or

attempting to ascertain their status relative to myself. This might have had an impact on

how my participants chose to answer their questions during the interview. In addition, as

will be discussed further later in this chapter, an insider status means that the

participants recognises you as a part of their we/us. In my case, this means the

participants assuming that I know the reasoning behind their thinking and not articulate

them, or causing them to feel that the researcher is ‘odd’ for not knowing the ‘obvious’.

Finally, Because of my research being of ‘home’ my duty of care goes beyond the

participants and also encompasses the impacts that myself and my family. If I were to be

insensitive or give participants a bad experience, not only might it be considered

unethical action towards the participants, but the consequence of such action would also

be felt by my family.

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5. Sampling Methodology

I restricted my sampling to Greater Bangkok.9 This was due to several indications that

members of Thailand’s elite classes would be concentrated in Bangkok. The first is that

that the average income in Greater Bangkok is 41,002 THB/month (National Statistics

Office, 2015, p. 51), higher than the average for the highest income quintile nationally

(37,154 THB/Month) (ibid, p. 57). This suggests that there is a significant concentration of

individuals from that top income quintile in Bangkok, relative to areas outside of Greater

Bangkok where the average income is significantly less than the top quintile average (ibid,

p. 57). Further, out of all the companies in the SET50 index10 46 (92%) are based in

Bangkok, 3 (6%) are based outside of Bangkok but within ‘Greater Bangkok’ as defined by

the National Statistics Office, and only one (2%) is based outside of Greater Bangkok. Even

then, the Thai Tap Water Company is located in Nakorn Pathom, in an area less than an

hour’s drive from central Bangkok(Stock Exchange of Thailand, 2015). In other words,

workers and executives at these company headquarters could all conceivably leave the

office after work and be in Bangkok in time for dinner. This concentration of Thailand’s

top corporations in Bangkok shows a concentration of wealth but also the concentration

of influence and economic power. To provide a point of comparison, only 50% of FTSE

10011 companies are based in London (London Stock Exchange, 2016), A significantly

lower number than SET50 businesses in Bangkok. Given this concentration of wealth and

economic power in Bangkok, it made sense for me to concentrate my efforts here –

where the majority of people whose family was able to fund their overseas degrees

would most likely be.

With Bangkok as a starting point, I began my research using a classic snowball approach. I

had three main points of contacts, Eric, Lisa and Mike. These individuals12 were able to

introduce me to other people who self/family-funded their international education. In

addition to this, there were several other participants whom I have met at social events

outside of the groups identified by Eric, Lisa and Mike (as shown in figure A below). There

is an argument to be made against snowball sampling in that the sample received may

9 Bangkok and Pathum Thani, Nonthaburi, and Samut Prakan, (National Statistics Office, 2015, p. 51)

10 The top 50 companies listed in the Stock Exchange of Thailand

11 The top 100 companies in the London Stock Exchange

12 Only Eric and Lisa were participants, Mike was a westerner living in Bangkok who is an executive at an

international education agency

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not be as widespread as a wider generic purposive sampling method. During the initial

phase of the study, purposive sampling was trailed alongside snowball sampling. Mike, a

manager at an international education agency, sent out emails on my behalf to their

client base inviting them to participate in the research. This method was met with near-

total failure, with only three participants responding – all of whom were Mike’s

employees who heard about my research project during a staff meeting. The near-total

failure of this approach indicates a level of barrier to entry into the target population,

namely that attempts to recruit participants from outside their social networks were met

with failure. Because of this, I turn to snowball sampling; a method used when there is a

focus on a particular network of people that is hard to access (Bryman, 2012). It is the

same approach employed by Armstrong (1993) in his study of football hooligans wherein

he used the method to access an otherwise closed-off group. As recommended by Noy

(2008), the sampling method is coupled with in-depth interviews, which Noy sees as being

crucial to the sampling method. Noy argued that the researcher needs the time to build

rapport with participants and make sure that participants leave satisfied with the

experience and would be willing to refer the researcher on to further participants (ibid, p.

335). In addition to giving the participants the opportunity to feel satisfied that they have

had their say, these in-depth semi-structured interviews provide richer, more

contextualised information rather than a strictly structured interview.

As I have previously stated, I intended to use a two-pronged approach to recruiting

participants for this research project. However, because of the failure of the mass-

emailing approach, all of my participants were recruited through my second method of

snowball sampling. The reason that I chose this method of sampling as a backup method

was the importance of the network amongst Thai elites, as was discussed in McCargo’s

research into the relationship between the Thai elites and the monarchy (McCargo,

2005).Networks are a crucial part of how the elite maintain their positions. Through these

networks, deals are made, and relationships are maintained. Also, utilising networks of

elites as a part of my sampling technique makes for a convenient way to identify

members of the population I am sampling for by asking participants to identify people

who are like them.

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However, despite the success of snowball sampling as a methodology, Its limitations

needs to be recognised, in that despite giving access to a normally closed off group

method is time-consuming, and does not give as wide a coverage of the sample group as

a general purposive sampling. Getting participants to warm to the researcher to the point

where it would be socially acceptable for the researcher to invite a participant to

participate in the research takes quite a long time, as will be discussed later on in this

chapter. Additionally, while this method is the best left open to this project, the nature of

snowball sampling is such that it can at best provide an illustrative sample and rarely will

it provide a verifiably representative sample to any significant degree of confidence.

This method of identifying elites is different from the reputational methodology used by

Hunter (Hunter, 1953) in that rather than relying on experts; I was relying on peer groups,

having members of the socio-economic elite identifying their peers. This also gave the

advantage of having a point of referral when approaching new potential participants. I

started off by choosing my first few participants through my contacts within Thai high

society. My first two participants were Lisa and Eric. These were people I was closest to

on that list who I knew are active within their respective social networks. These

individuals then allowed me to gain further research participants. The diagram below

shows a relationship map between my participants and myself.

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Fig. 1) participants mapped according to their network relationship to the researcher

It should be noted that the nonparticipants did not participate because they did not meet

the requirements set out for a participant. Mike and Roisin are expatriate Westerners,

and Barry and Nicky have not received a degree from a university in an English-speaking

country. I have made use of 3 networks that I am a part of; they are briefly described in

the table below (as far as they can be described without breaking participant anonymity.)

Network A: This was a hobby-based network where Eric was one of the main organisers

for Bangkok’s main club for this hobby. I was a part of this group while I was

living in Thailand before moving to the UK; as such I was able to use the

established connection with Eric to gain access to other participants who

were a part of that hobby-based network. Eric is not only the main

organiser but owner of the main venue,

This hobby has its roots in the west, as such most instructional materials

are in English and most activities of note require travel to other countries

(and as a result, also a working knowledge of English). As such this hobby

does not only require the person joining to be confident in their grasp of

English, but also for them to have the funds to be able to regularly travel

overseas or pay for workshops with instructors flown in from abroad. A

85

majority of the core members of this network are scions of business-owning

families or families with deep connections to Thailand’s military or civil

service.

Network B: This network was based around people I went to university with for my

undergraduate degree. I first contacted two friends who I still kept in touch

with; one of them was able to provide access to a larger group of people

who completed their undergraduate degree at the same university. My

point of contact for this network was Lisa. She and I are from the same

undergraduate graduating class, and we were in the UK for our master’s at

the same time – She comes from a family that owns a manufacturing firm.

This university is considered one of the top universities in Thailand,

specifically – the college that these participants and I went to is a specialist

all-English-language liberal arts college of the university. It has the same

English language prerequisite as western universities, and all courses are

delivered in English. Also, the fees for this college is significantly higher than

the university’s standard fees. For a lecture-based course, the fee at

Mahidol University is 200 THB/credit unit13, (Mahidol University, 2014)

whereas at the International college it is 2200 THB/credit unit (Mahidol

University International College, 2016) – 11 times the price.

Network C: This was a network of Thai individuals who for one reason or another have

chosen to make themselves a part of the Anglophone expatriate

community. Mike and Roisin are westerners living in Bangkok who are able

to introduce me to Thai people that they know. In general, most of the Thai

people within this network socialise with Anglophone expatriates as well as

other Thais. The majority of Thai people within this circle tended to be

internationally educated and have far higher than average grasp of English.

Table 1: Description of the sample’s social networks

Participants with no particular network were individuals that I have met through

members of the other networks but are not themselves members of any network that I

am a part of.

13

A typical course is worth 4 credit units

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Out of the defined networks, “Network A” provided the most diverse range of

participants. from Eric, who was educated overseas from a very young age to Anton, who

only went for his Master’s degree, to Casey who initially went for a Master’s degree but

then found funding to continue with a PhD. I believe the reason for Network A’s diversity

is that it is an activity-based network and has no real barrier of entry with exception to an

interest in their activity and the ability to pay for it. As such, the members of this

particular network would be quite varied. Participants within “Network B” tended to be

quite similar to each other; this may be because they are alumni of a particular university

all of whom have known each other for more than a decade. Some concerns were raised

during the planning stages of the fieldwork regarding the closeness of my relationship

with the participants in Network B in that they could be closer to me than other

participants. It should be noted that I have had little to no contact with since graduating

university in 2006. The only exception to that was Lisa. Shortly before my fieldwork was

scheduled to begin, she informed me of a wedding of a mutual friend from university

where many people I have known from university would also be attending. I gained the

permission of the bride and groom, and I was able to use the wedding as a means to

reconnect with members of this network and recruit participants.

6. Data collection

I began my interviews with two pilot interviews with Eric and Lisa, people who would

become my key participants whose network connection would account for 87% of my

sample. The purpose of these pilot interviews are twofold, firstly these pilot interviews

allow for further refinement of the interview questions and methodology. I accomplished

this by critically examining the transcripts of these two pilot interviews and question if

and how my own biases and assumptions have impacted the type of questions I asked or

what follow-up questions and I asked or should have asked but did not. Secondly, by first

interviewing people who would become my key participants, they will be able to give any

potential participant a first-hand account of the interview process, making it easier for

them to assist in finding further participants. One possible complication of using people

close to myself as entry points is that unlike an outsider researcher, I would never be able

to fully ‘disengage’ from the community I am studying. At the time of writing, one year

after the fieldwork has been completed, I was still one of the administrators for network

87

A’s Facebook group, and some people from network B are planning on flying to

Manchester for my graduation. This then raises the question of how my continuing

relationship with my participants might impact how I present my data and what data I

choose to present. One method that I am using to prevent any future awkwardness is

that I will be using pseudonyms my participants do not know, and cannot identify

themselves from. I also make deliberately vague references (e.g. ‘a university in the south

of England’ or ‘a university on the American east coast’ rather than specifically naming

universities) to information that might identify participants. Add to this the fact that most

of the interviews are translated, and happened long enough time in the past that the

participants would not exactly recall what was said, the possibility of participants being

able to recognise themselves with a high degree of certainty is low enough to be

negligible.

It should be noted that the reason why I gave my participant Anglophone pseudonyms

was that almost all their original pseudonyms are Anglophone. This may have come from

the Thai concept of chue len or ‘play name’ – this is an informal, unofficial name that is

used amongst family and friends and in informal settings. Ask a Thai person what their

name is in a social event, and you are more likely than not to be given their play name.

Play names are often one or two syllables long, and it is common – particularly in Bangkok

– for a person’s play name to be Anglophone. As the majority of the participants picked

Anglophone names, I went with the wishes of the majority of the participants and re-

named them with other Anglophone names rather than using Thai names.

The recruitment process was slower than I expected, my initial estimate of being able to

complete 2-3 interviews/week was grossly optimistic given that most participants were

only free for an interview on a Saturday afternoon. The process usually involved my first

meeting the participant at a social gathering. The small talk generally lead to the ‘what do

you do’ question – I explained what I was doing back in Bangkok to them and then I asked

them if they have studied overseas and whether or not they would like to take part in my

research. If they express the initial interest, I then email them the participant information

sheet14. After which if they still agreed I then organised the interview. It was this point

where I have to consider the issue of my being a single man, and that there are certain

14

See appendix 4

88

spaces where women (who made up 54% of my participants) who are culturally Thai

might have felt uncomfortable being alone with a man in. I mitigated this by suggesting a

café in Bangkok that specifically had an association with studying and universities15, and

thus suggesting – via subtext – that this was a meeting for an academic purpose and not

an attempt to try to spin fieldwork into a date. This café had the added benefit of having

glass walled rooms for group studies that shut out outside noises but still kept myself, and

my participants visible to everyone else and thus are still in a ‘public’ rather than a

‘private’ space. The majority of my interviews were done in these glass cubicles. However,

some participants preferred to be interviewed at their homes, closer to their homes, or at

their offices instead.

The interviews were carried out in as a relaxed manner as possible, with minimal notes

taken during the interview. However, some notes were taken for topics I wanted to get

clarification from the participants later on in the interview, or key subjects that the

participants raised I wanted to focus in on and discuss more, and the participant’s

physical reactions/ significant gestures during a particular question. I relied on a digital

voice recorder during the interview, after which the interviews were transcribed in its

entirety. During the interview, I loosely adhered to the order in the interview prompt, in

that if the participant brought up a particular topic that I had planned on bringing up

later, I would broach that topic at the time of the participant’s choosing. The most useful

interview technique that produced the most information on issues that the participants

take for granted (i.e. family relations) is the question “what would happen if you did/did

not do ______”. For example, when participants would talk about how they ‘have to’

obey their parents, I would ask them why? What would happen if they did not obey their

parents? In these cases, the question brought out the affective obligation elements of

familial relationship to the forefront. The reason I did this was that I was not only

interested in the information but also how that information was presented, what the

participants’ thoughts behind particular narratives were.

While my insider status has brought benefits that I previously discussed, it also brought in

certain practical challenges. The main difficulty that I encountered during the interview

15

The ‘Too Fast to Sleep’ chain of cafes are known for being set up near universities, and are heavily geared towards providing spaces for students to do individual/group studies. It is usually opened 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (Bangkok.com, n.d.).

89

process was the participant’s tacit assumption that I shared the same assumptions as

them, as I am part of the same we/us as them. The participants would react in a

surprised/incredulous way if I questioned ‘the obvious’ (like the aforementioned ‘why do

you obey your parents’). I got around this by couching the entire interview in terms of

sound research methodology, that I know that they know that I know, but I still need to

ask them questions as if I am not Thai because this is part of the research method that I

was taught. Once the process has been couched in terms of ‘this is how the university has

taught me to do research’, the interview process became smoother. This was effective

enough that after the first few interviews I would begin all following interviews with a

statement to the effect of ‘I know some of the questions might sound strange, but part of

my research method is to ask questions as if I am not Thai’. That statement helped to put

the participant at ease, in that it is not that I am some strange individual who does not

understand ‘his own’ culture – but that my methodology needed them to explain ‘our’

culture as if I am not a part of it.

Originally, the main focus this was about how different modes of engagement with the

west while the participants were students impacted their reintegration upon their return

to Bangkok. However, as I began to collect interview data, I realised that the first half of

my original research problem (about the participants’ mode of engagement with the

west) gave much more interesting answers than the second. Also, the ways people’s early

childhood upbringing impacted how they perceive the west made for a fascinating topic.

This made me shift my focus from reintegration to why people went to western

universities in the first place and how they engage with the foreign other; which

eventually turned into questions surrounding Thailand’s past relationship with the west

play into the construction of the ‘foreign other’ among the participants. The questions I

asked remained the same throughout but my focus shifted to the first half of the

participant’s timeline more so than the second half.

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7. Data Summary

In total, I found 23 initial participants – one interview was disregarded. The reason for this

was that the interviewee was half Thai/White-British. The data from her interview was

significantly different from other participants who all follow the same general trend. Her

experiences were more shaped by her being half White-British than anything else, and

that was reflected in the way she discussed the questions I have posed. As such, I chose

to disregard her interview as an outlier that is not representative of the group I am

interviewing. None of the other participants is half Thai/White-British. The following table

is a brief breakdown of the age/gender/education background of the participants.

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Gender Number Percentage

Female 12 54.5%

Male 10 45.5%

Age

Average 29

Oldest 32

Youngest 25

Time Since Date of Return (Years, counting from 1st Jan 2015)

Average 4.36

Longest 9

Shortest < 1

Previous Education Experiences

Thai-Thai High school 14 63.6%

International-Thai High school 4 18.2%

High school Abroad 4 18.2%

Destination Countries

Australia 2 9.1%

Canada 2 9.1%

United Kingdom 13 59.1%

United States 5 22.7%

Table 2: Overall participant statistics

During my research, I found that the main difference between my participants fall along

the line of how the participants were educated at high school level, with participants who

went to an international school or a school overseas having reported the least amount of

discomfiture and a greater degree of ease during their degree programmes. This formed

the basis of my analysis of the collected data. As such, I will provide here a statistical

breakdown of the participants based on their schooling backgrounds.

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Overseas Schooled

Gender Number Percentage

Female 1 25%

Male 3 75%

Age

Average 27

Oldest 30

Youngest 25

Have Their Parents had

Overseas Education?

Neither parents 1 25%

One Parent 0

Both Parents 3 75%

Destination Countries

Canada 1 25%

United States 3 75%

Table 3: Overseas schooled participants statistics

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International Schooled

Gender Number Percentage

Female 2 50%

Male 2 50%

Age

Average 27

Oldest 30

Youngest 25

Have Their Parents had

Overseas Education?

Neither parents 2 50%

One Parent 2 50%

Both Parents 0 0%

Destination Countries

Australia 1 25%

Canada 1 25%

United Kingdom 2 50%

Table 4: International schooled participants statistics

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Thai Schooled

Gender Number Percentage

Female 9 64%

Male 5 36%

Age

Average 29

Oldest 32

Youngest 27

Have Their Parents had

Overseas Education?

Neither parents 13 93%

One Parent 1 7%

Both Parents 0 0%

Destination Countries

Australia 1 7%

United Kingdom 11 79%

United States 2 14%

Table 5: Overseas schooled participants statistics

As the numbers of the overseas schooled and internationally schooled participants are

small relative to the Thai-Schooled participants, not much conclusion can be drawn from

the information in these tables by themselves. However, when combined with the

interview data, these do provide a context with which to look at the data particularly

about family involvement in the participant’s overseas education strategies, which will be

further discussed in chapter 4.

The majority of participants went to the United Kingdom for their degree. This was not

due to a clumping of samples and more to do with the ease at which a student can apply

to a university in the UK for a postgraduate degree. A UK degree takes a shorter time than

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an American, Australian or Canadian degree, without having to take multiple tests that

were required for an American master’s degree.

After returning to the United Kingdom, I began interviewing more people as a mean to

control for the nostalgia factor and that the original participants did not recall idealised

images about their past education. However, due to my lack of connection with the Thai

student’s society at Manchester University, plus other pressures on my time I was only

able to do four of these interviews. One participant was based in north-west USA (via

Skype), two in north-west UK, and one in London, with two having been to international

schools and two having been to a Thai school. There were no significant differences

between the way participants who were currently going through their education at the

time of the interview verses the original post-education participants.

I was only able to obtain 22 useable interviews in the primary tranche and four in the

secondary; this is due in large part to the amount of time it took to build rapport with the

participants. As the near-total failure of the mass messaging approach through an

education agency shows, the target population would not talk to someone they do not

know who contacted them without prior introduction or relationship. Because of this, I

had to spend time building rapport with potential participants, establishing my social

relationship to them before I could ask them to participate. Regardless of this, however,

Given that the participants’ narratives all followed similar themes, with differences being

attributed to their secondary education history. In addition to the similarity between

participants’narratives, I felt that I have reached far enough beyond my immediate

connections through the degree I was able to snowball away from my immediate circle. I

am reasonably confident that there has been no clumping of samples and that the picture

I received from my participants is an illustrative approximation of the bigger picture as a

whole. Below is a table summarising all of my participants. It should be noted that their

‘type of degree’ is not the exact degree they have but a description of the field they are

in.

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Name/age/gender Schooling history

Brief Description Type of Degree and Country

Anika/28/F

TS Parents are domestically educated professionals (business management), participant is currently a education consultant

MA [Business] (UK)

Anna/30/F TS Parents are domestically educated small-business owners, participant is currently a Lawer

LL.M (Master of Law) (USA)

Anton/32/M TS Parents are domestically educated, professional father and homemaker mother, participant is currently a Programmer

MSc. [IT] (UK)

Casey/32/F TS Parents are domestically educated business owners, participant is currently a writer

MSc. [Business] (UK) PhD. [Business] (UK)

Danni/31/F TS Parents are domestically educated small-business owners, participant is currently works for a Law firm.

MSc. [natural science] (UK) PhD. [natural science] (UK)

Emmy/32/F TS Parents are domestically educated professionals, participant is currently a freelance interpretor/translator.

MA. [Business] (UK)

Eric/25/M OS Parents are educated overseas, father is a senior civil servant and mother is part of the extended family’s conglomerate’s senior management. participant is currently a Programmer

BA. [Social Science] (USA)

Gary/27/M OS Parents are domestically educated business owners, participant is currently an engineer for a major government contractor.

BSc. [engineering] (UK)

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Name/age/gender Schooling history

Brief Description Type of Degree and Country

Gemma/30/F IS Father was internationally educated. Both parents are business owners, participant is currently runs her owns an up-market retail business.

BA. [Social Science] (UK)

Glenn/30/M TS Parents are domestically educated business owners, participant is currently a freelance project manager in the entertainment industry.

MSc. [Business] (USA)

Helen/30/F TS Parents are domestically educated business owners, participant is currently a PhD student at a Thai university. (returned home because of concern for parents)

MSc [Business] (UK)

Jeff/29/M TS Parents are domestically educated school teachers, participant is currently an international education consultant

MSc [Business] (UK)

Jessica/26/F OS Parents are domestically educated business owners, participant is currently studying Law in Thailand (required to practice law in Thailand)

BA [Social Science] (USA)

Karen/29/F TS Parents are domestically educated senior civil servants, participant is currently works for a civil society organisation in Bangkok.

MA [Social Science] (UK)

Lisa/29/F TS Parents are domestically educated business owners, participant currently owns and operates a food service business.

MA [Social Science] (UK)

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Name/age/gender Schooling history

Brief Description Type of Degree and Country

Macy/29/F TS Parents are domestically educated, professional father and homemaker mother, participant reluctantly went to study overseas. Participant is currently an international education consultant.

MA [Business] (UK)

Mark/26/M IS Parents are domestically educated business owners, Participant’s family is well known in political circles. Participant is currently owns and operates a food service business.

BA [Social Science] (Australia)

Peter/30/M TS Parents are domestically educated, senior Banker father and homemaker mother, participant is currently works as an analyst for an international bank.

MCom [Business] (Australia)

Ryan/25/M OS Father was internationally educated. Both parents are business owners, participant is currently part of his family business’s management team

BSc [Natural Science] (Canada)

Sam/27/M TS Parents are domestically educated highly skilled professionals, participant is working for a major international law firm

LL.M (Master of Law) (UK)

Steph/29/F IS Parents are domestically educated senior management professionals, participant is currently a marketing professional for a prominent hospitality company

BSc [Art] (UK)

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Name/age/gender Schooling history

Brief Description Type of Degree and Country

Steve/30/M OS Parents were internationally educated. Both parents are business owners, participant currently operates an adventure tourism business

BA [Art] (Canada)

Table 6: Participants Overview

8. Data Handling and Translation

Interviews were recorded, this was to free myself from having to take notes and to

capture more of the nuances in the way the participant respond to particular questions.

After an interview, the recording that was made is moved onto a secure USB Flash drive

with hardware encryption and a wipe-on-excessive-failed-logins functionality. Transcripts

plus identification key to match individual participants to a pseudonym were also moved

there. Additionally, three backup copies of my data exist. One was placed in an encrypted,

password-protected cloud service, one kept on the university’s server, and another on a

software encrypted file volume on my personal computer.

The interviews were conducted in either Thai or English (the Participant’s choice). The

majority of the participants chose to be interviewed in Thai. This raised issues on

translation when it came time to transcribe the audio. Considering that I am a native Thai

speaker and I have been fluent in English from an early age, I was in a reasonably good

position to translate the recording myself. I have trailed two different translation

processes; one where I first transcribed the recording in Thai and then translate the text

into English, and another where I transcribe the recording straight into English. I found

that there were no differences in the quality of the translation between either method.

After this finding, I proceeded to translate every single Thai interview recording as I was

transcribing them straight to English. I will not be going into the minutiae of the

translation process. However, there were aspects of the translation that were major

reasons why I did not use a professional translator. There are a lot of social nuances in the

Thai language, nuances which could be lost if translated unreflexively. For example, the

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Thai word ‘เดก’ [dek] literally means ‘child’, which is used as the dialectical opposite to

‘ผใหญ’ [phu yhai] which literally means ‘adult’. However, depending on the context that it

is used dek can also be used to mean an individual of lower rank16 or seniority and phu

yhai can be used to mean an individual of greater rank or seniority. The terms thus have

more meaning than just descriptors of actual, literal meaning of the words, referring to

relative positionality of the speaker. Were I to say ‘phom pen phu yhai’ [I am a ‘phu yhai’]

it would be a literal statement, taken to mean ‘I am an individual who is legally, socially,

and physically considered an adult’ However, if I was about to leave a social event and say

to someone ‘kor pai la phu yhai ghon’ [let me say goodbye to the phu yai first], this does

not mean that I am literally going to say good bye to ‘the adults’ first. Within that context,

it means ‘let me say goodbye to my social/professional superiors first’. Even pronouns can

carry with them social context regarding the relative position of the speaker to the

subject. แก [gae] มง [mung] เอง [aeng] คณ [khun] ทาน [tan] all mean ‘you’ and all could be

correctly translated as ‘you’ or a second/third person pronouns. However, each of these

words are used in different situations when the speaker perceives themselves to be in a

different position to the ‘you’ they were referring to. Khun is the polite form used when

talking to someone of equal rank, gae, mung, and aeng used to be used for talking to

someone of lesser rank but in modern times it is used among friends to indicate a level of

closeness that makes formality unnecessary. Finally, Tan is used to refer to someone who

is of higher rank. These nuances could have been significant to my research. It became

crucial that I translated the interviews myself in order to preserve contextual data. The

understanding of these linguistic nuances is also another reason that makes an insider-

researcher suited to this task. An outsider, particularly those not fluent in Thai might have

trouble understanding the difference between khun and tan or little nuances that makes

a large difference, for example – the difference between the homophones Khun Chai and

Khun chai. The former is simply ‘Mr. Chai’ whereas the latter is a specific form of address

for a senior member of the Thai nobility.

16

. ‘Rank’ in this case refers to one’s position in the social hierarchy.

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9. Data Analysis

Given what I have said in the above section regarding translation and nuances in the

language, the above showed the importance of not just looking at words that were said,

but also how they were said. Each extract taken from an interview for analysis needs to

be considered not as a self-contained piece of data in and of itself, but a part of a series of

interrelated potentially significant data points. As such, aside from the literal words

themselves, there needs to be a consideration of the context in which those words were

said, the narrative it was a part of, its sequential position in relation to other parts of the

interview, and the paralinguistic content of the interview (Mason, 2002, p. 149)

When approaching such data, one has to be mindful not only of what data is presented

but also of other factors significant to the narrative; how it is being presented, what is not

being presented? what question/prompt was the narrative in response to? One’s life

stories can be shaped by many different sources; they have been impacted by historical,

social, and cultural factors surrounding the person as demonstrated in Kopijn’s chapter

(Kopijn, 1998, pp. 142–159) in Chamberlain and Thompson’s Narrative and Genre (1998).

Specifically, in her interviews of Javanese-Surinamese women in Suriname, Kopijn noted

how paralinguistic cues can inform and modify the statement that the person is making

(ibid, p. 148), or how the social contexts of the participant’s culture can have an impact

on how they might define certain social realities. She gave an example of an infertile

woman who has raised four children, all of whom are children of family. Kopijn pointed

out that had she not known of the practice of children lending among Surinamese

families, she might have either been confused or ended up with a very different

conclusion from the interview (ibid, p .151).

One way this was accomplished is treating the interview as an interrelated whole and

drawing conclusions from how responses from two unrelated questions could relate to

each other. When I was talking to Glenn, I asked him why he thought he had to come

back to Thailand

Why do I have to? Okay one, my parents want me to return and that connects to

number two which is that I'm Thai, so I love Thai culture as a matter of course.

Even though I have an appreciation for Western culture be they American or

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British, however […], They lack things that Thai culture have for example respect

for one's elders (Glenn, TS)

Above, he valorised hierarchical rigidity within the family as a part of Thai culture that he

believes is superior to the west. However, later on in the interview when I talked to him

about working for a Thai company, his views changed far enough that he casts Thailand as

“less developed” because of the very same thing

One is the hierarchy, hierarchy is of very high importance in Thailand, and I feel

that this slows down is both business and ordinary life […] Compared to an

American organisation, we can just go straight to the management level person

without being afraid of our society going against us.

By analysing interview extracts as a part of a greater whole, contradictions and patterns

can be drawn out. These particular extracts were used in chapter seven in my discussion

of the impact of postcoloniality on the way the participants’ narrative of the west and

Western-ness.

In addition to this, I also took note of different types of laughter, be they ones from

humour or nerves, moments of incredulity, things that have been said or left unsaid, and

other significant paralinguistic traits. As I have mentioned, my understanding of the Thai

language also helped with contextualising and understanding the beyond the strict

meaning of the words themselves. In practical terms, what this meant for data recording

is that in my interview notes I make notes on significant gestures, tones et cetera. and

note down the topic and rough recording time. When I transcribe the interviews, I make

notes of these paralinguistic ques, for example, if a participant were obviously sarcastic

then I would note it down as such. I use a modified BBCode17 system for this, for instance:

Q. Are you serious?

A: [sarcasm] Why YES! I am *absolutely* serious! [/sarcasm]

In addition to the modified codes, I also attempted to capture these paralinguistic traits in

my recording of the data with several modifiers based on common internet social

17

A simple web programming code used in online forums, for example [b] dog [/b] would have made the word “dog” bold.

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convention, e.g. all capital letters for ‘shouting’/ increased volume, using asterisks before

and after a word to indicate the participant’s emphasis on that particular word.

The transcribed interview was analysed using nVivo, a qualitative data analysis software.

The software was mainly used to assign codes to passages in the interviews, after which

passages of the same coding can be compared, as well as comparisons between the

thematic codes. The software was also used to find occurrences of specific words or that

word’s synonyms. This particular functionality was used before coding as a rough guide to

examine whether or not that subject occurs often enough to be coded. The data was then

coded both thematically and based on the question asked. Initially, the thematic coding is

intentionally broad as to capture a general overview on a particular theme.

After coding at this level, the data is then further coded at a second level in a manner

which was appropriate for that particular topic. For example, for “other Thai students”

the data is sorted based on the sentiment behind the statement –whether the comment

was positive towards other Thai students, negative towards other Thai students, or

neither positive nor negative (indifferent) towards other Thai students. By doing so, I was

able to see a pattern within the data along certain trends. By using a phased approach to

data analysis, I was able to first ascertain which topics were most discussed by the

participants and then take a deeper look at the narratives. Also, a phased approach helps

to contain coding within a reasonable amount and guard against using too many codes on

the first reading of the transcripts, allowing me to analyse the data in a more managed

and efficient manner.

10. Reflections on Methodology

As was mentioned earlier in this chapter – due to the uncertain nature of the exact size of

the population and the sheer scale of even the lowest estimate would make a

representative sampling impractical. I focused my efforts on providing an illustrative

sample by prioritising the quality of data, rather than quantity of data, with each

interview lasting approximately 90 minutes on average and 180 minutes at the longest.

By using in-depth interviews and responding to the participant’s narratives rather than

rigidly adhering to a script, I was able to develop a richer and more complete picture of

each of the participant’s narratives with clear ideas of why or how each of them came to

a particular conclusion. Given that the primary objective of qualitative research is not

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there to find the ‘what’ and the ‘how many’ – rather, it is there to discover “how things

work in particular contexts”(Mason, 2002, p. 1). In this way, I was able to use my

interviews to show a level of contextual consistencies within my sample group.

As has been noted earlier the chapter, I was only able to gain very few participants in the

second tranche of interviews of participants who are still studying for their degrees at the

time of the interviews. In hindsight, this was mainly due to my lack of contact with the

Thai student’s community here at the University of Manchester – and through them, the

Samaggi Samagom18. Regardless of this, the four interviews I conducted while based in

the UK all followed the same narrative as those I have interviewed in Thailand. As such,

the level of consistency achieved by a group spread across three cities in two countries

(two participants in Manchester, one in London, one in Seattle, WA) is proof of their

ability to illustrate that the narratives of my main sample group were not significantly

different from those of current students.

Another challenge was of my being an insider of the group I am researching posed both

opportunity and problems during the research process, I was able to rely on my

knowledge of my ‘home’ to identify elite populations, and their familiarity with me made

it easier for me to gain access to that population. I also found myself having to give more

care and attention to the ‘face’ of the participants – by taking extra effort to anonymise

their data to a level that others would not be able to figure out who a particular

participant is from context clues. However, this extra effort does create the dilemma that

if the information is too obfuscated, it becomes useless as a piece of data to be analysed,

and yet – if there were not enough obfuscation the participant’s anonymity might be

breached. This challenge is met by my re-reading the extracts I use as if I am an informed

third party and critically assess if I could determine who it was that I was referring to from

the information in the extract. However, the benefit that vastly outweighed this

inconvenience was that my position as an insider-researcher was key in my being able to

have access to as many participants and collect as much data as I have done, as was

shown by the failure of the first data collection approach. Without my personal access to

these networks within the Thai upper classes, data collection would have been

significantly more challenging. This shows the importance of a researcher who is engaged

18

The official Thai student’s association in the UK, established by the Sixth Rama (r.1910-1925)

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with their participants, where the participants feel confident enough to identify the

researcher as one of their own, this applies in particular to hard-to-access groups such as

members of a socio-economic elite. However, there have been some debates on whether

or not a researcher should be close to or detached from the people they are researching.

As past feminist researchers have argued (Harding and Norberg, 2005; Roseneil, 1999),

detachment and objectivity are unachievable ideals. Everyone is a product of their life

experiences, and that bias is already built into our subconscious as such, it is better to use

that familiarity to be able to provide appropriate field site context to those who would

read the research, and remain mindful of the biases that you hold.

The linguistic issues brought up shows the importance of a native/near-native speaker

level of understanding of the participant’s language in capturing all the social nuances

within the participant’s narrative. Without knowledge of these nuances and relying purely

on translators, or tourist/expatriate-level knowledge of the local language a significant

amount of the data would likely be lost, and misunderstandings made more likely. The

objective of this research was to discover the participant’s narrative of Western-ness and

western education. The methodology’s design must be done in such a way that it would

maximise the collection of such data, I have shown that a semi-structured interview

wherein I have the freedom to allow the participants to talk on a topic for as long as they

wish, capturing the fullest extent of the participants’ narratives. Further, this type of

interview both allows me to follow tangents that the participants have gone on to see

where they lead, but at the same time provide a framework that would keep the

interviews comparable.

In analysing the data, I used NVivo as a data management tool and a phased approach to

the thematic coding of the interview transcripts. By using a phased method in addition to

treating the interviews as a holistic whole with extracts as parts of a story rather than

stories in and of themselves, I was able to determine which general theme was important

to the participants and which were not. In addition to keeping the number of main

themes down, this allowed me to prioritise the deeper analysis of the data and

concentrate on more promising themes which were eventually turned into the three

thematic chapters of this thesis.

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Chapter 4: Family, Education Hierarchies, and Circuits of Education

1. Introduction

My theoretical framework set out an argument that the family is a vital part of developing

one’s mode of cultural competence, particularly the types of embodied tastes one has. In

this chapter, I will be examining the role of the family in shaping my participant’s decision

to study overseas, and I shall argue that my participants’ individual educational choices

must be seen as part of a familial educational strategy. Because familial habitus and

strategies are so important in my sample’s educational routes, they require a discussion

of the entire timeline of the participants’ sojourn. While I will be focusing from the

moment of their decision to leave Thailand, to the moment of their return, this research

also looks more broadly, locating their educational trajectories in the wider expectations,

knowledge and assumptions of the participants’ families. In fact, as we shall see in this

chapter, in their decision to study overseas, participants’ parents were a significant

source of the “push” for them to leave the country for their education. Indeed, some of

the sample were sent overseas from a younger age (studying abroad for their secondary

or even primary education), and in such cases, we can clearly see parental influence on

the educational trajectories of their children. In other cases in my sample, participants

were schooled in Thailand but at international schools, and again we can see how parents

played a significant role in shaping their children’s post-secondary education choices, and

in constructing the value of international education. However, for other participants,

educated in Thai schools, the decision to study abroad was a less automatic, taken-for-

granted one.

Participants who had been International-schooled and Overseas-schooled (IS/OS)

narrated a particular set of experiences, producing very different accounts from that of

the Thai-schooled (TS) participants. I discuss how this difference in earlier education

impacted participants’ attitudes towards western education and how, because of their

background, Thai-schooled participants were more likely to be calculative and reflexive

about their choices of western education than the International-schooled and Overseas-

schooled participants. The latter were more likely to narrate their decision to study in the

West as something that was largely taken-for-granted, both by themselves and within

their families, the automatic next step following on from their prior (internationally-

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inflected) educational experiences. As discussed in chapter two, research on higher

education choices (Reay et al., 2005, 2001) has consistently shown that such choices derive

from unequal resources, knowledge and social networks, and are classed, raced et cetera.

Reay et al. (2005) make an ‘ideal typical’ distinction between ‘contingent’ and

‘embedded’ choosers, arguing that young people make choices on the basis of very

uneven social, cultural and economic resources, and orientations to education. For

‘embedded’ choosers, higher education choices are based on extensive knowledge,

where higher education is part of a deeply embedded grammar of aspiration and seen as

part of a ‘normal’ biography, with parents playing an active role and being strong framers

of such choices. ‘Contingent’ choosers were often ‘first generation’ in their family in

higher education; their higher education choices were often based on limited

information, with the choice seen as distant or unreal, weakly linked to imagined futures,

and parents were often onlookers on the decision, providing practical support only. Of

course, the elite participants in my study are much more privileged than the ‘contingent’

choosers of Reay et al. (2005) study. Nonetheless, as we shall see, the differing

knowledgeability, expectations of, and orientations to, international education found

amongst my sample show some similarity to the differences between ‘embedded’ and

‘contingent’ choosers. As I shall argue, the differing family backgrounds of participants

and their earlier educational experiences had already placed them on different

educational routes or trajectories.

In order to analyse these differences, I use the concept of circuits of education (Ball et al.,

1995; Reay and Ball, 1998). Based on UK research, Ball et al.’s work demonstrates how

class-specific ‘circuits of schooling’ operate in London, with the cosmopolitan middle-class

the more ‘active’ choosers of educational opportunities. Ball et al. identify two distinct

‘discourses’ of choice: a working-class one dominated by the practical and the immediate,

and a middle-class one dominated by the ideal and the advantageous. This resulted in

different patterns of choice and modes of intervention in children’s schooling, and so

generates different ‘circuits of education’ along the lines of class and race. Ball et al. see

the activities of middle-class parents as supporting Bourdieu’s argument about the

‘jockeying’ for position which is key to middle-class cultural reproduction. There are no

working-class participants in this study, nonetheless, amongst the much more privileged

members of my sample, there is distinction and differentiation within the elite and

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distinct circuits of international education. Specifically, I discuss how the International-

schooled and Overseas-schooled participants (who were also the more privileged

members of the sample) framed their accounts of western education in terms of them

simply following the flow of their existing education circuit, part of the normal

expectation for people in their situation, and also they narrated a sense of ‘ease’ with

western education. By contrast, in deciding to study abroad, the Thai-schooled

participants were not simply following normal expectations and had to change their

circuit of education consciously. As such, their accounts exhibited much more calculation

and reflexivity about the process of choice. Finally, I discuss how the sample’s varying

expressions of familiarity and ease (or lack of ease) with western education also affected

how the participants behaved in the west. In particular, I show that Thai-schooled

participants, because they were crossing educational circuits, and so felt a transition into

another, less familiar field, and developed a sense of liminality about their time abroad.

As a result of that, they often gave a narrative of freedom from the role expectations that

would have been in play at ‘home’. However, unlike conventional liminality, which would

have engendered a lasting change to the change in their habitus (their sense of

freedom)(Turner, 1967), the change I have found was temporary. This temporariness was

more in line with what Turner described as liminoid – a break from reality, rather than a

change in the participants’ perception of reality (Turner, 1974). The temporary nature of

this break was demonstrated by the participants’ expression of their desire to return to

their families, or their unreflexive acquiescence to their parents’ wishes despite the

limitations it implies. While this liminoid break exposes Thai schooled participants’ strong

commitment to their family, it also forced a closer examination of the family narratives of

overseas and international schooled participants. This close examination revealed a

similar commitment to their families, similarly expressed in both affective terms, and in

the linkage between the family and their conception of Thai culture. This demonstrated

the deeply-ingrained nature of the discourse of the family as a key part of Thai culture.

The first sections of this chapter discuss how the familial relationship (specifically the

parent-child relationship and the influence of parents on earlier educational decisions)

has influenced participants’ overseas education strategies. Was it a matter of a key

influence at a point in time? Or was it a result of long term inculcation? And what were

the motivating considerations behind their strategies? I argue that we can see important

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differences in how my participants narrated their experiences of overseas education, and

their experiences of deciding to study overseas, depending on their prior educational

experiences. In the next section, I argued that the differences in their approaches to

international education based on their prior educational experiences fits within the

concepts of circuits of education, where the differing cultural and social capitals imparted

by the international and domestic circuits of education have influenced how participants

see their education trajectories, and accounted for the difference in the resources

available to them in the pursuit of international education. I then argue that Thai

schooled participants’ lack of familiarity with the international education field have

caused a more pronounced sense of disjuncture during their time overseas. I then go on

to illustrate how this disjuncture, along with the Thai schooled participants’ sense of

overseas study as a ‘break from normal’ help to illustrate the deeply-ingrained nature of

the participants’ sense of filial duty.

2. Family in the Thai context

While family advantage and familial habitus have long been key themes in discussions of

the sociology of education (Archer et al., 2012; Ball et al., 1995; Reay, 2005); it is

important to set out some specific feature of family influence in the Thai context. The

family, in particular, the parent – child relationship is seen as an integral part of Thai

culture. It was something that was built into the national mythos. From the earliest part

of the nationalist historiography of ‘Thai’ history – during the - Sukhothai 19Kingdom

period (13th – 14th Century) - the system of government was described as that of a Father

(the King) tending to his children (the subjects) (Stengs, 1999).This tradition continues to

this day, where the King, the pinnacle of the country’s socio-political order is still seen as

a paternalistic figure. The late King Bhumibol, the IX Rama (r.1946-2016) is often referred

to as the ‘royal father’ or ‘father of the nation’ by the general public, and the media, both

public and private. Stengs’ (1999) research shows the centrality of not only paternalism

but of the authority of the parental figure – particularly the father figure - within Thai

society. Given this, it is no surprise then that Pimpa’s (Pimpa, 2003) research on the push

and pull factors affecting Thai students’ study overseas found that familial influence and

support was central to a student’s decision. However, Pimpa’s research was largely

19

A predecessor kingdom of Siam/Thailand

110

quantitative and did not elaborate on the reasonings behind this. Given this background

and also because the topic of family was the most frequently mentioned by the

participants20, it is clear that we must examine family as a theme of importance to the

participants. As we have seen in chapter two, a considerable body of past research in

other localities has indicated significant linkages between family, the construction of

one’s habitus, and one’s education choices. There is a need to pay closer attention to

how, in the Thai context, the families of participants influenced them, to find out – in

more detail – the nature of this influence.

Given Stengs’ research (1999) we can argue that Thai filial bonds are seen as a matter of

state as well as a private matter. If one grew up in Thailand – as the author did – the song

“ten duties of a child”21 would be common knowledge, as would sitting through class

being told the significance of that year’s children’s day motto (The prime minister of the

day gives a new children’s day motto every year) generally summing up what it means to

be a “Good child” to the government of the day. One can see filial bonds being presented

as a matter of state. The importance of filial bond to the state can be seen in

contemporary school textbooks where The family and filial piety have been framed as a

part of being a ‘good citizen’ of the state. For example, in the government-approved

textbook “Social Studies, Religion and Culture” for students at Mattayom 222 level, in the

section on “being a good citizen in a democracy” it stresses the importance of one’s

responsibility to “self, community, and the nation”, in which one can begin by being a

good member of the family.

1. On being a good member of the family.

For example, father and mother should look after and instruct their children on

doing only the correct things. Teach them to behave within the confines of

Silladharma23 and provide them with education enough to have a career. Children

should be Katanyu24, look after and care for one’s father and mother up to and

20

To put this in context ‘family’ came up 36 percent more frequently than the next highest topic ‘Thailand’. 21

Full text translated by the Author can be found in Appendix C 22

Equivalent to UK Year 8, approximately 14 years old 23

Lit. Trans: Morality, Thai word has strong Buddhist connotation 24

Being grateful to someone and reciprocate with loyalty – often used within the context of patron-client relationship.

111

including being a good person in order to repay them for their kindness and

benevolence (Worakwin et al., 2015, p. 99).

The usage of moralistic terms and the none-too-subtle reference to the nation’s most

common religion aids to create a certain familial narrative: parents marshal students

towards the “correct” things, provide them with “good” education. Children should obey

and be grateful. As will be seen later in this chapter, many of my participants reflect this

narrative in their narrative of familial obligation and expectation, so much so that even a

liminal sense of freedom from parents while they are abroad was framed as a ‘break’, a

temporary state of being before going back to ‘real life’ and their familial obligations.

3. Schooling and Attitudes towards Overseas Higher Education

This section focuses on how the participants recounted their family’s role in their decision

to go abroad. This section examines how a participant’s upbringing, combined with

prevailing social norms regarding family structure, as well as an Occidentalized view of

the west25 marshalled them into seeing studying in the west as the ‘best’ thing for them

to do. This family influence did not begin at the point of the decision to go to university

abroad; rather it began earlier, during childhood, in the indirect construction of the

participant’s habitus through the parents’ schooling choices. For some, this meant having

instilled in them a particular set of tastes and dispositions, creating a sense of

international education as the natural and inevitable choice. For others, international

education was seen as an aspirational goal rather than a foregone conclusion, where the

choice to study overseas was made in a much more conscious and calculative way with

more explicit encouragement from their parents and family at the time of decision. Then

the section discusses the role of cultural hierarchies and upon the formation of a broad

ranking of universities in Thailand and universities in “the west” which in turn, helped to

influence the choice of an overseas education.

I have separated my participants into three distinct groups based on their schooling, as it

became clear from the interviews that earlier experiences of education were very

influential on the choices and experiences of western education. The members of the first

group – the Overseas-schooled (OS), or those who had experienced their pre-university

25

Will be discussed further in chapter 7: Distinction and the Post-Colonial Condition

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education overseas - never really considered a Thai university as a possible choice, and

frequently dismissed the whole category of “Thai Universities”. For example, Jessica, who

was educated in the United States since middle school and spent five years in the United

states prior to university said that it would seem “counterproductive to go through all of

that and to come back to a Thai university”. When asked to explain, she suggested that

because she had already spent considerable time in the American schooling system, if she

went back to Thailand for university, the value of these earlier experiences would have

been lost

um... Because ultimately I think I wanted to experience higher education in the

States and to have to go through middle school and high school in preparation for

that entry. If I stayed in [prestigious Thai school] or something, my

competitiveness compared to if I had gone to the school in the States in order to

get into a school like [an Ivy League university] would have been much lower

(Jessica, OS).

Jessica could talk at some length about Thai universities, perhaps because she was

pursuing a law degree at a Thai university at the time of interview and as such had first-

hand experience to talk about. It should be noted here that Jessica attended a Thai law

school because she wanted to practice law in Thailand, knowledge of Thai law and legal

procedures are required to obtain the proper licences. This is the reason why she went to

a law school in Thailand rather than going or remaining overseas for a law degree.

When I asked Eric if he ever considered going to a Thai university, he paused before giving

a short and succinct “no.” When I asked him to expand, he talked about how universities

in the US are better

I knew that the universities in the States were better for my education, so I just

didn't consider coming back to Thailand. But now being in Thailand umm… and

wanting... I am taking some courses here, and my parents were like "yeah, take an

MBA here or whatever" it is also good for networking, lalala but I wanted to learn

what I really want to learn, not for the degree so I am still indifferent (Eric, OS).

In Eric’s quote, while Thai universities had some value in terms of social capital, American

universities had more intellectual prestige. As in the cases of Jessica and Eric, the other

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OS participants framed their decision to go overseas for university as a natural

progression: they saw it as ‘staying overseas’ in the sense that a choice had already been

made for them. To return to Thailand for university would require them to cross from one

education circuit26 to another, which would require a level of reflexive consideration – as

noted by the general “why would I?” theme of the answers from Jessica and Eric. As for

Eric, he did not talk much about Thai universities at all during our discussion, and his

schooling had been in an elite American private school since the beginning of high school.

This had placed him within a circuit that naturally flows towards American Ivy League

universities. In addition, his father and siblings were all American educated. This was

typical amongst OS and IS participants, with 62% (five out of eight) having had at least

one parent who studied overseas, whereas only 7% of TS participants (one out of

fourteen) had a parent who studied overseas. Having grown up in surrounded by

overseas educated people, it is easy to see how remaining in the USA seemed the

inevitable choice for him.

Amongst IS participants, their accounts indicated that their international schools had

shepherded the participants and their fellows into applying to universities in Britain or

America (depending on their school’s affiliations). Here, Gemma, who has been schooled

in a British international school in Thailand, explains why she felt that going overseas had

always been ‘expected’ of her.

It started off with my grandmother on my mom's side; she did not want us going

to a Thai school because she saw the way how the teachers used to hit the kids

and also because... she stressed the importance of the English language, […] And

so they enrolled us ... into uh, British international school in Thailand. So it was

always expected that I was going to a university... overseas... in the UK

(Gemma, IS).

Gemma’s account shows one way that parental schooling choices impact a participant’s

later university education choices. By placing her in an international school, Gemma’s

family created a situation where she perceived going to a British university as something

that was ‘expected’ of her, in much the same way as the OS group. However, the IS

participants were not as fully embedded in overseas education as their OS counterparts.

26

This concept will be discussed further in Chapter 5: Cosmopolitanism as a cultural capital

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One difference between OS and IS participants is that the IS participants tended to have

at least considered Thai universities as a possibility, which may also reflect the differences

in the fields in which they were educated. Whereas OS participants were completely

educated overseas, IS participants were educated in Thailand, albeit at an international

school. This means that even though their educational field may be similar to OS

participants, their family and social lives were still occurring in a Thai field. As such, they

would have had more exposure to the general Thai cultural field than OS participants,

who spent most of their schooling life in boarding schools or with host families, only

spending their school holidays in Thailand. However, while IS participants considered Thai

universities they did so only to dismiss them or applied to them as ‘safety schools’, in case

they could not gain admission to anything better. For example, Ryan, an IS participant,

referred to his application to an international university in Thailand as a “safety school”

choice and explained.

If it was the worst case scenario that I could not get into any of the schools I

applied to then… I would just stay and get my degree and then… Think about what

I want to do later. (Ryan, IS)

The fact that Ryan considered going to a Thai university as a ‘worst case scenario’ shows

that he saw Thai universities as being ranked lower than western Universities. Steph,

another IS participant, did not apply to a Thai university, not even as a safety school. She

said that it was because Anglophone universities in Thailand are ‘fake international

schools’.

I guess… They would have to be certified with international teaching standards in

some ways, and use proper teachers, qualifications and what not; […] [like] the

IGCSE27 curriculum and… Import the teachers, from the UK. With real Welsh

accents *laugh*they gave me real trouble when I went to high school like… "What

are you saying?" (Steph, IS).

It is interesting to see here that Steph equates ‘international standards’ with the

standards of the west, and this use of the word ‘international’ as a euphemism for the

27

International General Certificate of Secondary Education, a qualification offered by Cambridge International Examinations, a UK Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) accredited department of Cambridge University (Cambridge International Examinations, 2017).

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west will be further discussed in the next chapter. However, it was clear that Steph

considered Thai universities to be of a lesser standard than ‘real’ international - western -

educational institutions. This perception of international universities being superior to

Thai ones can also be seen amongst TS participants. For TS participants, the idea of

moving “up” to a foreign university – or crossing over from a Thai circuit of education to a

western one - played a key part in their decision to study abroad. This was particularly so

for those who went to elite Thai universities for their undergraduate degrees. In the

accounts of the TS participants, there was also an added dimension in that their

discussion of going to a western university was much more explicitly strategic than for the

OS and IS groups. There was also a more candid discussion of financial support from their

families as being key to their decision to go. Parental support for study abroad was far

less assured and much more contingent for the TS group. In my discussion with Karen, a

TS participant, she talked about how going to university anywhere in Thailand would

“degrade the value of my [elite Thai university 1] degree”.

I graduated from [elite Thai university 1], I have to go somewhere better to build

on that right? Otherwise, it will drag your previous degree down. My dad was

dead set against [me staying in Thailand]. So I thought what does he want? He

does not want me to study in Thailand, but he would not say if he will fund me to

study overseas... but after I got the offer he finally offered me the money, so that

was ok (Karen, TS).

When I asked Karen to clarify why her father was ‘dead set’ against this, she explained

that it was because of what he perceived as the prestige that the ‘name’ of universities

implies.

He saw that [elite Thai university 1] is like... the best out of all the universities at

the time, so he thought why I should go somewhere that will drag my name

down? That is what he said (Karen, TS).

It is interesting to note here that according to Karen, her father knew ‘absolutely nothing’

about universities overseas, and yet he was convinced that they are better than Thai

universities. This begins to indicate a level of culturally ingrained belief in the superiority

of western education, which will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapters. In this

case, Karen’s father felt that her only way ‘upwards’ from an elite Thai university was to

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go overseas. Interestingly, he did not specify which university, just that she had to go

abroad. Sam, a Thai school graduate of one of Thailand’s most prestigious law schools

never thought about studying overseas until his father mentioned it to him. However,

unlike Karen’s father the ‘step up’ was not about the university’s name, rather, it was

about knowledge of English – which both Sam and his father believed to be essential for

improving Sam’s employability.

My father feels that in the legal profession… Not just the legal profession, but in

general that… Today, if you do not know the English language, it will be hard for

you to work. So, since you would need English anyway, you might as well go and

continue your education overseas (Sam, TS).

Although Sam’s father’s judgement of Thai university was not as explicit as Karen’s

father’s, it was still clear that both Sam and his father believed that an overseas master’s

degree would be a step up from a prestigious Thai degree. This is based on both Sam’s

father’s belief in the employability edge that an anglophone education would provide,

and Sam’s description of the workplace advantages that having a foreign degree would

have over his prestigious Thai bachelor’s degree.

Within the legal profession, if they see that you have a degree from overseas, they

will know that you have an acceptable command of English and I should be able to

find work in an international law firm. Because the work in an international law

firm and a local law firm are very different, the pay is also very different. […] The

pay in a local law firm would be just over half that of what someone would get in

an international law firm and the work is much harder (Sam, TS).

To Sam, a foreign master’s degree would act (and indeed, had acted) as a ‘step up’ from

his Thai degree, enabling him to work in a more prestigious international law firm,

earning nearly double the money for less work (Sam is currently working for an

international law firm). This idea of a generic overseas or western institution being better

than those in Thailand was also in evidence when Glen talked about how his parents dealt

with his wayward sister who refused be a ‘good child’. To prevent her from slipping into

mediocrity, his parents sent her to study overseas.

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When my sister was sent overseas to study […] my sister was sent away out of

necessity because she was gae rae28. Like, she would skip school and refuse to

study so […] if they let her stay in Thailand she would always be an ordinary

person, unremarkable, unsuccessful. Like… She would not be able to get into one

of the Thai speaking universities like Chula29, so she would have to go to a private

university30. So… her future does not look very bright. So, it is better for them to

send her to study overseas because at the very least… She will get the language

(Glen, TS).

We can see here a much more explicit statement of the importance of a university’s

prestige ‘rank’ but also the role that the ‘Western-ness’ of a university plays in that

ranking and its impact on a participant’s perception. In addition to Sam’s father

perception of the benefits of an anglophone education, Glen’s parents believed that

simply by putting Glen’s sister into an overseas university she would be moved into a

‘higher’ circuit of education. Glenn’s parents believed that this movement to a higher

circuit would be enough to cure her of any perception of mediocrity that others might

have of her. In these examples from Thai-schooled participants, parents' influence took

the form of a more explicit encouragement at or near the point of decision. This

encouragement is made within a broadly hierarchical narrative, encouraging their

children to ‘move up’ to a more prestigious circuit of education, be it because of the

perceived prestige of that circuit, or because of the assumed improved employability that

it would provide.

Participants from every schooling background talked about education in a broadly

hierarchical way, in one way or another. We have already explored this in the case of

Jessica and her non-consideration of Thai universities because ‘all the effort’ she put into

getting into an American university would be wasted. In the case of Steph and her idea of

higher ‘international standards’. In the case of Karen and her desire to climb up the

educational hierarchy after reaching what she sees as the limit of what is possible within

the Thai circuit of education. In Sam’s case where English is regarded as a key to increased

28

Disobedient and Truculent, generally only used when talking about a child. 29

Chulalongkorn University – considered to be one of the top universities in Thailand – Chulalongkorn and Thamasart Universities makes up the Thai cultural equivalent of Oxbridge. 30

Private universities are considered inferior to state universities – an option for people with money but insufficient intellect to enter one of the more selective state universities.

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employability. Finally, in the case of Glen and his parent’s calculative way of thinking

about higher education. This hierarchical view of education was a common theme in the

accounts of the sample which broadly occurred throughout the different schooling

groups.

Within my sample, implied by their narrative of educational hierarchy is that by studying

overseas, one stands to gain cultural capital that is more valuable that they could gain

from a Thai institution. Why is this so? How is it that studying overseas is thought to have

this ability to provide distinctional advantage? Is it because foreign education has

increased in value as a cultural capital? Or has domestic education lost its value compared

to it? Looking at the changes in higher education in Thailand, Tangkitvanich and

Manasboonphempool (2011) argue that higher education in Thailand has changed from

being once only the domain of the elite administrative classes to being something that is

far more widespread (ibid). To highlight this, In 1990 the gross enrolment ratio for higher

education institutions in Thailand was 15.9% of the university age population. 20 years

later that ratio has more than tripled to 50.2% (World Bank, n.d.). In the period between

1990 and 2010, university education became much more commonplace, with half of the

university-age population enrolled in a Higher education. If we are to treat cultural capital

as we would a financial instrument - as Bourdieu (1984) does - then the cultural capital to

be gained from domestic higher education has suffered from massive inflation. As such,

domestic higher education is no longer seen as sufficient for anyone wishing to

distinguish themselves and maintain or improve their status. The participants’ discourses

of educational hierarchy thus far places international education over domestic, creating

the perception of international higher education as a better kind of higher education, one

that will bring in the capital necessary to sustain a sufficient level of distinction and

provide the prestige and employment benefits as previously discussed. In this manner,

overseas higher education is a means to combat this inflation in cultural capital.

It is also worth noting that, as we shall see, for many participants in my sample, the

possible return-on-investment regarding cultural capital goes beyond the simple

credential that one can acquire from a foreign university; the sojourn itself becomes a

source of cultural capital. The credential that one achieves from an overseas university

goes beyond simply providing a guarantee of academic competence. This was noted in

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Collins et al.’s (2016) research, part of the cultural capital associated with international

higher education is derived from the situatedness of the learning experience in addition

to the credential itself. As such, the cultural capital one develops from international

education should be seen as having two components. The first having to do with the

perceived hierarchy of education, that western universities are superior to Thai

universities. The second having to do with the situated nature of that education, in the

perception that international education ‘expanded their world view’ through their

experiences of the west.

Indeed, those who study abroad are accorded a particular label in Thai society, Dek Nork,

one with status connotations. Casey, a Thai-schooled researcher who went to the UK for

her master’s and PhD brought up this topic when I asked her about what she had

expected to get out of her overseas education before she first left Thailand. She felt that

Thai society gives much credence to an institution’s name and the status of being a

Nakrian Nork31/Dek Nork32

[Aside] from the institution that you graduated from, Thailand also gives a lot of

importance to the degree that you graduated with and your status as a Nakrian

Nork. Otherwise, there wouldn't be words like Nakrian Nork, arising because once

you say it, people understand, "oh, Dek Nork, Nakrian Nork" They are

like...another Puak33 (Casey, TS).

When asked the differences between Dek Nork and Nakrian Nork, her reply focused on

the element of appearance, about the ‘brand’, and the embodied labels ascribed to those

statuses.

Umm... I think… Back then if I was thinking in a childish and stupid way it is... I

would just think about the brand, the connections how people would perceive me

but after coming back I felt that Dek Nork have seen more of the world, have seen

more of a varied world, have been out of the Kala34; more open to things, less

narrow-minded (Casey, TS).

31

Lit: Outer/Outside Students, people studying/have studied/going to study overseas. 32

Lit: Outer/Outside child, people who spent their youth in Muang Nork 33

Group of people, usually with a connotation of a reciprocating network 34

Kala = Coconut shell, a reference to the Thai proverb "a frog under a coconut shell" meaning one who've led a sheltered life and refusing new knowledge or experiences

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As can be seen from the above quotes from Karen, Glen, and Casey, there is a higher level

of reflexive calculation in the accounts of the TS participants. Going to an overseas

university appeared part of a more explicit and calculated strategic manoeuvring as part

of middle-class struggles over distinction. This is not to say that OS and IS were not also

engaged in struggles over distinction, but as we shall see later, their accounts were more

often framed in terms of cosmopolitan ease and the normal expectation of overseas

study. For the TS participants, there was less assurance of a trajectory towards overseas

study. Rather, TS participants were more reflexively calculative about its value, perhaps

linked to a greater sense of status anxiety. We have seen this in the case of Karen, for

example, who talked about how her [elite Thai university 1] degree would be ‘degraded’

by her going to a lesser university. The phrase “go somewhere better to build on that”

would imply that going somewhere “worse” would have the opposite effect. Or John’s

sister who would have been ‘ordinary’ had his parents not sent her to study overseas.

Casey’s narrative also pointed to a second factor of the cultural capital gained from

overseas studies: the fact that a participant was not just going overseas for an education,

but also going to live overseas itself.

This cultural capital will be further discussed in the next chapter. However it is worth

flagging that, for most of my sample, overseas education was valued because it allowed

them to see the world and become more open-minded, in addition to being seen as a

valuable, rarely obtainable thing in itself (because overseas education was considered to

be expensive, more prestigious and selective).. I have argued that a key factor

differentiating between my participants is their pre-university education. This fits with the

concept of ‘circuits of education’, the idea that people of different classes identify with

and engage in different ‘circuit’ of education. The next section will further discuss how

the circuits of education has impacted my samples’ approaches to international

education, with those who have been in an international circuit of education from an

earlier age (OS/IS participants) having both greater access to resources, and a sense of

assurance in their education trajectories. I will also show how, despite their lack of

advantage comparative to OS/IS participants, TS participants who were educated at an

undergraduate level in elite Thai universities felt the need to seek out international

education in order to ‘build upon’ their degree. I argue that these narratives points a

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belief in a generalised hierarchy of culture, exemplified in their narrative of hierarchies of

educational institutions based upon their national fields.

4. Circuits of Education and Overseas Study

By placing their children in international or overseas schools since early childhood,

parents have set their children onto an international circuit of education from an earlier

age. This analysis is based on Brooks and Water’s (2009) extension of Ball et al.’s (1995)

study of education choices of British students. A student’s circuit of education placed

them on a path towards a certain set of higher education instituions, molding the

student’s perception of what institutions they should aim for, and where. This can be

seen in the way OS and IS participants was ‘groomed’ by their schools. Ryan, who

attended an international school, talked about how his school has been visited by

universities from around the world

We had what is called the um… They were like college visits or something, so a lot

of the top [international] universities would make a visit and set up a booth at the

school. We would get a lot of different representative from different universities

that will be advertising their school, […] that is how we get our information, and it

is pretty worldwide too (Ryan, IS).

In addition to this, Ryan had access to a college35 councillor who was knowledgeable

about overseas universities. Attendance at a western school or an International school in

Thailand placed the OS and IS participants in a system which predisposed them towards

going to university in that western country or the western schooling system associated

with that school. Take the case of Gemma who felt that because she was in a British

curriculum school, and all of her family members were educated in the UK, it naturally

followed that she would also go to university in the UK.

For me it was... it just made sense, my family was used to the UK... used to the

British curriculum, I was going to a British curriculum school (Gemma, IS)

Furthermore, at Gemma’s school, her careers/universities counsellor was more versed in

western universities than Thai universities. From these kinds of examples, we can situate

an OS/IS participant’s decision to study overseas not as an isolated decision made at a

35

In the American sense of the word, referring to universities.

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single point in time, but as a progression of their journey along their education circuit. For

IS and OS participants, their schools had inculcated a sense in them that they were a part

of a larger international education circuit, and that they ought to set their sights not on

domestic universities, but universities overseas. This is reflected in the fact that when

OS/IS participants, were asked when the idea of studying at a university overseas

occurred to them, they all answered that they had always had this idea. For TS

participants, it was a different story. For most of them, the idea of studying abroad

occurred to them while they were at university in Thailand. This often arose through

discussion with western-educated lecturers or, as was done at my undergraduate alma

mater, the university would organise a master’s degree fair where local and overseas

universities would be invited to participate. For some others, it happened in high school

when they came into contact with relatives who had studied overseas.

Take the case of Anika, a TS participant. Neither she nor her family had ever considered

the idea of studying overseas before. She assumed that it was the preserve of the super-

rich and not something for a child from the professional classes. Until she was prompted

to look beyond the domestic circuit of education by one of her lecturers, the idea of

foreign education had never occurred to her as a possibility. I asked her how much she

thought it cost and her reply was quite simple

I thought it was verrrrrryyyy expensive, probably not a possibility we are just

normal middle-class people, things like that (Anika, TS).

However, once she was made aware of this possibility by one of her lecturers, she visited

an international education agent – many of which advertise heavily and has offices in

Bangkok’s busy shopping and business districts. There, she was able to find information

on where she could go, and how much it could cost, she approached her parents and

tried to convince them that they really could afford it.

I talked to them for a while, like… "now it has changed mom, there are a lot of

different types [of degrees], and the professor recommended it and the tuition

fees are not as expensive as people think" things like that. But as I said, my family

does not have the background or even my relatives, none at all (Anika, TS).

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As discussed in the methodology chapter, the participants in the study are selected

exclusively from a relatively wealthy population who were able to self-fund their overseas

degrees. Given the reasons enumerated there, the participants of this research can be

counted as members of the socio-economic elite. However, one fundamental difference

between TS participants and OS/IS participants is that TS participants lacked the

knowledge and support about international education available to OS/IS participants

from an early age. Nevertheless, with the assistance of an international education agency,

this could be overcome, as in Anika’s case. As seen here, even though Anika had no idea

about the exact costs of an education overseas, she “knew” that it was out of her family’s

reach. It was seen as something outside of her circuit, outside of what she thought was

the realm of possibility. Anika associated the idea of overseas studies with individuals and

families with far higher social, cultural and economic capital than her own. Anika’s family

is from a different circuit from that of the OS/IS elites, so she did not have access to that

body of knowledge. However, with the help of education consultancy firms, people such

as Anika can – and do – seek out information and expertise on overseas, opening the door

to families with the financial capital to study overseas but who lack the ‘right’ type of

cultural capital to access the traditional body of knowledge.

We can see here part of what Reay (2005) has found: students from different

socioeconomic backgrounds identify with different education circuits. The more elites'

geographically wider awareness enabled them to consider schools and universities

further afield, and in the case of IS student’s parents – International schools that are local

geographically, but nonetheless form a part of the international/global circuit by virtue of

the qualifications and knowledge of the international circuit of education that these

schools provide. Those whose parents socialise within the international education elite

circles ‘know’ that Oxbridge and Harvard and Yale are comparable, that in Britain the

ancient universities are more prestigious than red brick universities, et cetera. Those who

went to international schools had access to internationally educated university advisors

who could help them through the processes of application – with in some cases the

university or their agents in Thailand going to the schools themselves.

We can see a similar situation in the case of Jeff, who had no idea of studying overseas

until he started his undergraduate degree at an international university in Thailand.

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I never thought of [studying overseas], like I have never seen the wider world, and

when I get into university, it is another level. Meeting friends... like, I happened to

have been in an international [university], things like that and that made me want

to spend some time overseas (Jeff, TS).

Or take the case of Anton, who only considered study abroad when he realised that the

field he wanted to study was not available in Thailand.

There was something that I was interested in studying, which was not available in

Thailand, so I went looking for courses in [an emerging IT field] (Anton, TS).

What I have argued so far is that sending a child to an overseas school or an international

school in Thailand had a significant impact on the participant's decisions to seek

university education overseas. Because of this, parents’ role in a participant’s decision to

study overseas was not a simple matter of their input at the point of decision. For OS/IS

participants, their parents’ participation went far beyond that, with their influence also

embedded in the long-term construction of the participant's habitus in a manner which

led to the decision to study overseas being seen as a natural next step to those who could

afford it. For TS participants, their narratives framed an overseas master’s degree as a

natural “step up” from an elite Thai undergraduate degree. In addition to what Karen has

said about her perception of her [elite Thai university 1] degree being degraded, other TS

participants had given a narrative that indicated that they either never looked in Thailand,

or only looked at universities that are comparable to their elite Thai university before

they decided to look overseas. I asked Danni, a Thai-schooled scientist if she considered

Thai universities at all before she went to university overseas. She only looked at

universities comparable to the university that she graduated from.

Well, at the time I graduated from [elite Thai university 2], right? And if I wanted

to continue in my field I would have to switch to medicine. Either that or change

to [elite Thai university 1] (Danni, TS).

In the end, Danni followed the recommendation of one of her lecturers and applied to a

British university. Dani’s narrative implied that any possible alternative to an elite Thai

university would be either another elite Thai university or a western university. Another

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interesting part of Danni’s narrative of her university choices is that she did consider

going to medical school in Thailand as an alternative, and wanted to leave Bangkok for it

as she felt it would have been harder to study medicine in Bangkok. However, her parents

were against her studying ‘in the provinces’ because it was ‘too far’. I asked her how that

reconciled with their supporting her overseas education.

Yes, but they let me go overseas*laugh* that is their logic. Like… I can get more

from being overseas; I should go overseas instead. Like… What can I do in the

provinces? (Danni, TS).

‘I can get more from being overseas’ implies a hierarchy of culture as noted in

Winichakul’s (2000) study of the discourse of hierarchy of civilisation in Thai history

where ‘the provinces’ are considered inferior to Bangkok, which is then seen to be

inferior to the west. Her parents thought that if she was going to be far away, she might

as well go somewhere where she can get this nebulously defined ‘more’. It is this desire

to gain ‘something more’ that is driving TS participants to actively seek out overseas

education as a means to increase their cultural capital. This desire for increased cultural

capital through education needs to be seen in the context of the significantly increased

levels of university enrollment in Thailand. Within this context, TS participants’

calculation, their narrative of gaining ‘something more’, of gaining status and cultural

capital could be interpreted as a desire to maintain their distinction and the employment

advantages that that the cultural capital associated with international higher education

implies.

Take the case of Karen, a Thai-schooled participant for whom one factor that lead her to

study overseas was the perceived improvement in her employability

if it's a Thai organisation, they look at you and see that you've graduated from a

foreign university you'll be at the top of their list, this is how I feel. Even if it's an

international organisation, they don't just look at your overseas qualification but

look at your international experiences, are you international enough to work

within their society (Karen, TS)?

Karen, along with Sam’s previously mentioned quote - as with many other Thai-schooled

participants see their overseas education as a means to enhance their employability and

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make them stand out amongst other candidates. With more and more people entering

higher education all over the country – the elites and those who aspire to become elites

see overseas education as a means to distinguish themselves from those who have been

domestically educated, and in doing so allow them to continue to keep ahead and

maintain their elite status.

From the evidence of my sample, the main difference between OS/IS participants, and TS

participants were their relationship to the international circuit of education. A long-term

embedding within a particular educational circuit from an early age created a sense of

ease and normal expectation within that circuit. With OS/IS participants, this included

having been taught in English, with the same or a very similar curriculum to the one they

were expected to head towards. OS/IS participants’ schooling gave them familiarity with

the language of instruction, and the resources available to them at the school guided

them to an overseas higher education. These actions by the school helped to bring on a

seamless sense of ease with the circuit, a sense of flow from one institution to the next.

This sense of ease that OS/IS participants schools imparted is very similar to that

identified in Khan’s (2010) study of an elite US school, St Paul’s. This ease with different

cultural forms was discussed by Khan as a key factor in the new American elite, imparted

to students at St. Paul’s. That ‘ease’ was an ability to fit in, to feel comfortable in a given

situation. It was a thing that was taken for granted as natural but was, in fact, a product

of a systematic effort to create a new generation of elites whether it was the parent’s

decision to send their children overseas from a young age, or choosing to enrol them into

an International school. Both of these parental actions lead the students to develop the

cultural capital – in the form of comfort within the international education field,

knowledge of postsecondary institutions associated with their school’s circuits. In

addition to the aforementioned cultural capital, they also gain social capital – in the shape

of connection to teachers with experiences of western education, and assistance that was

put in place to assist the students in making the correct choices (e.g. college/university

counsellors, college/university fairs). In this light, we can see education as a system of

self-replicating and self-improving social and cultural capitals.

The difference between OS/IS and TS participants in my study also shows that these

groups are acting with two very different modes of cultural competence. This can be seen

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in the differences in the way TS participants and OS/IS participants considered the idea of

attending overseas universities. OS/IS participants’ choices have been made within the

narrative of a ‘natural progression'. Their social and cultural capitals have given them a

sense of ease within the international education field through the sheer amount of time

they have spent within it. Their social resources at school have allowed them to plan for

overseas education from a much earlier age. As a consequence, their narrative did not

paint a picture of a reflexive process, but rather that of a natural progression in their

circuit of education, something they were at ease with and which appeared to them as

simply common sense (as shown in the previous examples form OS/IS participants).

In Khan’s research (2010) into elite school children, in many cases, the shaping of the

child’s disposition through their education often hid the link between money and the

privileges that allowed them to ‘achieve’ the inevitable, as well as how much of their life

was steered by their parents’ choices of their education. As we have seen from my

sample, the parental influence on a participant’s education was not just about immediate

financial support – as important as that may be – or their impact on the participant’s

decision at a given point in time. Rather, the main parental influence lay in the

construction of the participant’s educational experiences. By investing in overseas or

international schooling, the participants’ parents placed the participants on a path that

meant they would come to see staying/going overseas for their bachelor’s degrees as the

reasonable, desirable, even inevitable, option. A similar, albeit more uncertain and

delayed, process can be seen in those Thai-educated members of the sample who

received their Bachelor’s degrees from the more prestigious universities in Bangkok.

These elite Thai universities created a sense of reasonable expectation for TS participants

that the ‘step up’ was to go overseas for their Master’s degree, and with the help of

education consultancies, they are able to make that shift between circuits. In the next

section, I focus on this shift between circuits discussing the impact that this had on the

participants’ perception of themselves in relations to their family. I will be arguing that TS

participants’ shift from a Thai field to a foreign field and the resultant disjuncture reveals

both a narrative of international education as a ‘break from normal’ and a deeply

ingrained sense of filial duty.

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5. Filial Duties, Freedom from Families, and the Habitus

In the previous section, I have argued that parental impact on the participants’ overseas

education strategies was a subtle matter involving influence and inculcation over an

extended period rather than a discussion at a single point in time. In addition to this,

participants’ perception of their place within the family structure, of their perceived

duties to their families and their parents that have been constructed by the Thai state’s

official narrative of familiality (as previously discussed). In addition to the impact that

family have on participants’ perception and attitudes towards international education,

participants’ relationship to their families – regardless of the level of their embeddedness

within the international circuit – still have a noticeable impact on their post-international

education choices, in addition to highlighting an experience that is unique (within the

sampled group) to TS participants. In the case of TS participants, their awareness of a

change from a Thai field to an international field is noticeable enough to impart a sense of

liminality; this is most often expressed in the narrative of being free from one’s parents’

gaze. However, unlike the transformative liminality discussed by Turner (1967), these

changes are seen by TS participants as a temporary break from reality after which the

participant would return to their previous position within the family. Every participant

had a sense that they would return home, that their time overseas is strictly a temporary

state of being. This desire to return home was narrated in relation to desire to be with

their family. While this firm commitment to the family was made obvious amongst TS

participant by the contrast between their sense of freedom while overseas and their

reasons for returning home. A closer examination of narratives by OS/IS participants

suggests that they also have a strong commitment to their families.

Additionally, for TS participants, their narrative of a strong commitment to their families

helped to highlight a significant change in their behaviour that was inconsistent to this

narrative. Whenever the participants were questioned about their obedience to their

parents’ wishes and what would happen if they did not obey them, they all said the same

thing: they had a strong sense of obligation to their parents and didn’t want to cause

them emotional hurt. This narrative helps to highlight the impact of the participant’s

sense of being ‘home’ and ‘away’ on the participants’ sense of affective obligation to their

parents. I will first discuss the participants’ sense of affective obligation while at home

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first before contrasting it with how it is perceived while the participants are away. Helen

described how she wanted to go clubbing with her friends in Bangkok but her parents did

not want her to go, – so to avoid upsetting her parents she did not go, a choice she

described making naturally and without any reflexivity.

I do not usually defy my parents. Like, I love them, and I do not want them to be

worried so if something that I might do might upset them then… I would not do it

(Helen, TS).

The telling part here is that when I asked her what was wrong with upsetting her parents,

she repeated the question and gave me an incredulous look, it was not until I classified

that question as “strange” that she answered

I do not want them to be upset because I love them! *Laugh* (Helen, TS).

The way Helen reacted to this question, clearly conveyed that she felt that that the

question was a ridiculous one. It was clear that obeying her parents’ wishes was

something that she had accepted as a norm to be followed and never thought about

critically. Peter had a similar story. I initially asked him what would happen if he did not

tell his parents if he was going out, he replied that he would be told off. However, after a

long-winded conversation about the nature of that telling off, he eventually told me that

his concern was never about the fear of a telling off. Instead, it was about his worry about

their feelings.

I did not want my parents to be worried. Like, I did not think that they'll have to

tell me off and scare me but... otherwise, they would be worried and can't sleep.

[…] If they do not feel good then I do not feel good. Yeah, mostly it is that I will not

feel good if I make them worried. (Peter, TS)

Here, both Helen and Peter, talk about their obligations to obey their parents in affective

terms. It is not that they obey out of fear of punishment, or because of some overt form

of control; rather, their narratives shows that their obedience to their parents is

something that deeply ingrained, and happened without reflexive thought. Bourdieu

(1998) talked about how the ‘creation’ the family – in the sense of naming the family,

defining what a family is and who belongs to it and the ‘acts of reaffirmation and

reinforcements’ of the family – narratives of things that families ‘normally’ do together,

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family dinners, the Thai tradition of reserving Sunday as ‘family day’, et cetera. These acts

of reinforcement represent a form of continuous creation and reaffirmation of ‘the

family’ which produced what Bourdieu terms the ‘obliged affections’ and ‘affective

obligations’ of family feeling (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 68). It is this affective obligation which

has been inculcated within the participants since they were small, through both their

education, as seen at the start of this chapter, and family life which takes on a particularly

strong form in the Thai context. This sense of affective obligation underpins the way the

participants narrate their relationship with their parents, how they feel they ‘have to’ do

this or that to please their parents. In the end, after discussing the matter further, it

became apparent that it was not that they literally ‘had to’ do something – but rather the

affective obligation that they feel towards their parents guided their action. Helen’s case

shows the taken for granted nature of that affective obligation. Through this obligation

then, participants were incentivised to act in such a way that would ‘make their parents

proud’ and disincentivised from acting in such a way that might ‘upset’ their parents.

However, the participants’ narrative changed notably once they were overseas. Things

that they did not think they could do while in Thailand for fear of upsetting their parents

could be easily done. Helen ended up going clubbing anyway while she was overseas. She

mentioned this as a casual, throw-away addendum to her discussion on how she was not

allowed to go clubbing in Thailand.

I just felt… Why? Why? Why? But… My dad told me that they were worried. They

are not wrong, they are just worried, and they cannot help it. So… I did not get to

go, but I guess that was okay… I did go a lot when I was in England though.

*Laugh* yeah, in the end, I got to go (Helen, TS).

I asked if this was simply because her parents did not know. Helen admitted that was a

part of it. However, her narrative suggests something more than Helen’s awareness of

parent’s ignorance of her actions.

I think that is quite strange; I talk to my other friend about this like… When I was

in Thailand I could not go to different provinces different cities but… When I am

overseas, I suddenly get this massive amount of freedom and… my parents did

not… Yeah, maybe it was because they do not know when people check up on me

(Helen, TS).

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While this could have been dismissed as simply the action of someone who knows their

parents are not watching and have decided to go ahead and do what they wanted

regardless. However, from other TS participants’ discussion on the same topic, there

seems to be a link between their change in their social field with their sense of freedom

of action in general. Sam, a Thai schooled participant, emphasised this feeling of out-of-

placedness when he compared the difference between being overseas and at home, and

how it contributed to his feeling of freedom.

Being overseas is like being with your friends, being by yourself. When you are at

home you are always with your family. It is not the same, the character of being at

home is one thing, and the character of being with your friends, being in school is

another, because my family prefers their children to be reab roi36 (Sam, TS).

The above example could mean that this applies to every time he was out of his parent’s

sights. However, Sam pointed out that there is something special about being overseas

that exacerbates this distinction, an awareness that they are living within a different

social field that played by a different rulebook.

I was excited. It was like… I can do whatever I want; there is no one to tell you

what to do. I feel that in Europe, people mind their own business. In Thailand … I

do not know why, but I always feel conscious of how other people are judging me

(Sam, TS).

Here, Sam talks about feeling judged while in Thailand, but not while in Europe. As such,

this freedom is not precisely freedom to do something. Rather, it is freedom from role

expectations, from others who play by the same rulebook as he did. This has been more

explicitly described by Jeff, a Thai schooled participant, when I asked him what he meant

by “England is not our home” when he talked about the difference between social

judgement at home and in the UK.

It was like... freedom, our freedom... we might be able to do things more openly

there than in Thailand. The thought of the foreigners, the English and the

36

Doing as one is expected to in one’s place, generally applying to those of lower rank who acquiesces to the demands of their betters.

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Europeans are freer than in our home. Whether in expression or doing things

that...if Thai people see and they might think "wait, you should not do that" things

like that... (Jeff, TS)

This particular sentiment was echoed by several other TS participants as well. Through

their upbringing in Thailand, within the Thai social field - the participant’s place is not only

known but confirmed and reinforced by the way the notion of the family has been

constructed. However, once outside it, the participant’s physical and social selves have

been removed from that field, and placed into a new socio-spatial field where the

participants – especially the TS participants, are keenly aware that they are not from. This

can be seen clearly in the previous extract from Jeff’s interview. Referring back to the idea

of circuits of education – the very fact that these sentiments are only expressed by TS

participants and not OS or IS participants shows how OS and IS participants have

inhabited an international circuit of education from childhood. This means that OS and IS

participants are more used to the idea of crossing different fields and find this impact

unremarkable enough that they either didn’t notice it or didn’t think it was significant

enough to be worth mentioning during their interview. These narratives by Jeff, Sam, and

Helen shows that while overseas education is often pursued in part, as a response to

parental expectations and a desire to make them proud (as discussed earlier in this

chapter). TS participants also narrated a personal benefit in this perceived freedom from

judgement and surveillance.

In order to explain this relationship between a TS participant’s habitus/field and this

sense of freedom that was brought on by habitus/field disjuncture, the state where one’s

habitus encounters an unfamiliar field (Reay, 2004), I borrow a concept from

anthropology – that of liminality and liminal spaces. Mostly known through Victor

Turner’s work with the Ndembu (1967). Turner used the concept to describe the limited

time/space during a rite of passage, wherein one is on a threshold (limen) and is in a state

of flux, not being what one was before the rite, but not yet what one will become after

the rite (ibid). This creates a state where one is temporarily a “transitional being” a state

where one is free from society’s rules and expectations, as the rules which governed what

one was, no longer applied but the rule for what one is about to become does not yet

apply (Turner, 1967).

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Within the context of this thesis, the participants’ time studying overseas could be seen

as a form of liminality. However, unlike the rituals which Turner studied, TS participants’

sense of liminality is not derived solely from an internal transition. Rather, it stems from a

reaction to external change. When the participants move to a new socio-spatial field,

particularly one that is visibly different from ‘home’37, they experience a disjuncture

between the field that they are in and their habitus. As was argued by Reay (2004), this

disjuncture creates within the participants a confrontation between their habitus – their

deeply engrained dispositions and tendencies (Bourdieu, 1977) and the new, unfamiliar

field that they found themselves. As a result, their habitus operates at a conscious,

reflexive level, no longer sure if their long-held assumptions would be valid in the

unfamiliar field (ibid). I argue that this sense of uncertainty brought on by the disjuncture

culminates in the participants’ awareness of being dislocated from their home field and

entering a liminal state. However, unlike conventional liminality as described by Turner in

relations to rites of passage (Turner, 1967), the change to the participants’ habitus is not

a permanent one. This can be seen in the participant’s discussion of their longing for the

freedom of their time overseas, and the lack of change to their disposition to their

families. Peter, a Thai schooled participant missed the freedom to do whatever he wished

without ‘having to’ inform his parents and had thought that he might take a trip back to

Australia to relive this freedom.

I felt that.... maybe I should go back to take a trip. Because my life there was very

free, but it had a lot of expenses, and when I came back... I felt like wanting to go

back sometimes (Peter, TS).

When asked why he could not have that freedom in Thailand, he explained that it would

not be the same as he would have to inform his parents.

um... not that free. like, over there if I... I do not come home [after a night out], I

can stay over at a friend's place. […] [At home] I would definitely get a call, and get

told off for coming home too late that sort of thing. I could still [stay out till

morning], but I would have to tell them first - but over there I did not have to tell

anyone (Peter, TS).

37

I refer here to the differences that the participants would be able to perceive with their empirical senses – the language sounds different, the people, buildings, streets, et cetera looks different and the weather feels different, the sun rises and sets at the ‘wrong’ times (in the case of the UK at least) for example.

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Jeff, a Thai schooled participant, said that he felt freer during his time in the UK than he

did in Thailand. When I asked him to expand on that, he replied along a similar vein to

Peter in that his freedom is derived from his sense of being ‘alone’ and not a part of a

larger familial structure.

Like... going out... going places or doing things... the decision, I can do it right away

like going out at 7 or 8 pm or going out at 10 or 11 pm and coming home at 3 am

things like that er... I did not have to worry that someone is waiting at home

*laugh* and living alone, living with friends in a flat ok, coming home late, waking

up late and not getting told off things like that, I did not have to tell anyone, tell

my family (Jeff, TS).

Emmy, a Thai schooled participant said that she was sad to come home because she

would lose her freedom and things will ‘have to’ go back to the way things were upon her

return.

I was sad to lose my freedom because I know that everything will have to go back

to the way it was when I come back to Thailand (Emmy, TS).

These quotes clarified the impact their disjuncture had on their habitus. Their sense of

freedom arose not from a forced reconsideration of the legitimacy of their filial duties,

but from a sense of being ‘alone’. By ‘alone’ the participants gave a sense of their

awareness that, though they are a part of a larger family structure, by travelling overseas

they have been temporarily separated from that structure, and while they are separated

they are free from their obligation to that structure. This poses a problem for the

application of liminality to the experiences of TS participants, as these quotes

immediately above shows – there was not a permanent transition or change to the

participants’ habitus. Their sense of freedom was a temporary experience. Because of

this, I would argue that the participants’ experiences are not liminal, but liminoid – an

experience that, while has some of the qualities of liminality is not entirely liminal

(Turner, 1974). Thomassen describes the liminoid as ‘a break from normality’

(Thomassen, 2012, p. 28) which lacks the transitive quality of ‘true’ liminality (ibid). This is

supported by how some TS participants described their overseas study as a “break” from

their lives in Thailand. Within this narrative of a ‘break’ temporariness is implied, these

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participants are to go overseas, gain a degree, and then return home to make use of that

degree.

Anton and Casey both specifically discussed the idea of studying overseas as a ‘break’

something that they are pausing their lives to do, before returning home to resume that

life.

Before [going to study abroad] I have worked for a very long time, and I wanted to

stop working for a while, and live my life and see the world (Anton, TS).

I started feeling bored with my work and thought how should I take a break for

the current Job that I'm doing right now, so I thought going to study in Muang

Nork is the most reasonable break *laugh* (Casey, TS).

Both Anton and Casey worked for a period of time before deciding to enrol in a master’s

degree programme overseas, which may explain their more explicit view of their study as

a break. However, this sense of overseas study as a finite and temporary state of being

rather than a permanent transition is strongly implied in Peter’s, Jeff’s and Emmy’s

quotes through their narrative of returning home to ‘normalcy’ after a period of freedom

overseas. The idea of overseas study as a liminoid experience explains why, despite their

new-found sense of freedom from their family, TS participants, like participants of other

categories narrated their desire to return home in terms of their desire to come back to

their family. Within the framework of the liminoid experience, TS participants’ filial duties

and their affective obligations to their families are still part and parcel of their deeply

ingrained habitus, but suspended for the duration of this break. Indeed, their perceived

obligation to end their break and return home to resume their filial duties is a major part

of why every participant chose to return home or saw their return home as an

inevitability. Helen, a Thai schooled participant, considered the possibility of staying in the

UK in terms of the benefits of working for a British company. However, she reconsidered

the idea in terms of her relationship with her family after a bout of illness.

There was a period where the weather was really cold and I got very sick. During

that time the idea suddenly got into my head about how my parents are getting

old, and if anything should happen to them now, I will feel sorry for not having

spent more time with them. So that was why I changed my mind, that was when

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decided that I should be spending time with my parents. So… I decided to go back

to Thailand. (Helen, TS)

Despite the calculative frame with which she first approached the question of remaining

in the UK, once the question was reframed in terms of being with or away from her

parents, the question changed from a calculative one to an emotional one. Eric, a Thai

schooled participant, presented his choice to return to Thailand as his own practical

choice. This was in response to my question asking him if he came back to Thailand

because his parents wanted him to (as he earlier stated).

In reality, my parents did not set an exact timetable for when I have to come back,

like… They gave me the opportunity to try and work in America. However, I

choose to come back […]. I think that while my parents played a big role in my

coming back [to Thailand] at this juncture, it is mostly me that wanted to come

back (Eric, TS).

Eric’s decision, although presented as his own choice is significant for what he did not say.

He quietly accepted his parents’ desire for him to return to Thailand, framing his decision

as one of when to return rather than whether or not to come back at all. These examples

showed that for TS participants, the liminoid changes that brought about their sense of

freedom while overseas arose as a temporary state of being without altering what they

perceive as their ‘normalcy’. Their affective bonds to their families and their sense of filial

duty were not affected by that liminoid experience. For OS and IS participants, regardless

of their lack of a liminoid experience, they, along with their TS counterparts all framed

their replies to questions regarding their return to Thailand within the context of their

family. Steven, an overseas schooled participant ‘knew’ that he ‘had to’ come back home.

He explained the reason why he ‘had to’ come back home in terms of the importance of

the affective bonds between him and his family.

My family is here [in Thailand], and also, Canada is literally the other end of the

world. I want to spend time with my family. There is only so much time you have

with them before they pass on. [pause] You know, as dark as that sounds that is

the reality. Any human being who spends good time with their family does not

look back and want to take it all away (Steven, OS).

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Steven painted a narrative of a biological inevitability: that it is ‘natural’ for humans to

want to be with their family. This indicates that his decision was something that was

made on the assumption of the ‘naturalness’ of going home. The inevitable nature of

Steven’s narrative indicates that this was likely a decision informed by a deeply ingrained

‘truth’ about family and how one ought to act towards one’s family. Gemma, an

international schooled participant, felt that she did not fit in in the UK because of what

she perceived to be the local’s attitude towards family, which made her feel

uncomfortable.

A lot of the UK people I met they would be dissing their parents they would

probably say that when their parents get older, they'd probably put them in a

home […]. It is just the way they speak about family and parents, I did not like it

(Gemma, IS).

For Gemma, her evaluative stance regarding the family reflects the kind of a strongly

ingrained belief in a set of filial duties that was seen amongst many other participants, a

duty of obedience, respect, and loyalty to one’s parents and family. Even though she had

been in an international education field since a young age – in her narrative, she singles

out her discomfiture with what she perceives to be British family values as a reason that

she does not fit in. This shows how strongly her relationships to Thai field was framed by

the discourse of the family as an institution deeply embedded within the Thai field. The

importance of the family to the Thai field will be further explored in chapter 6, alongside

a discussion of the logic behind Thai discourses on where and when cultural capitals from

the west can/cannot apply.

Within my sample, TS participant’s articulation of freedom from their family helped to

highlight the liminoid nature of their experience through the notable difference between

their description of their sense of ‘freedom’ while overseas, and their narrative of filial

duties and their strong affective bonds to their family. Their sense of freedom should be

regarded as liminoid, not liminal as there was no transitive change to their habitus

(Turner, 1974), as shown in their quiet acceptance of their filial duties upon their return

to Thailand. From their narratives, TS participants revealed that their experience of

freedom while overseas stems from their perception of being ‘alone’, being physically

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separated from their family structure. This aloneness engendered a liminoid sense of

freedom – which ended once they return to the Thai field, and to their family. As such, TS

participants acting against what they know to be their parents’ wishes should not be

interpreted as a rejection of those wishes or a repudiation of their affective bonds.

Rather, their actions need to be seen within the context of their liminoid experience, their

break from the reality of ‘normal’ life in Thailand. This strong commitment to their family

was commonly raised as the main reason behind the participants’ return to Thailand. This

was often articulated in terms of an affective longing for their parents and close relatives.

Indeed, this affective longing was powerfull enough in some cases that returning home

was not seen as a choice at all.

6. Conclusion

This chapter has attempted to establish an entry point into the participants’ narratives

through an analysis of the participant’s most-often mentioned topic, family, with the aim

of unpacking the link between family influence and the sample’s western education. This

chapter also built on Pimpa’s (2009) finding highlight the importance of family in an

international student’s education choces. I began pointing out the link between the

participant’s schooling and their attitude towards western education – pointing out that

the different ways that my participants narrate their western education experiences

could be split into two groups with common threads being their prior schooling. Accounts

varied significantly depending on whether participants went to an International school

(IS) in Thailand or were schooled overseas (OS), compared to attending a Thai school in

Thailand (TS).

I have shown that OS and IS participants have very similar attitudes towards their western

education choices – in that they never really perceived studying abroad as a choice. For

these two groups, studying abroad seemed to be a natural progression, with a taken-for-

granted expectation that they would go to university in the same system that their school

was in. So, for those who went to British schools or British curriculum schools in Thailand

it seemed a natural and expected progression to choose a British university. Similarly, for

those who went to American schools or American curriculum schools in Thailand the USA

was the natural choice for university too. Given their prior international experiences of

schooling, these groups felt that that it just did not make sense for them to go to

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university in Thailand, with some considering such a choice a waste of their previous

schooling. The greater value of western education was already established for this group

through their previous schooling, a value which would be lost if they returned to Thailand

for university. However, the value of western education was also part of more general

discourses of cultural hierarchies and educational rankings (which will be discussed

further in the next chapter); This can be seen in the accounts of Thai-schooled

participants and their parents, who had a much more distant relation to western

education but still accorded it a high value. For TS participants, the idea of going to

university overseas was very much a calculative, strategized one – with consideration of

the costs and benefits of going overseas playing a main part in their narrative of why they

went. However, again, the higher value placed on western education was key. The

reasoning for this group in the sample mostly rested on the idea that if they went to

university overseas, they would be going somewhere better than Thailand and thus

reaping greater rewards. This clearly shows a perception of educational institutions as

existing in an international hierarchy, with western universities having a higher position

than Thai universities.

Given that the participants’ experiences were clearly divided by their schooling

experiences, I adopted the concept of circuits of education (Ball et al., 1995) to explain

the phenomenon and to explore the implications of this key difference further. In this

discussion, I argued that given that OS/IS participants had already participated in the

international circuit of education for a significant part of their educational careers, they

only had to go with the flow of that circuit which naturally lead them to western

universities. As TS participants had spent most of their time in the Thai circuit of

education, however, they needed to decide to change circuits in a much more active

manner. As such, the narratives of their decision to study was far more calculative and

considered than those of IS/OS participants. This difference in approaches towards

overseas education between OS/IS and TS participants demonstrated that for OS/IS

participants, parental influence that was in place long before the moment of decision. By

placing their children into a school overseas or an international school, parents placed

their children into an international circuit of education, which provided their children with

the social and cultural capital needed to make a seamless transition into overseas post-

secondary education. For TS participants, there have been some evidence of more overt

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encouragement at the point of decision. Nevertheless, by funding their children’s

education at elite Thai universities38 the participants’ parents have begun a narrative in

which the only reasonable way ‘up’ from the participants’ elite Thai bachelor’s degree is

to move into the international circuit of education and obtain an overseas master’s

degree.

However, because of their lack of experience within the international circuit of education,

TS participants notice the transition from the Thai field to the field of their destination

country much more keenly. This results in their experiencing a disjuncture between their

habitus and the field in which they have found themselves. This was made apparent in

participants’ discussion of their relationship with their family. Although participants of

every schooling background narrated a strong connection to their family through their

sense of filial duty and affective obligations, TS participants experience freedom from

their filial duties and obligation while overseas, reflected in their narrative of freedom to

do things they would not dare to do in Thailand. This was not a simple ‘out of sight and

out of mind’ situation, as participants described the state of freedom of being overseas as

being distinct from being away from their parents in Thailand. This impact of their

disjuncture was initially discussed as a form of liminality. However, as the discussion

proceeded, it was clear that the participants were not experiencing conventional

liminality, in that they did not experience a permanent change to their habitus at the

conclusion of their liminality. This was demonstrated in the participants’ seeing their time

overseas as a temporary one, that they returned home in part, out of a sense of filial duty

and a desire to reconnect with their families. As such, their ‘liminal’ experience would be

more accurately described as liminoid. Unlike a liminal experience which is transformative

(Turner, 1967), a liminoid experience is not. It is instead a temporary break from

normalcy, a period where role expectations that are ‘normal’ temporarily do not apply,

and does not engender a transformation of the participants’ habitus (Thomassen, 2012;

Turner, 1974).

Although TS participants’ liminoid experience was highlighted by the difference between

their commitment to their family and their sense of freedom while overseas, OS and IS

participants also possesses this deep-seated sense of filial duty and belonging to their

38

While student loans exist in Thailand, it is largely seen as an option for poorer families. It is virtually unheard-of for an upper middle class or an upper class student to have to resort to a student loan.

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family. This was shown through the importance of family to participants’ desire to return

home, which was a commonality amongst participants of every schooling background. My

sample has shown that a parental influence in a participants’ overseas studies started

early in the participants’ life courses. This was indicated by both the construction of ‘the

family’ as a social structure that governs their senses of affective obligations and filial

duty, and participants’ own later life overseas study choices through the circuit of

education in which they were placed.

By following a chain of thought regarding family influence and expectations on Thai’s

student's decisions to study abroad, several other questions have been raised.

Specifically, questions about the nature of that ‘situated learning experience’ as a form of

cultural capital – as in the hierarchisation of the quality of their situated experience, or

where in the west was that learning experience situated, and their actions during that

experience. In the next chapter, I continue to explore these questions, by focusing on how

my sample perceived hierarchies in higher education, and examining what that meant for

their understanding of the value of western education as a form of cultural (and perhaps

also social) capital.

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Chapter 5: Experiences of the Western Other as Cultural Capital.

1. Introduction

This chapter makes a closer examination of the participants’ beliefs that studying abroad

will improve their life chances and cultural knowledge through their exposure to Western

modernity and Western culture. In doing so it also examines how such beliefs can be

better understood once we view international education as a form of cultural capital. In

the previous chapter, I discussed the important way in which the participants’ families

influenced their choices to study overseas, an influence which was in fact, not at the point

of decision, but rather occurred much earlier in their life when they were entered into

their respective schools. This early childhood education along with parental inculcation

from a young age led to what Bourdieu described as ‘total, early, imperceptible learning,

performed within the family from the early days of life and extended by a scholastic

learning which presupposes and completes it’ (Bourdieu, 1984; p.66). Such ‘early and

imperceptible’ learning impacted the participants’ habitus, engendering particular

dispositions towards international education, as well distinctive strategies to it. The

impact of this differing early childhood inculcation lead to my categorising of the sample

by schooling backgrounds. As already discussed, the categories are overseas-schooled

(OS), international-schooled (IS) (that is schooled in a Western-curriculum school in

Thailand), and Thai-schooled (TS). In Chapter 4, my research showed that, by sending

their children to a school overseas or to an international school, some parents had placed

their children in a circuit of education that lead them to develop greater ease with the

Western ‘other’ at an earlier age. This education, as I shall argue throughout this thesis,

also eventually lead them to be more at ease with their host universities and culture

during their period of HE study abroad. On the other hand, participants who were

educated in Thai schools had less familiarity with the west and western education

systems and so, in both their decision to study abroad and their subsequent studies,

needed to overcome their initial unease and the shocks of habitus/field incongruity.

Regardless of these differences, however, participants from all three schooling categories

articulated a vision of education where overseas education, and in particular, western

education, was valued very highly and seen as a form of cultural capital, not just as

education but as education overseas. In this chapter, I will look at this particular

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viewpoint and examine the participants’ narratives in order to explore how they might

explained by theories of cosmopolitanism and international cultural capital. To begin, I

discuss the participants’ narrative of their desires to experience and explore the wider

world as one of the key benefits of an overseas education, and consider how well this

understanding of international education fits with theories of education as a source of

cultural capital. Even though none of the sample explicitly mentioned the term

‘cosmopolitan’, their desire to experience the foreign other as a means of ‘broadening’

their cultural outlook was a key driving force for my sample to obtain an international

education, and strongly connects to some of the key elements identified in a

‘cosmopolitan’ outlook. As such, in this chapter, I discuss whether the samples’ narratives

fit within the framework of cosmopolitanism, or if they can be better explained as a form

of international cultural capital.

For this analysis, I approach cosmopolitanism as a mode of thought and action that

presupposes a worldview that defines the local as a part of an interconnected,

interdependent network that forms the global, giving the individual sense of belonging

that is global. This was the general principle of cosmopolitanism that the literature

surveyed in Chapter 2 outlined. I discuss the participants’ narrative of experiencing the

foreign other within the context of how each of these surveyed literatures

operationalised the concept of cosmopolitanism. Firstly I consider Beck’s (2011, 2016)

conception of cosmopolitanisation, which is an externally driven form of

cosmopolitanism. Beck’s concept relies upon what he refers to as a ‘cosmopolitan

imperative’ - an imperative that was created by socio-technical changes (e.g.

improvements in communication and long-range transportation technologies) and global

risks (e.g. climate change) which cause individuals to perceive a need for a more global

mode of thought (Beck, 2011, 2006). In many cases, for my sample, one of the main values

of studying in the west was that familiarity with the English language, and with western

culture more generally, were seen as skills that would be valued by prestigious employers

operating in the global marketplace. Here, perhaps, we can see one aspect of Beck’s

‘global imperative’ - the need to take increased global links into account - in action.

However, my participants were never in any doubt that they would return to Thailand

after their studies, so the ‘global employability’ value of their western education was

really framed in terms of their local competitiveness in terms of finding a job with firms in

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Thailand. So in addition, I will also examine the data within the context of Savage et al.’s

(2005) rather different and more limited conception of cosmopolitanism, as global

reflexivity rather than as a global mode of thought. Savage et al conceive global reflexivity

as the ability of people to evaluate their ‘lives, thoughts and values from a perspective

that did not take [local] referents as the implicit frame for judgment, but which was able

to place them in some kind of a broader global comparative frame.’ (ibid, 2006, p. 191).

Specifically, I use Savage’s distinction between ‘shallower’ and ‘deeper’ forms of global

reflexivity (ibid) to assess the sample’s narratives and argue that while the participants’s

narratives of openess and exploration points towards a cosmopolitan viewpoint on the

surface, deeper analysis of the participants’ narratives indicates that their frame of

reference is still very much a Thai one. Savage refers to shallower forms of global

reflexivity as a general awareness of otherness, so the ability to engage with the foreign

other but still using one’s ‘home’ as a referent (ibid, p. 191). Deeper forms of global

reflexivity, on the other hand, are the ability to fully engage the foreign other within a

global comparative frame (ibid, p. 191). I use Savage’s graduated scheme of global

reflexivity to examine the participants’ general discourses on their relationship with the

global. Savage’s scheme of global reflexivity will also be examined in order to

demonstrate that the participants’ engagement with foreign others is still deeply

embedded within the Thai frame of reference, in which their interpretation of the foreign

other and their actions towards particular foreign others are still made within a Thai

frame of reference.

Given the above arguments, alongside theories of cosmopolitanism, I will also examine

the participants’ desire to experience the foreign other through overseas education in

terms of accounts of the international mode of cultural capital. As Üstüner and Holt

(2010) have noted in their study of status consumption in less industrialised countries

(LICs), we need to consider how international cultural exchanges modify conventional

understandings of processes of cultural capital and distinction in national fields. They

argue that the valorisation and consumption of Western cultural capital by people outside

of the West, means that we need a different model of cultural capital, as such processes

result in a deterritorialised form of cultural capital. This arises through what they refer to

as ‘Western lifestyle myths’ or stylised images of the West created through national

discourses (ibid, p. 39). Deterritorialised cultural capital is valuable both because of its

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perceived rarity, and the perceived higher value of a Western lifestyle. Within the

umbrella of international cultural capital I will also examine Pöllmann’s (2013, 2009)

concept of intercultural capital – as the ‘personal reservoir of intercultural experiences

and skills (e.g. experience of living abroad, intercultural friendships, and language skills)

that enable the respective individual to competently engage in intercultural encounters’

(2009,p.540). I discuss its usage as a possible link between the concept of international

cultural capitals and cosmopolitanism. I consider how we can apply the concepts outlined

above to analyse my sample’s narratives of their engagement with foreign others, in

order to determine which of them explains the data best, and to discuss the questions

that arise from their application.

I shall argue that while the participant’s narratives of longing for experiences of foreign

others seems cosmopolitan on the surface, a deeper analysis shows that their perspective

of foreign others is still rooted in a frame of reference that reproduces the existing Thai

discourses regarding the west. I will further argue that with this being the case, the value

of international education to the participants clearly lies in how the west is perceived in

Thailand. As such, international education is best seen as a form of deterritorialised

cultural capital, with its value stemming from the Thai frame of reference towards the

west. I will demonstrate this by showing how existing Thai discourses about the west are

reproduced in the participants’ narratives describing their experiences of the west, and

what they had expected to experience prior to arriving at their destination countries. I

shall also further Üstüner and Holt’s (2010)’s concept of deterritorialised cultural capital

by demonstrating that not only there are differences in the ways low cultural capital and

high cultural capital individuals relate to deterritorialised cultural capital, but that very

high cultural capital individuals also have a different relationship to deterritorialised

cultural capital. I will demonstrate this through discussing the difference between the

narratives of OS/IS participants and TS participants, establishing that OS/IS participants

who began their international education with advantages over TS participants

experiences international education with far more ease than TS participants, Further,

OS/IS participants do not demonstrating the unease and discomfiture that TS participants

and Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) high cultural capital participants show.

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To begin, I first establish the nature of my sample’s discourse on experiencing the foreign

other as part of their international education. Specifically, I look at the participants’

articulation of the ability to experience and explore a foreign other as a key positive

element that they identify in international education.

2. Escaping the K’la: Longing for Experiences of the Western Other

One theme that was frequently discussed among my sample as one of the main

advantages of study overseas was that it enabled them to fulfil their desire to ‘see the

world’ or ‘experience new things’. Casey, a TS participant, referred to an old Thai proverb

‘A frog under a k’la [coconut shell]’ when discussing this. To be a frog under a k’la means

to be ignorant of the wider world – this suggests that your world view is limited by the

coconut shell that you cannot see past, and that you are not aware that there is a wider

world out there. Casey referred to this as an undesirable state of being that one should

always attempt to escape. In Chapter 4, I have already argued that this sense of escape

was partly about the (temporary) freedoms from the strictures of parents and Thai

society that overseas study could bring. But it was also part of a sense of broadening

one’s horizons with the new and unfamiliar experiences of other societies. This narrative

of a desire to leave, to be ‘out there’ is one that was brought up by participants from

every educational background. Ryan – an IS participant, spoke about not going to

university overseas in terms of being trapped.

Basically I think that it was going to be a good opportunity for me just not to be

trapped in the same country, to be able to explore... not just education wise but

being able to see the world and being able to meet other people and seeing how

other places around the world are like (Ryan, IS)

When pressed on his use of the word ‘trapped’, Ryan clarified that he did not mean

physically trapped, but mentally trapped; stuck with people from the same background

growing up with the same ideas. He discussed this in terms of multiculturalism as an

antithesis to the homogeneity of sedentariness.

[People of] different backgrounds, different cultures providing me with different

perspectives beyond just the way like… If you are, they were just from one country

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you may just know the same culture but… If I was to go abroad or somewhere that

is really multicultural; you get a different sense of that (Ryan, IS).

Ryan’s narrative is an indication that one aspect of the value of Western education as

cultural capital was that it was seen to give the student a chance to experience things that

are new and foreign. The participants’ desire to experience and explore a foreign other

can be seen as a part of the wish to expand their worldview to better themselves, not just

educationally but also culturally, hence the perception that it is better to be ‘out there’,

rather than ‘stuck’ in Thailand. Participants’ valuing of the ability to experience new

things also came through when TS participants talked of the pros and cons of possible

destinations, as a factor that influenced their choices. Anna, for example. said that she

wanted to be in the US because of the scale of what was on offer.

Yeah I wanted to go to America more, it seems that it has... the country is vast, I

do not know where I would end up, it seems exciting (Anna, TS)

This desire to go somewhere that would maximise the ability to see and explore new

things was quite common among participants who either went to America or considered

America. Lisa, a Thai-schooled participant who ultimately went to study in England, also

said that America would give her more opportunity to explore and experience new things.

The country is bigger. So like, there should be more things for me to explore. Like

because of the geography or whatever it seems diverse and like, there seems to

be more there than just study like, more opportunity to travel and see this and

that (Lisa, TS).

Lisa was initially attracted to America because it is a bigger country than the UK, and as

such provides her with more opportunity to travel and explore without the inconvenience

of obtaining new visas – as she would have to do to visit mainland Europe from the UK.

However, in the end she decided that the shorter length of a British master’s degree (and

the living cost savings that this implies) made Britain more attractive. The attractiveness

of experiencing a foreign other, and the value of cultural difference, was also reiterated

by Casey when she discussed the impact that having studied overseas had on her life,

attributing many positive changes in her life from studying overseas.

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‘Before I went I had no expectations it is like... going to rest, to study, I was

thinking like a kid. But when I came back it changed my life, my perspectives, my

world views, how I see other people, how I live my life.’ (Casey, TS)

I asked Casey how this changed her life, she discussed it in terms of having more capital

(Casey has a humanities PhD, which would explain why she was talking in such terms) that

stemmed from her international education.

I felt like I came back with more capital [note: the world capital & fund is the same

in thai] and I felt excited as to what I can do with this capital, I’m not talking about

educational funding but I was talking about life capital, intellectual capital, things

like that (Casey, TS).

My samples’ discussion valorised experiences of the foreign other, particularly Casey’s

explicit discussion of cultural capital could be seen as fitting in with the general

framework of Beck’s cosmopolitanisation, or at least the result of cosmopolitanisaiton.

Beck’s cosmopolitanisation is the idea that there are processes of change within societies

that – driven by global forces – have caused peoples and societies to recognise that ‘[T]he

universal and the particular, the similar and the dissimilar, the global and the local are to

be conceived, not as cultural polarities, but as interconnected and reciprocally

interpenetrating principles’ (Beck, 2006, pp. 72–73). Within Beck's framework, my

sample’s narratives of a desire to experience and explore a foreign other as the driving

force behind their decision to go overseas for a university degree could be seen as a

change brought on by the cosmopolitanisation of at least the more elite segments of Thai

society. Specifically, it could be argued that, for my sample, the value of study abroad is

the product of an increasing awareness of global connectivity that has led to the idea of

familiarity with the foreign other being a valued social capital, with an international

education being seen as a means to achieve this.

However, participants’ discourse indicates that in some ways, they were conceiving

‘home’ and ‘abroad’ as ‘cultural polarities’ (Beck, 2006, p. 73) rather than situating their

own identities within an ‘explicit global frame’ (Savage et al., 2005, p. 197), something

Savage et al consider as a key component of an ‘authentic’ cosmopolitan. Participants

generally framed their discussions around comparisons of the West and Western

practices to Thailand and Thai practices. In the case of Steven, an OS participant, his

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choice of a Canadian university was framed as a sort of rebellion against what he sees as

the standard Thai practice of going to the Australia, the UK or the US.

I did not want to go where the other kids are going. I wanted my own experience,

you know - how all these people are like [mocking voice] ‘oh I am going to go...

Boston, I'm going to Manchester’... [/mocking voice] […] nothing wrong with that!

*laugh* but it seems an appropriate thing for Thai kids to do like, I am going to go

to Monash, I am going to Melbourne U. I want my own thing. […] I want to have

my own experiences, develop my own personality (Steven, OS)

Or, take the case of Anna, a TS participant who discussed her classroom experiences by

comparing it to a Thai university.

I feel that the professors there... don't see themselves as teachers who have a

higher status than their students but they see themselves as like... someone who

needs to give knowledge to another person. They would.... they see it as they are

educators like they have to educate these people but not see that everyone has to

respect them, they are not like Thai people (Anna, TS).

The case of Gemma – an IS participant – is slightly different, but still shows the same Thai

frame of reference in her thinking. When asked why she chose to study in a smaller

southern English city rather than London, she framed her reply around a comparison to

her perception of Bangkok.

London is nice... if you are if you are in a nice area. But if you are not in a nice area

it can be quite scary. Um... that was also one of the things I experienced living in

the UK as well, in Thailand where ever I walk, I feel safe. I never... someone ask me

the other day where in Thailand would you not feel safe in? I could not say, I was

comfortable with everywhere I walk (Gemma, IS).

These cases indicate that regardless of the participants’ schooling background,

participants still used Thailand/Thai practices as their main referent in their discussion of

their destination countries. According to Savage, this type of comparison (comparing a

specific other with that of home) is indicative of a form of reflexivity that is not quite fully

cosmopolitan.

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It needs to be emphasised that this kind of global reflexivity does not involve any

deep awareness of oneself as globally positioned, but a much more limited sense

that [their home’s] specificity could be understood by reference to other parts of

the world. It was thus quite consistent for this kind of global reflexivity to be

anchored back to a form of local or nationalist identification (Savage et al., 2005,

p. 194)

By using Savage’s framework of global reflexivity as a measure of cosmopolitanism, it can

be seen that while the participants’ narratives indicate an engagement with the global,

their local frame of reference (as indicated by their frequent use of Thailand and Thai

practices as the key comparison) suggests a mode of thought that is not entirely

cosmopolitan in nature. By ‘not entirely cosmopolitan’ I mean that their referent remains

a local, rather than a global one. Rather than framing their encounters within a broader,

more global perspective, the participants domesticated their encounters with the foreign

other and couched it within references of home, and of returning home. Another

interesting aspect of my finding in relation to Savage’s (2005) research is the similarity in

findings. Despite my and Savage’s research being conducted in significantly different

locations (this thesis’s participants being from the global south and Savage’s from the

global north) I have found a similar sense of the not-quite-cosmopolitan from my

participants as Savage did in most of his participants. This focus on ‘home’ as referent

point points to its important to the discussion of how participants engage with foreign

others. The participants’ encounter with a global other was still being mediated by a

context that was built at ‘home’ and it was clear that they saw the real value of their

Western education in terms of how this value would be realised when they were back in

Thailand. As such their interpretation of the other is also mediated by that context. As

such, in the next section, I will be discussing this point with regards to my participants.

3. International Education as a Deterritorialised Cultural Capital

In attempting to frame the participants’ valorisation of international education as a result

of cosmopolitanisation, I have argued that rather than being a phenomenon that resulted

from a global, interconnected frame of thought, the participants’ narratives were firmly

embedded in a Thai interpretative frame of reference. This is especially highlighted in the

TS participants’ usage of the concept of charoen. Charoen, originally, was a spiritual

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concept of ‘cultivating merit and Buddhist awakening, making (someone) happier,

growing up, increasing maturity’ (Winichakul, 2000 p.531). However, during the 19th

century the meaning changed into one of material progress, a ‘sense of transformation

into the new age, or modernity, as opposed to the traditional, the ancient, or the bygone

era’ (ibid. p.531). According to Winichakul, charoen is a movement away from a certain

set of competencies that were deemed obsolescent, a relic of a bygone era, to a new set

of competencies that are modern, civilised. This use of charoen to mean modern,

civilised, can be seen here in the way Anika, a TS participant, used the term to describe

what she expected to find in England before she started her degree.

Like, very charoen not very many drunks and drug addicts, *laugh* and...

everyone speaks clear and beautiful English, all very well-mannered. The land is

charoen, nice and clean in every nook and cranny - not like Thailand (Anika, TS).

In the above quote, Anika’s expectation of what she would find is coloured by a

specifically Thai interpretation of Western modernity, that Britain would be Charoen. This

assumption was echoed by several other participants. Sam, a TS participant, talked about

his reactions when he first arrived in London and saw that London was not quite the clean

and orderly place he thought it was.

The first thing I saw was that London was very dirty. At first, in my mind, I thought

that Europe must be very clean. Very beautiful. Very orderly but when I first

arrived… It was not that way at all. *Laugh* it is just like Thailand (Sam, TS).

Or take Anton’s case, where he brought up London’s tube system when I asked him about

his impressions when he first arrived. I asked if he was surprised by how extensive the

system was, he replied:

I was not surprised because I was going to a charoen country, they would have

things are more convenient and more orderly when compared to our home… And

I feel… It was really convenient when compared to what I used in our home

(Anton, TS).

Anika, Sam, and Anton all framed their expectations of their host countries in terms of

their charoeness. Specifically, they expected England to be more clean, more orderly,

more charoen than Thailand, because they assumed that somehow the West possesses

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more of the aforementioned set of modern, civilised competencies that constitutes

charoeness than Thailand. This further indicates how participants domesticated their

encounters with the Western other, first by couching their experiences within the

specifically Thai discourse of charoen and in their comparison of their destination

countries to Thailand. Again, the participants’ interaction with the foreign other fits more

with Savage’s description of a ‘shallow’ form of global reflexivity, in that their frame of

reference is still very clearly a Thai one (Savage et al., 2005).

The participants’ largely domestic frame of reference suggests that while the cultural

capital of international education is indeed a global one, it is being ‘consumed’ within a

Thai frame of reference. Such practices fit with previous research on international cultural

capital such as Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) study of status consumption in Turkey,

O’Dougherty’s (2002) study of consumption of American goods and leisure amongst the

middle class in Sao Paulo, and others reviewed in Chapter 2. Üstüner and Holt suggest

that within a less industrialised country (LIC) Western cultural capital is reconstructed in a

deterritorialised form, as opposed to a conventional Bourdieusian cultural capital which is

sedimented, and formed as a part of indigenous socialisation (Bourdieu, 1984).

Deterritorialised cultural capital is, by definition, deterritorialised, not organic to the

national field, and so must be imported and learnt through conscious effort.

From the perspective of this thesis, the participants’ valorisation of experiences of the

foreign other and the desire to leave ‘home’ to explore this can be seen as being driven

by a desire for a deterritorialised form of cultural capital rather than from a recognition of

global interconnectedness and the desire to acquire a global mindset. Participants’

narrative of charoenness can be seen as a specifically Thai form of deterritorialised

cultural capital, one that is informed by an implied cultural hierarchy, where items and

practices originating in the West are seen to have a higher cultural value than those that

are embedded within the Thai field. Their value rests not just in their difficulty of

acquisition (as a sign of distinction) but also because they originate from outside the Thai

field. This use of charoeness as a specifically Thai form of deterritorialised cultural capital

is comparable to Üstüner and Holt’s use of the ‘Western lifestyle myth.’ Discourses of

charoen (and its related concept of siwilai – a Thaizisation of ‘civilized’) could be

considered a Thai-specific deployment of the Western lifestyle myth in that they are both

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‘stylized [discourses] projecting an idealized consumer life in the West’ (Üstüner and Holt,

2010).

This projection of an idealised image of the West or, specifically in this case – Western

education - can be seen in the participants’ reports of how their overseas qualifications

have given them the appearance of prestige to their employers when they have returned

to Thailand. For example, I talked to Macy about how she felt her degree had helped her

in her job; her narrative focused on how it was her degree’s Britishness that won the day

for her, rather than the content of her degree.

I think so because they would look and think ‘ah, UK’ like it looks... better than

other candidates. When I have a foreign master's degree, they would love me

more, from what I see (Macy, TS).

It was the same for Danni when she was discussing her experiences during a job interview

with a company in an industry she had never worked in before.

My degree and my CV did help me with the current job I am in now. Like… they

barely asked me any questions. Like… [they assumed that] By having studied

overseas, I have seen the world and therefore it would be easy for me to talk to

people and that I would understand different people's mindsets, […] like… ‘you

have a wide skill set; you should be able to [do a specific job requirement] for us.

As for your [industry-specific skill]… I know you do not have any [industry-specific]

training, but you can develop those here’(Danni, TS).

Danni and Macy both felt that their employer (or potential employer) made certain

positive assumptions about them purely based on their overseas qualifications alone.

Their qualification was seen as a signifier of international cultural capital. In Macy’s case,

her discussion of how her degree makes her ‘look better’ than other candidates suggests

a judgement by the employer/potential employer of the implied cultural capital value of

Macy’s degree. In Danni’s case, her employer’s assumptions of the positive values of her

international qualification are closer to what Pöllmann (2009) describes as ‘intercultural

capital’, a form of capital that includes one’s ‘personal reservoir of intercultural

experiences and skills […] that enable the respective individual to competently engage in

intercultural encounters’ (Pöllmann, 2009, p. 540). From the perspective of Danni’s

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employer, the fact of her having studied overseas allowed them to assume that she would

possess intercultural capital.

Intercultural capital can be regarded as a cosmopolitan form of cultural capital that allows

her to engage with a foreign other, and ‘understand different people’s mindsets’ (Danni,

TS). However, as discussed in Chapter 2, while Pöllmann’s concept of intercultural capital

does seem to fit in this instance and is shown to be a valued thing, its application needs to

be mediated by an understanding of the context to which it is being applied. By context, I

mean how ‘the foreign other’ is conceived of within the field that the capital is being

deployed. Specifically, I refer to the way TS participants narrated the importance of the

image of an institution. As discussed in the previous chapter, participants talked about

institutions in broad ranking terms, specifically ranking Western institutions over Thai

ones. In talking about why she went overseas for university, Casey started by talking

about improving her ‘profile’. I asked her to clarify, and she explained it regarding the

importance of an institution’s ‘brand’ to a Thai employer.

I mean, in reality, it has to be accepted that in Thailand that people still look at 'brand'

and by graduating from [a lower-ranked Thai university] and not Chula or Thamasart39

I might... not be as posh as other people (Casey, TS)

In Casey’s case, she felt that as she had not graduated from an elite Thai university, going

overseas would give her an edge as she felt Western universities had a better ‘brand

image’ than Thai universities. Similarly, Anna, a TS participant, talked about how a

university’s reputation shaped her choices of where she eventually went for her master’s

degree.

I think a university's reputation is important because really, when you graduate

with a foreign [specific field] degree you will not be using the [geographically-

specific knowledge] that you learnt, you would use learning methods, thinking

methods, and the university's name. Like, let’s say if you go to university in

Australia, it might have been a great university, but Thai people have never heard

of it, but if you studied in America in a place like... may not be as good as that

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Chula (short for Chulalongkorn) and Thamasart are elite Thai universities in Bangkok, both being the Thai social equivalent of Oxford & Cambridge in the UK.

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Australian university but Thai people know of them, then they'd pick the American

graduate (Anna, TS).

Or take the case of Peter, a TS participant, when I asked why he factored a university’s

fame into his selection criteria

It is important, for example, if someone graduated from Harvard, they do not have

to do much, like… people will be asking them to come work with them, right? […]

It is a factor, like… Their credibility (Peter, TS).

These examples help illustrate a shortcoming to seeing the participants’ overseas

education in terms of intercultural capital. The inherent weakness of applying

intercultural capital to this thesis is in its assumption that it is the connection between

cultures that is assumed to have value, rather than the (Western) culture the individual

becomes connected to. In the cases of Casey, Anna, and Peter it can clearly be seen that –

to them – one of the main factors behind the desirability of a Western education is the

fact that it is Western. As I argued in Chapter 2, Pöllmann (2009, p. 540) recognises that

the value of intercultural capital emerges because it crosses national cultural fields, and

can provide distinction in the ‘economically viable skills’ that allow people to ‘successfully

compete in global markets’. But Pöllmann’s work is more interested in intercultural

capital as a general social good which promotes intercultural tolerance, sensitivity and

competence rather than in questions of advantage, power and status competition. As a

result, his account loses sight of the power differentials between global regions which

give intercultural capital much of its value, and which affects how people might use

Western culture in locally specific ways. It also does not examine the different ways in

which unequally positioned groups adopt different strategies to intercultural capital. The

first issue will be explored further in the next chapter, but in this chapter I argue that the

concept of deterritorialised cultural capital fits the Thai case better, as it relies on a

specifically local interpretation of a foreign other to give it value, meaning that that value

comes from a local interpretation of a specific foreign other, unlike in Pöllmann’s (2009)

intercultural capital which conceptualises value as being inherent in the connection. I

shall also examine how the concept of deterritorialised cultural capital helps to explain

variations in my Thai sample’s approach to international education, though there are also

some important differences from Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) Turkish sample.

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The conception of charoeness as a form of deterritorialised cultural capital also fits well

with the idea of there being international hierarchies of institutions of higher education

as evidenced in the accounts above and as discussed in the previous chapter. Western

universities are seen as automatically better than Thai universities because they are

Western and thus provide the participant with international cultural capital. This gives

new light to Waters (2006) findings. Like Waters’ participants, the sample in this thesis

articulated a discourse that elevated an international university’s Western-ness as the

factor that made it superior to domestic universities. In this case, the credentials that

were the result of international education can be seen as not just a signifier of technical

competence, but is also bound up with perceptions of cultural superiority that forms a

Western cultural capital that is both rare and valued in the Thai context.

The participants’ narrative of the value of international education can be much better

explained through framing as a form of international, deterritorialised cultural capital

rather than within the framework of a cosmopolitan form of cultural capital. As discussed

above, the participants’ narratives do not fully fit the ideal of cosmopolitanism in that

they still rely on Thailand to provide a frame of reference rather than discussing their

experiences in a broadly global frame. Their experiences can be argued as having some

global reflexibility (Savage et al., 2005) as they still frame their experiences of home

within their experiences of the foreign other and vice versa. However, the analytical

frame of deterritorialised cultural capital accounts for the participant's discussions of a

desirable and valued Western other rather than simply a desirable and valued foreign

other. Within this framing, the participants’ narratives regarding what they expected to

gain from Western education, along with their description of how employers view their

credentials, shows the need to consider the interpretative context of the participants’

field.

In the next section, I continue the comparison between applying cosmopolitan and

deterritorialised cultural capital frameworks to my participants’ narratives, moving to

discuss the differences in the ways my sample engaged with the West. Whereas in the

previous chapter I focused on how international education helped my sample distinguish

themselves form non-overseas educated others, in this section I look at how differing

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levels of engagement with the West and narratives of ‘fitting in’ have created distinction,

and status competition, within my sample.

4. ‘Fitting In’ and Distinguishing the Elite’s Elite.

Within my sample, there was discourse that was used to distinguish between the

individuals who ‘did’ international education ‘properly’ and those who did not do it well.

This was couched around judgements of how at ease one became with being in the West,

and how much one could accept and experience Western culture. This sense of the west

was discussed in terms of how much or little one socialised with other Thai people during

one’s time in the west. For example, Karen, a Thai-schooled participant, said that she

tried not to socialise too much with other Thai students, because socialising with other

Thai students would be like not really being there, suggesting that there is a particular set

of practices associated to being ‘authentically’ abroad.

It is not good because… I am living there and… That would just make it just like

living in Thailand, no? […] I just thought that since I will be over there anyway I

might as well try to live like the locals. (Karen, TS)

Anton, a Thai schooled participant, gave a similar reason for not trying to reach out to

other Thai students.

I went all the way over there, how can I only socialise with Thai people? […], I try

to learn other people's culture and I wanted to maximise my opportunities to

exercise my language skills. Because if I am with Thai people, then I would only be

speaking in Thai (Anton, TS).

This idea of ‘living like the locals’ and getting a ‘feel’ for the culture of local (Western)

people discussed here fits in with the notion of experiences of a foreign other being a key

positive component of international education as discussed earlier in this chapter. In line

with Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) arguments, we can see how for these participants because

Western cultural capital is ‘deterritorialised’ it had to be actively learnt rather than

dispositionally acquired, through the experience of ‘living like the locals’. But there were

varying levels of engagement with this active learning. Despite participants of all

education backgrounds expressing a desire to ‘see the world’ and ‘gain a wider world

view’, as a positive aspect of studying overseas, some participants chose to remain within

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the local, overseas-based Thai community at their destinations. There were clear

differences between the behaviours of those who felt they could come to terms with

their host society’s culture and those who felt they could not. Despite talking about

wanting to explore new things and meet new people, the majority of Thai-schooled

participants chose to remain within the Thai community in their destination countries.

This placed TS participants in an awkward position: their need to feel relief from the

sense of displacement and loneliness that the disjuncture between their habitus and their

current field created warred with their desire to do international education ‘properly’.

Their need for relief from their sense of displacement can be seen in the different ways

participants narrated their feelings towards the Thai students’ community – indicative of

their attitudes towards socialising with co-nationals. Anna, a Thai-schooled participant

who ended up playing a key role in her university’s Thai community, talked about the

community in terms of providing comfort and emotional support.

I think it is important, when I was on [a high school] exchange [programme] there

weren't any Thai people in the city. zero. And I felt so tired, there was no one that

speaks the same language as me, but when I came to study at [North-East USA

university] I feel...oon jai40 I felt that... I have people who are friends with me,

people that can understand me (Anna, TS).

Anna’s choice of word – oon jai – the feeling of safety and comfort that she derived from

other Thai students shows how the local Thai community and other Thai students could

help ease the dread of disjuncture. This can also be seen when I asked Peter, also a Thai

schooled participant, why he did not go to the pub with his local housemates very often.

He said that he preferred to socialise with other Thai people because he felt closer to

them.

Um... it is like... culture? Like I can talk to [Thai people] more easily, it was like

being with friends. They are more like my friends (Peter, TS).

This idea of having people in your social circle that are more like the people you are used

to back ‘home’, and who can understand you, resonated with many of the TS and some IS

participants. While the participants might not have been able to find congruity between

40

Literally ‘warm hearted’, meaning to feel safe and comforted

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their habitus and the field they found themselves in, they could at least find people with

the same or similar habitus to be around. This idea of habitus/field incongruity was often

narrated in terms of safety and fear, as discussed by Macy, a TS participant.

I was lonely, and I wanted some Thai friends like... I was feeling unsafe, something

like that. I wanted to find friends that are Thai, wanted some friends who speak

the same language at that moment, I turned around, and I thought huh? Is that

person Thai? I'd try to sneak a look at their passport first *laugh*, and I thought

hey! You are Thai! ‘Sawadee ka41‘ and it went on from there (Macy, TS)

When asked why they felt unsafe, or what they feared, participants who expressed

explained this in terms of discomfiture, being ill-at-ease, or not being familiar with the

place they were in. Danni, a TS participant, spoke about this as an acclimatisation process,

where she slowly got used to the place that she was in as she became accustomed to the

city and the weather.

It was starting to get dark early, and I was like… Why is it so dark? Why is it so

cold? Then I start equating darkness with danger which is not really true over

there. Like… I did not feel like going out anywhere, I would stay home in my tiny

dorm room, I am so lonely, I am so cold… Let's cry.*Laugh*[…], But after a month I

started to acclimatise myself like… Oh, there are night buses, and if I eat here or

there it was not dangerous, and my comfort zone slowly expands (Danni, TS).

Such experiences are part of the habitus/field disjuncture discussed in the previous

chapter. As TS participants crossed into an unfamiliar field, they felt a disjuncture

between their habitus and field. This disjuncture, while it might bring a liminoid sense of

freedom, also brought a sort of dread or feeling of dislocation, creating a sense of unease,

of the unknown and a sense of danger because of that unknown. There were a signficant

number of TS students who mentioned feelings of ease, or a lifting of unease, when being

around other Thai students. Students said that when they were around people whose

habituses were developed in the same field, they felt less ‘scared’ or experienced a

general lessening of the ‘fish out of water’ feeling that comes from field/habitus

disjuncture. Given that most of the Thai schooled participants referred to the idea of

going to study overseas to improve their English, it might be assumed that at the very 41

Feminine form of ‘hello’ in Thai

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least, these participants perceived their English to not be of the standard they wish it to

be. This was reflected in the anxiety in the way TS participants discussed their English

abilities, with a perception of being judged by others for it. This is illustrated in Macy’s

account of her feelings when she could not make herself understood by a local person.

When I speak English, they will put on this face as if they do not understand my

accent, so then I like, lost a lot of confidence *laugh* like I was immediately hit by

a lack of confidence, things like that (Macy, TS).

Or take Casey talking about her initial experience of feeling alienated in England, partly

because of her self-perceived lack of English ability.

At first I didn’t feel like I fit in, I feel quite separate because I never lived in muang

nork before, and I couldn’t speak much English so when I am going places I still

feel like a fool out of place, I didn’t quite know what I was supposed to do, I know

that this isn’t my place (Casey, TS)

Because of a perceived inability to communicate properly or to know the correct way to

behave with the insiders of the new field they currently inhabited, many TS participants

spoke of how they were not confident in their ability to learn how to act or how to ‘be’

within this new field. This kind of discomfort became a strong motivator for Thai-schooled

participants to gravitate towards other Thai students and the local Thai community. For

TS participants, this was a way alleviate their discomfort but clearly affected their ability

to learn about Western culture by ’immersing’ in it, as there were very different patterns

of social interaction between those who felt at ease in the host field and those who did

not. Here we can again see the different impact of prior schooling (and the inculcation of

habitus) on the sample’s engagement with their international sojourn. It was participants

who were internationally schooled or schooled overseas who all fell into the category of

people who felt at ease in their host community fields. Because of this, their patterns of

social interaction depended less on co-nationals and were more focused on people with

similar interests from their host community or other (non-Thai) international students.

This can be shown best by examining what was missing from the OS/IS participants’

descriptions of what it was like to start university. For example, Ryan, an IS participant,

recounted his first days in Canada not in terms of cultural disjuncture or discomfort but

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rather as focused on doing all the things one would do in orientation/fresher’s week with

students from everywhere.

It was a blast like I said, so many things that happened like um… just… orientation,

there are so many orientations there was orientation for the first day of school

where everybody at first year, both international and local would come together

and like… the whole university just… you get to do campus tour; you get to

explore a few clubs42, you get to um… just walk around and see all the

classrooms… […] that sort of thing. That was an amazing first week just to get

everybody involved… every first year and then the whole social thing like, every

week there is always something going on campus, or [the halls of residence], yeah

(Ryan, IS).

Gemma, an IS participant, talked about her very international group of friends that she

met during her first year, and with whom she ended up moving into a house in her

second year.

So basically I made friends with... [name], this [European] girl. I met her through

volleyball, we clicked really well, and she was the one who started this let's live

together and then I had my two big [south American] brothers that I was going to

[live with in second year] anyway, and then um... the others came as like, extra.

There were seven of us. But... I had three of these guys, and I was very happy. It

was more than enough (Gemma, IS).

Jessica, an OS participant, talked about how she could finally relax and just ‘enjoy [Ivy

league university]’: after working hard to get a place, she could finally stop working so

hard and socialise and go to parties.

It was quite good actually, um... I have to admit, coming from high school, I was a

big nerd, because... there was that shining golden goal of getting into a great

university hanging over me so I had to work hard and I didn't really pay attention

to my social life, but when I got to [Ivy league university]… you know, there was no

next goal to hit, and yes, I wanted to do well but... there was really no incentive to

get a 4.0 [GPA] um... and I wanted to enjoy myself, so at [Ivy league university] I

42

Americanism meaning student societies, not night clubs.

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got out more and like... socialized, went to parties and things um... just things I

wasn't used to but enjoy doing (Jessica, OS).

What is missing from these narratives is that there are no references to Thai-ness or other

Thais. That even though their referents are still Thai (as discussed earlier in this chapter),

their past educational experience within an international circuit of education which

allowed OS/IS participants a much longer period of time to become accustomed to the

idea of a western education (as discussed in the previous chapter), their confidence in

their level of English (demonstrated by the lack of narrative of linguistic anxiety among

OS/IS participants) culminated in a demonstrated level of ease with the western other

that allowed them to ‘fit in’ more seamlessly. When asked about their social life while

studying abroad, OS/IS participants only mentioned Thai people or the Thai community in

passing. These accounts could have been made by a local student – there was nothing

there that would have given them away as an ‘outsider’. Garry, an OS participant,

mentioned how ‘everyone’ thought that he was American when we were discussing how

language proficiency helps one to fit in.

Everyone thinks I am American. There is this one day in my third year university I

was standing up in line at Starbucks, and my university has a ROTC43 program, and

the recruiter, one of the recruiters, were standing in front of me, and he turned

and asked if I wanted to join the army. (Garry, (OS).

Because of the ease with western education (and culture) inculcated into them since

early childhood, OS and IS participants were able to go through their overseas university

experience without the disjuncture and social discomfort and dread commonly narrated

by the Thai-schooled participants. This means, however, that OS/IS participants had a

significant advantage over TS participants in that they already possessed the capacity to

do international education ‘properly’, their internalised dispositions allowed them to

interact and experience the West with ease, and as a result, have an international

education experience that is considered more valued and more ‘authentic’.

This finding of a marked disparity in the social comfort and forms of engagement with

Western culture and education between more and less privileged Thai students has some

43

Reserve Officers' Training Corps – US Army’s university-based programme for training commissioned officers

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similarities to what Üstüner and Holt (2010) found in their Turkish study. They

distinguished different uses of deterritorialised cultural capital among participants with

lower cultural capital (LCC) who generally engaged in ‘pecuniary displays’, compared to

participants with higher cultural capital (HCC) who were more ‘focused on cultural

sophistication’ (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 52). Üstüner and Holt’s assertion of HCC focus

on cultural sophistication appears, at first glance, to resonate with my sample’s narrative

of a desire to learn and understand the West ‘properly’, with a perception that those who

cannot ‘fit in’ to the West have somehow failed. Take the example of Steph, an

internationally schooled participant, who mentioned a group of people she refers to as

‘super Thai’. When asked to clarify what she meant, she gave this description

Yeah, so… just eat Thai food, stay with only Thai people, and watch Thai TV, that

streams from Thailand and… you know, just… why do you come overseas?! […] I

mean… you… you have the chance to be overseas and so… you better use it. It is

not… not everyone gets to spend their life overseas for an extended period of

time, and that is a chance to [infomercial voice] ‘see the world! Experience new

things!’ [/infomercial voice] you should use that, and… Because it is not… the price

you pay is not just for education is for experiences as well. (Steph, IS)

In this case, ‘super Thai’ meant someone who, despite being overseas, spent their entire

time within the Thai cultural sphere, clearly increasing their ease through self-enforced

social insulation. Most participants saw this insulation as a negative overall. Even Macy –

who would fit into Steph’s definition of ‘super-Thai’, believed that it was a bad thing for

her to do, as shown when she reflected back on her relationship with the Thai community

whilst studying overseas.

Where ever [other Thai people] go, I go; it was one of the big mistakes of my life

that I still tell the kids that come in that I send overseas that... ‘Let me advise you,

you can know Thai people but do be too into them.’ (Macy, TS)

At the time of interview, Macy worked as an overseas education agent, and her quote

refers to the advice she gives to people who come into her office seeking her services.

Even amongst those who felt that they had struggled to do so themselves there was the

idea that ‘you have the chance to be overseas, so you better use it’ and an attitude that

the more you are seen to be familiar with the West, the better. While this discourse

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might seem to confirm that my sample were focused on acquiring ‘proper’ ‘cultural

sophistication’, like those in Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) research, there is a critical point of

difference. Üstüner and Holt describe the process through which their HCC participants

gain deterritorialised cultural capital as an effortful, deliberate, and ‘by-the-book’ process

which is never fully acquired as an embedded ‘sense of ease’.

Building deterritorialised cultural capital is particularly arduous. This task—

learning the cultural codes and sensibilities of peoples of other nations—is not

unlike learning a particularly cryptic and complex foreign language. Despite the

HCCs’ best efforts, because the Western lifestyle is not part of the HCC habitus, it

stubbornly remains as borrowed culture, an add-on aspect of their identity

projects. When they compare themselves with the Westerners who have become

acculturated in the redundant embedded manner described by Bourdieu, Turkish

HCCs can feel like posers trying to imitate others. They are forced to consider the

differences between their deterritorialised cultural capital and the embedded

form prevalent among HCCs in the West (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 53).

But while Üstüner and Holt reported a sense of unease amongst their Turkish HCC

sample, ‘feel like posers trying to imitate others’, such unease was not found amongst the

IS/OS portion of my sample. Indeed, if ‘feeling a fraud’ is taken to mean a general sense of

unease about one’s relation to deterritorialised cultural capital, then Üstüner and Holt’s

participants can be seen as being more comparable to the TS participants in this thesis. In

describing their HCC participants, Üstüner and Holt noted that ‘All informants had taken

multiple trips to the United States and Europe, and many had made extended stays in the

West for higher education and occasionally for work’ (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 48). This

would suggest that none of Üstüner and Holt’s participants had any secondary or pre-

secondary education in the West. As such, in their earlier educational experiences (and

habitus) Üstüner and Holt’s sample of HCCs are closer to the TS participants of this thesis.

This puts into question Üstüner and Holt’s claim that deterritorialised cultural capital is

one that is only acquired through an act of conscious, intensive learning. This form of

learning is similar to the mode of cultural competence that Bourdieu terms as ‘belated,

methodical learning not so much in the depth and durability of its effects - as the ideology

of cultural ‘veneer’’(Bourdieu, 1984, p. 66). As I have shown in this chapter, through the

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narratives of the IS and OS participants, deterritorialised cultural capital can be

embodied. However, it must be learnt through ‘total, early, imperceptible learning,

performed within the family from the earliest days of life and extended by a scholastic

learning which presupposes and completes it’ (ibid, p. 66).

Every OS participant, except one, had a parent who had studied overseas. They also went

to the same school system as Westerners, went through the same experience of finding a

university as Westerners, and as we have seen, narrated their period of international HE

in terms which suggest they they also had the same experience of university as a

Westerner would. In this section, I have focused on the difference between the OS/IS

participants and the TS participants in terms of their ability to fit into their host

communities whilst studying abroad. TS participants needed to overcome a sense of

dread, insecurity and uncertainty brought on by the habitus/field disjuncture they

experienced during their study abroad – what I have referred to as disjuncture dread –

before they could attempt to try and fit in. Meanwhile, OS/IS participants who had been

educated from an early age within either an international field of education (IS

participants) or within the same or similar field as their destination university (OS

participants), did not experience this same disjuncture. This meant that OS/IS participants

narratives showed very little sign of unease or discomfort at their ability to join in the

social life of their host communities, presenting their experiences as that of ‘ordinary’

university students. When compared to Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) work, my sample,

which is more composed of what Üstüner and Holt would refer to as high cultural capital

individuals, revealed another level of difference. Aside from the distinction between

those with low cultural capital and high cultural capital, there was also another distinct

set of experiences found amongst a group that could be called very high cultural capital.

Amongst those with very high cultural capital, because of their prior educational

experiences with Western education and culture, their integration of this deterritorialised

cultural capital with their habitus was more complete so that they did not feel unease

about their position and saw no differencebetween their ‘deterritorialised cultural capital

and the embedded form prevalent among HCCs in the West’ (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p.

53).

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This thesis focuses on those few in Thai society who could afford to be educated overseas

in the first place, a trait Üstüner and Holt ascribed to HCCs. However, in this research I

have argued that within the elite in Thailand there are further differentiations (an ‘elite’s

elite’) which complicate Üstüner and Holt’s conception of how deterritorialised cultural

capital works. However their account remains very useful for considering how

international cultural capital works across national contexts. Echoes of the ‘pecuniary

displays’ of LCCs described by Üstüner and Holt can be seen in Moerman’s (1964) work on

less elite groups in rural Thailand, which explores how global products take on unique

meanings in local contexts:

Cultures are not like shelves in a supermarket which can be satisfactorily

described by taking inventory of their contents. Bottles of Coca-Cola may look the

same, but only in Thailand can a minor official, by drinking it, signal the fact that

he is more progressive than the simple villager who drinks only water yet less

exalted than the district officer who can afford beer. Elements of culture have

meaning only in context. Since no two cultures provide identical contexts, it is

unlikely for there to be anywhere a one to one correspondence between what is

loaned and what is borrowed. (Moerman, 1964, p. 32)

Moerman’s work in Thailand, in addition to the evidence presented in this thesis, helps

show the applicability of Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) framework to a non-Turkish context.

As in Üstüner and Holt’s work, Moerman’s ethnographic fieldwork in Thailand shows the

importance of considering how deterritorialised cultural capital is contextualised within

the field that it is being consumed and deployed. More critically, Moerman’s work help

illustrate how the application of Beck’s conception of cosmopolitanism to Thailand is

problematic. Beck describes the process of cosmopolitanisation as one where the ‘global

and local are to be conceived, not as cultural polarities, but as interconnected and

reciprocally interpenetrating principles’ (Beck, 2006, p. 73). However, this framing is

problematic in the light of the empirical arguments made by this thesis and Üstüner and

Holt’s (2010) findings. Specifically, interconnectivity and reciprocity imply equal

exchanges of culture where information, goods, and practices exchange at equal ‘value’

and where the value of these exchanges derive from their intercultural nature, as for

example discussed in Pöllmannn’s (2013) discussion of intercultural capital. But as this

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thesis argues, the value of international education practices amongst Thai elites derives

not from the intercultural nature of the practice but rather from the fact that the

interlocutor is seen to be culturally superior. In this way, the Thai practice of international

education cannot be regarded as a fully cosmopolitan practice. As I have argued the

participants in this thesis are not engaging in international education from a global

perspective; an ideal end-goal as articulated by cosmopolitan thinkers such as Beck (2011)

and Nussbaum and Cohen (2002). However, Savage et al’s (2005) conception of

cosmopolitanism as global reflexivity may be of greater value here, as discussed earlier in

this chapter. Savage et al’s gradation of differing levels of global reflexivity, running from

those with a global perspective but a local referent to those with global perspective and

referent offers a more nuanced approach to processes of cultural globalisation, opening

up a space for investigation as to how and why a population still holds on to a local

referent. In the next chapter, I shall explore this question further, drawing on literature

that considers how the ‘western lifestyle myth’ is constructed through colonial hybridity

(Bhabha, 2004; Canclini et al., 1995), and the relation of these to processes of

deterritorialised cultural capital in Thailand.

5. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have discussed the participants’ narratives of their experiences of

international education, exploring how their understanding of foreign others was a key

component that gave their international education its value as cultural capital. I have

discussed these narratives within the concepts of cosmopolitanism and international

cultural capital, concluding that, while the participants’ narratives have some

cosmopolitan elements, they cannot be seen as straightforwardly cosmopolitan. The

participants’ constant use of Thai referents, including their specific singling out of the

Western other, mean that the source of value they placed in their international cultural

capital was not in the globalness of their encounter. Rather, the value lay in the positive

attributes of Western-ness that were ascribed to their interlocutor within the Thai frame

of reference.

The participants’ discussion of their desire to see the world, and to experience and

explore new places and new things was the main force underpinning the cultural value

they placed on studying overseas. This could – at first sight – be seen as a form of

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cosmopolitan cultural capital, and could be interpreted as an indication that people

within Thai society conceive the local and global as a part of an interconnected whole

rather than opposing polarities (Beck, 2006). Similarly, the desire for more experiences of

a global other might be seen as a good and socially valuable sign that the process of

cosmopolitanism is underway. However, upon closer examination, the participants’

narratives still rely heavily on Thai referents. This, when viewed within Savage’s (2005)

analytical framework, indicate a less-than-cosmopolitan form of reflexivity that relies on a

local frame of interpretation rather than situating their experiences within a broadly

global interpretative schema. Some participants narrated their international education

experience as giving them the ability to communicate with and understand foreign others

better. This was often narrated as a key part of their enhanced employability. On the

surface, this might lend credence to the notion that international education represents

intercultural capital, a form of capital that includes one’s ability to ‘competently engage in

intercultural encounters’ (Pöllmann, 2009, p. 540). While this would fit into the notion of

a cosmopolitanising Thai society seeing interconnectivity between groups in a warmer

light, these statements need to be considered within the Thai context. The narrative of

charoeness was used by participants to frame the West using a specifically Thai

interpretation of Western modernity, ranking the West as more modern and more

civilised than the traditional, less charoen Thailand. This view of the West places the West

as a superior foreign other, and by using Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) framework of

deterritorialised cultural capital, we can see that the stylised conceptions of the West that

were prevalent among my Thai sample strongly shaped their use of contact with the

Western other as a source for cultural capital. Viewing cultural capital as deterritorialised

helps to explain the Western-centric nature of the participants’ experiences, in that

within a deterritorialised cultural capital framework, the origin of the cultural capital is its

source of value. As such, the western-centric nature of the participant’s experience can

be explained thusly: because of the participant’s stylised conception of the west,

practices and comodities from the west are given value because of its western origin, as

such, it would follow that they would focus on the west, as the point of origin of a valued

cultural capital. The participants ranked international cultures through the lens of

charoeness and, as I have argued in the previous chapter, this is linked to their ranking of

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educational institutions – with Western institutions automatically assumed to be better

than Thai ones in part because of the assumed superiority of the West.

However, Üstüner and Holt’s participants were not educated in the West from a young

age, and as a result, their analysis does not address consider this ‘elite’s elite’ group in

their analysis, or how distinctions within elites might affect processes of deterritorialised

cultural capital. Their distinction between the use of deterritorialised cultural capital

among LCCs and HCCs, with LCCs focusing on pecuniary displays and HCCs focusing on

cultural sophistication (Üstüner and Holt, 2010) has merit in the Thai context. There are

overlaps with my data, and with Moerman’s (1964) research, as his rural Thai participants

behaved in the same way as LCC participants in Üstüner and Holt’s study (ibid). However,

my research does not support Üstüner and Holt’s assertion that deterritorialised cultural

capital is always unembodied and reflexively learnt. While my TS participants showed

similar forms of status anxiety to that shown by Üstüner and Holt’s HCCs, the OS/IS

participants in my sample did not, Rather, they showed considerable ease with the

Western other, which I argue is because they were educated overseas from a very young

age. As such, I propose that while there is an important distinction between the

deployment of deterritorialised cultural capital among individuals with low and high

cultural capital, there is also a distinction – although a subtler one – between HCCs and

VHCCs (very high cultural capital) individuals.

This chapter has shown the importance of a contextual interpretative frames in analysing

cultural practices that on the surface, appear to be cosmopolitan. When examined more

closely, these practices reveal a more nuanced meaning, That the participant’s practices

stems more from the perceived value of a foreign other, rather than the value of having a

connection with a foreign other. As such, in the next chapter, I explore further how the

Thai context coloured the participants’ interactions with the West. I do so by exploring

the participants’ narratives of their encounters with the Western within a postcolonial

framework.

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Chapter 6: International Education and the Thai Discourses of the West

1. Introduction

In the previous chapter, I discussed how international education has been used as a mode

of distinction for elite Thais. I made the argument that whilst participants express some

examples of cosmopolitan values, their Western-focused narratives suggests that a very

different system of values is operating among this thesis’ participants. As a result, I

contend that deterritorialised cultural capital (Üstüner and Holt, 2010) provides a more

appropriate explanation of the value of international education as a source of cultural

capital. In this chapter I will be further exploring this concept, suggesting that although

not formally post-colonial, the attitudes towards the West of the Thai elite in my sample

follows a post-colonial logic, and as a result, Thai elite’s use of Western modernity as a

source of cultural capital reinforces and reproduces this logic.

Past studies have shown that narratives of openness do not necessarily equate to a

globally reflexive mode of thought, an example of this is Snee’s (2013) study into the

experiences of British gap year travellers. Her participants’ discourses shows that, while

their desire to experience and explore the world may appear cosmopolitan at first glance,

further examination of their accounts shows that ‘structural and historical legacies of

difference are reproduced in the gappers’ understandings and representations of people

and places’ (Snee, 2013, p. 158). This in turn reproduces ‘existing power relations and

inequalities’ (Snee, 2013, p. 158). The importance of frame of reference to a participants’

view of openness is further highlighted in the difference in how British international

students (Brooks and Waters, 2009a) and Thai international students view international

education. Brooks and Waters’ participants see their destination institutions as

‘acceptable alternatives’ to elite institutions at home. In contrast, the Thai participants in

this thesis, regardless of their educational background, all see international education as

an automatically superior alternative to a domestic one.

In the previous chapter I explored how the idea of international, and in particular

Western education is conceived as a source of cultural capital for my participants. This

chapter now turns to examine the frame of reference that has caused international

education to become so valued. Waters’ (2006) study of Hong Kong students in Canada

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also stresses the importance of the interpretive frame that gives value to the

international education experience:

the value of overseas credentials is inextricably linked to very specific place-based

social relations, or ‘social capital’, that facilitate and perpetuate local discourses

pertaining to the inherent superiority of overseas graduates (Waters, 2006, p.

186).

This means that there is a need to explore the broader framing of the participants’

discourses and to consider the underlying power relations that have informed this

discourse, giving context to the participants’ narrative. I argue that the past relationship

between Siam/Thailand and the West is key to the participants’ frame of reference. Even

though Siam/Thailand was never officially made a colony of a European power, due to the

nineteenth and early twentieth century geopolitical landscape of South East Asia,

interactions, particularly with the British and French Empires became unavoidable. Many

scholars (Herzfeld, 2010; Jackson, 2008; Kitiarsa, 2010; Peleggi, 2002; Winichakul, 2000)

have argued that these interactions took on a decidedly colonial tone, so that even

though Thailand was not officially a colony, it was nevertheless part of a discursive and

political space that was colonial.

In order to fully understand the participants’ framing of their international education

experience, there is, therefore, a need to delve into the coloniality of Thailand’s past

which has created a post-colonial interpretive frame that has shaped the participants’

accounts. This aspect has already been highlighted in the discussion of the participants’

narratives in Chapter 5, in which I argued they employed a frame of reference in which

Western modernity is hybridised and localised into a discourse of charoeness and siwilai –

progress and civilisation – which is widespread in Thailand. I argue that these discourses

were borne out of past interactions with the west, in which the very inequality of that

interaction shaped the way the west is perceived by the Siamese/Thais. This process has

been observed in other studies of globalised consumption practices in post-colonial

contexts, as observed for instance in the impact of French discourses of haute couture on

the urban Congolese practice of la sape (Friedman, 1994), Further examples are Ger and

Belk’s (1996) discussion of the similarity between the creolization of Western

commodities and the creolization of Western religion, and Üstüner and Holt’s (2010)

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study of the appropriation of Western consumption goods in middle-class processes of

distinction in Turkey.

Although I am claiming that the West is seen as a superior source of cultural capital, I am

not contending that the West is unproblematically accepted as superior to Thai things and

practices. In fact, as I shall argue in this chapter, my participants had very qualified, even

negative, views of some aspects of Western culture. This is first informed by the duality of

the Thai conception of the West, simultaneously seen as a superior and a suspicious

other, one that is capable of both being an existential threat and a source of modernity

(Kitiarsa, 2010). Here we can see similarities to Chatterjee’s (1993) account of the

postcolonial discourses of his Indian participants. Chatterjee suggests that the nationalist

discourses of postcolonial India have resolved this duality through what he refers to as

‘intellectual bifurcationism’. This is where the West's superiority is restricted to the

temporal or material realm, while the spiritual superiority of the nationalist we/us

remains unsullied by Western influences. Chatterjee’s study therefore shows a nuance in

how the West’s superiority is viewed. I argue that this intellectually bifurcated discourse

creates ambiguity regarding where and how cultural capitals that originated from the

West can be applied. As such, care must be taken when studying the application of

deterritorialised cultural capital, as bifurcation means that cultural capitals from the West

will only be perceived to have value in fields that is seen to not be constitutive of the Thai

national identity. This leads to possible conflict within certain fields where there is room

for subjective disagreement over what is classed as part of Thai national identity, as will

be shown in the participants’ narratives of their job hunting experiences.

I begin this chapter by unpacking the phenomenon of openness to the West as a source

of cultural capital; concentrating on the part of the West that my participants had

experience with – the Anglophone West – and specifically, English. I will discuss the

perceived relationship between English fluency and the ability to engage with the

Western other and how that translates to increased cultural capital for the speaker. I will

argue that this increased cultural capital is a result of the participants being able to

display (to fellow Thais) a more nuanced appreciation of western modernity. I will then

demonstrate how this valuation of of western modernity, or Thailand’s ‘Western lifestyle

myth’ – to use Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) terminology is in fact a reproduction of an

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established discourse which was formed through Siam/Thailand’s interaction with

colonial powers. I will then go on to discuss the complication that the conception of the

western other as a ‘powerful but suspicious other’ (Kitiarsa, 2010) or a ‘threat-come-

treat’ (Winichakul, 2010) can bring. I use Chatterjee’s (1993) concept of intellectual

bifurcaitonism to demonstrate how this dualistic nature of Siam/Thailand’s conception of

the West causes a discourse that complicates the study of international education as a

deterritorialised form of cultural capital. This results in the need for an analytical

approach that is attuned to not just the nuances of a particular field’s Western lifestyle

myth but also the contexts and ways in which that myth is and is not applied within that

particular field.

2. English Language and Distinction

This section will be using the participant’s perception of the English language as an entry

point to how the participants’ narratives were influenced by a historically informed frame

of reference, which in turn reproduces a discourse that gives value to international

education as a source of cultural capital.

A majority of the Thai schooled (TS) participants regarded the English language as one of

the main motivators for them to study overseas. This was not something emphasised as

important by the international schooled (IS) and overseas schooled (OS) participants. The

near-total absence of any discussion of the value of the English language amongst these

latter sub-groups (the one exception being Gemma’s (IS) discussion of her parent's

reasons for sending her to an international school) is significant and is consistent with the

argument made in Chapter 4 about the differing circuits of education found amongst the

participants. The international and overseas schooled participants had already

experienced total immersion (or near-total in the case of IS participants) in English

language schooling from a young age. This not only created fluency but also an ease with

the English language and confidence in their fluency. However, TS participants who had

received a predominantly Thai education were more likely to perceive their English

abilities as unsatisfactory, and more readily see an improvement to their English as a

desirable form of cultural capital. Anxiety expressed by TS participants’ regarding their

English ability and desire for improvement became a consistent theme during

conversations with TS participants about what motivated them to study in the West in the

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first place. An overwhelming majority of TS participants cited the English language as one

of the main benefits of an overseas education. As shall be demonstrated in this section,

this was because of a generalised belief in the importance of the English language. The

reasons articulated by TS participants for this belief ranged from the aspirational to the

practical, including the belief that English would help advance their careers, expand their

horizons and assist them in engaging with the world outside of Thailand. Some TS

participants expressed a belief that their international education was best limited to the

Anglosphere on a practical level, mostly due to English being the only compulsory

Western language in the Thai education system (on which I will say more later).

A good example of this generalised belief in the importance of English came from Casey, a

Thai schooled participant, who highlighted both the importance of English to her working

life and the difficulty that learning a third language would cause her.

[English is] a language that I have to use when I get back. Back [before I went

overseas] I was working for [an American company], and I thought... even if it is

not this company, if I come back to Thailand the second language I would have to

use would be English. (Casey, TS)

As Casey already spoke English, it seemed common sense for her to go to an English-

speaking country, particularly as she felt English was something that she would ‘have to’

use in work back in Thailand. The perception that English was the language that one

needed to know well to be able to get a good job helps explains why none of the

participants (except one) even considered studying at a non-Anglophone university. The

exception was Anton, a Thai-schooled participant, who considered Germany but in the

end, he decided to study in England.

From what I have asked of people, I will have to take tests and study German, and

when I get there, I would not be sure if I would be able to use only English, or if I

had to use English and German [in class]. And from what I know, the Germans are

happier speaking with you in German than English. So I thought that if I live in an

environment that primarily uses English, would be better (Anton, TS).

When asked further, Anton said that he decided that it would make more sense to go to

an English-speaking country, as his main goal in studying overseas was to improve his

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English, because ‘If I was able to improve my English, there would be a lot of

opportunities in life that I can choose from, both professionally and privately’ (Anton, TS).

Universally, my participants highlighted the importance of fluency in English to both their

life and career. For example, Anna, a Thai schooled participant, discussed why English

would be useful in her professional life, practising law in Thailand

Like... back then, when I was studying Law in Thailand there aren't many things

that people chose to be afterwards. Like, if you are not a judge or a prosecutor,

people tended to join a law firm. If you want to work in a law firm and your English

is poor, you will not be able to practice... like, you can, but it will be difficult. […] it

will be more difficult to get opportunities to get good jobs and... when you really

practice you will need to use a lot of English because most clients that use law

firms are... they want English mostly, and there are both Thai and foreign clients,

and sometimes there are cross-border transactions (Anna, TS).

The discourse equating knowledge of English with professional success was widespread

among the participants. Jeff, a Thai schooled participant, thought that it would lead to his

being able to climb the ranks in the tourism industry, where he was working part-time as

part of his degree requirements.

I was in [a Thai resort town], so I studied and worked part-time, working in a hotel,

and if I can speak English, it is an opportunity to get a better job, better position,

things like that (Jeff, TS).

Or take the case of Peter (also Thai schooled) who thought that English language skills

would help him in any job situation and seem surprised that I even bothered to ask such

an obvious question (Why is English important?) since ‘everyone’ knows that English is

essential.

Well, these days one of the qualifications for work is English. Like, if I have it, if I

can speak it well then I have an advantage over other applicants for the job. Or

even in my everyday life. (Peter, TS)

The narrative of English fluency, and by extension the ability to engage with the

Anglophone West was presented by all the participants as being key to making oneself

more employable. As previously discussed, the decision to study in the Anglosphere may

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have partly stemmed from the fact that the participants were already familiar with

English, as it is a compulsory subject in the Thai education system and also a mandatory

subject at many universities. The compulsoriness of English language education – which

has been a part of the Thai school system since the 19th century (Foley, 2005;

Wongsothorn et al., 2002), may be a contributing factor to the participants’ belief that a

nebulously defined ‘better’ proficiency in English was of professional benefit. However,

there is a question of the global dominance of the English language and how it is

connected to global inequalities and socio-political domination. British imperialism spread

English to many countries as part of colonial rule, and the global importance of English

has been further advanced by America’s economic and cultural dominance. The

participants in my sample clearly recognised the cultural value of English for global

commerce, believing that English language skills would allow them to work with more

successful companies with a wider, international horizon rather than a single linguistic

sphere. Echoing an argument from the previous chapter, at first glance it might seem that

the values of cosmopolitanism are in operation here. As the world becomes more and

more globalised, it could be argued that this consciousness of the need to be able to

communicate with the foreign other is indicative of an increasing awareness of the

significant interconnectivity of the world (Beck and Levy, 2013). To support this idea,

consider the reason why Lisa, a TS participant who was looking for a marketing job, said

she would not work with a company that did not interview in English.

It looks narrow, like today, English is pretty much almost... like you should not

have to ask if you can speak English or not because you should be able to like now

we are not talking about second languages we are talking about third languages. If

a company still interviews in Thai, and does not ask you about your other

languages and not speak it, I do not think it will work out it looks like... how would

you grow? (Lisa, TS)

The question at the end of the quote; ‘How would you grow’ carries with it an assumption

that to know only Thai, is to be limited to Thailand, and not able to reach a worldwide

audience. Within this is also the assumption of a general link between the English

Language and the ability to connect with the wider world, not just for the individual but

also at a wider level; regarding international media, international people, and

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international places. Lisa’s comment ‘it looks narrow’ implies a view of being local as

being narrow, or closed off and echoes the sentiments - shown in the first section of the

previous chapter – of Ryan in his desire to not be ‘trapped’ in a country, or of Casey in her

discussion of her expanded world view compared to those who remain in Thailand. In

sum, these comments share an idea: that to know English is to know ‘foreignness’, and to

have access to the world. Taken at face value, the participants’ valorisation of the ability

to communicate with foreign others could be taken as a positive indication that my Thai

sample are rising to Nussbaum and Cohen’s (2002) call for action, asking people to

overlook the arbitrary boundaries of states and to join hands with others in cosmopolitan

solidarity:

But why should these values, which instruct us to join hands across boundaries of

ethnicity, class, gender, and race, lose steam when they get to the borders of the

nation? By conceding that a morally arbitrary boundary such as the boundary of

the nation has a deep and formative role in our deliberations, we seem to deprive

ourselves of any principled way of persuading citizens they should in fact join

hands across these other barriers (Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002, p. 14).

However, as I outlined in the previous chapter, the context which frames the participants’

accounts suggests a rather different conclusion, since the ‘global employability’ value of

their Western education was really framed in terms of the local competitiveness it gave

the participants in terms of finding a job with firms in Thailand, and the participants’

engagement with foreign others and foreign culture was still deeply embedded within the

Thai frame of reference. Furthermore, as the sample’s accounts in this chapter show, the

international ‘other’ to which they reached out was rather narrowly defined in terms of

the Anglosphere. In other words, while Thai and Thai-ness was compared to a ‘narrow’

local, it was the English language and Anglosphere foreignness which was compared to

being global.

The participants’ focus on the English language can be seen as further support for the

argument that the practice of international education in Thailand is linked to a specifically

Thai form of deterritorialised cultural capital. Indeed, the introduction of English into the

Thai curriculum had more to do with the elite’s wish to emulate the West, and to engage

with the powerful British Empire (Peleggi, 2002), than with a longing for a more

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generalised international openness. Furthermore, as discussed in the previous chapter,

the participants’ desire to improve their English was part of their desire for charoeness,

the Thai phrase denoting a movement towards progress and civilisation which is

exemplified by the West (Winichakul, 2000). This issue, and the question of global and

postcolonial inequalities which help to produce the value of deterritorialised cultural

capital will be discussed in greater detail later on in this chapter. However, inequalities

and processes of distinction within my Thai sample also shaped their cultural strategies.

By becoming fluent in English, my participants were given a pathway to learn Western

lifestyles. In the last chapter, I argued that, in contrast to the findings of Üstüner and Holt

(2010), rather than limiting themselves to the pecuniary displays of Western-ness found

among those with a second-hand knowledge of deterritorialised cultural capital, the more

elite members of my sample - through their childhood exposure to Western education -

displayed more proficiency in Western culture and styles. However, even the less elite

members of the sample, who had been Thai-schooled, focused on English language skills

as a way of acquiring greater ease with Western culture. This process of acculturation

might have been a more ‘by-the-book’ process, but it was not just about pecuniary

displays, prompted both by a desire to be more culturally at ease with Westerners, as

well as being able to display that Western ease back home in Thailand. This reflects my

argument in the previous chapter regarding how, when compared to Üstüner and Holt’s

study, my TS sample conforms more closely with their high cultural capital sample and

that there is a case to be made for OS/IS participants fitting in to a very high cultural

capital group that was not a part of Üstüner and Holt’s study (ibid).

My participants often spoke of English fluency as the basis of becoming acquainted with

the ‘source’ of Western culture and of being able to grasp its nuances more easily. In

other words, English fluency was a means to make oneself more proficient at consuming

Western culture, allowing one to show finesse and nuance in one’s ability to consume

charoen things and practices, and increase one’s deterritorialised cultural capital. This

was noted by participants who felt more anxious about their ease with Western culture

and viewed their language skills instrumentally, as in the case of Anton, a TS participant,

who talked about the benefits of improving his English for his career.

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If I were able to improve my English, there would be a lot of opportunities in life

that I can choose from; both professionally and privately like my ability to go

travelling, read books that I am interested in. Movies become easier to watch, and

it would make my daily life more fun if my language abilities were to improve. And

professionally, the jobs that I want to do in organisations I want to work for –

which are mostly foreign companies in Thailand. If I improve my language ability,

it will allow me to get that opportunity more easily (Anton, TS).

For Anton and for Peter, also a TS participant (below), knowing English did not just mean

the freedom to travel or to consume a wider range of cultural products, it also meant the

ability to do so with confidence in one’s ability to engage with Western commodities and

practices. Here, Peter discussed how being fluent in English would help in his day-to-day

life.

Um… It might not exactly be everyday life but let’s say if I go overseas, I would

be… Okay, I can speak, I can do whatever. Alternatively, even … If I meet a

foreigner, I would not be shy. I will be able to speak and answer whatever

questions they might have. Or like, if I go to a fancy restaurant that is… Farang or

something like that I will be okay, even if they ask me something in English. I will

not be shy to reply (Peter, TS).

In such accounts, English fluency permitted an individual to become more familiar with

the source of their deterritorialised cultural capital and so more proficient in it. In

contrast, someone who was only proficient in Thai would be more limited, restricted only

to items available within the Thai linguistic space. Anton and Peter’s narratives of

calculative reasoning behind the importance of English fluency reflects the importance of

in-depth knowledge of Western lifestyles that Üstüner and Holt discuss.

It is no coincidence that [high cultural capital individuals] promote in-depth

knowledge of the Western lifestyle as central to their moral order. These tastes

are a near perfect cultural articulation of the formal and informal educational

assets they have accrued. As a result of this strategic acculturation process, the

expression of cultural capital operates, not through Bourdieu’s habitus, but rather

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through a strategic “by-the-book” pursuit of tastes that have been explicitly

defined and circulate in the discourse (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 53).

In line with Üstüner and Holt’s account of the strategic acculturation process needed to

acquire deterritorialised cultural capital, my participants – but particularly the Thai-

schooled group – spoke of acquiring a fluent knowledge of English as providing a pathway

to a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the Western lifestyle. The participants felt

that English language skills enabled them to appear more charoen, and therefore appear

more in keeping with how Western modernity is perceived through the Thai lens.

However, it is also important to recognise that the cultural ease participants were seeking

was not just a deterritorialised form of international cultural capital, but also a more

specifically post-colonial form of cultural capital. English was associated with Western-

ness in many of the participants’ comments, and when they spoke of wanting to

experience a ‘foreign other’ the participants used a Western-focused interpretive frame,

as the following quotes show. When I asked Casey why English was important to her, she

began by saying ‘it is important because I work in a farang company’44 (Casey, TS). When

Macy bemoaned her lack of English fluency, she said: ‘Like, when I went up to present my

farang friends could not understand me’ (Macy, TS). Similarly, when Peter talked about

the uses of English in everyday life, he said ‘if I go to a fancy restaurant that is… farang or

something like that I will be okay’ (Peter, TS).

Each of these participants connected English with farang. In her study into the use of the

term, Kitiarsa discussed the deployment of the farang narrative in Thailand as a stylised

representation of Westerners and the West, used to conceptualise and consume

Western-ness as a ‘powerful but suspicious other’ (Kitiarsa, 2010). By that association, the

participants express a link between the ability to communicate in English, and capacity to

communicate not with the world but specifically, with the farang – the powerful

Occidental other. Fluency in English meant the ability to communicate with the farang

and consume farang things. This framing further problematises conceptualising the

desirability of English fluency as a cosmopolitan phenomenon, as well as showing the

importance of the context of a particular narrative. Within my sample, knowing English

44

An American multi-national company.

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was not about being able to connect with a generic foreign other, rather it was about

connecting with a specific and Western foreign other.

This helps explain the different way in which my Thai international students conceived of

the international education field when compared to the British international students in

Brooks and Waters’ (2009a, 2009b) research. Brooks and Waters’ findings suggest that

British international students travel to study abroad in universities that they see as

acceptable, equivalent alternatives to universities in their own countries. However, the

students in this thesis see Western (specifically English speaking) universities as clearly

superior options to even an elite education at home, as discussed in chapter 5. This is

similar to what Waters (2006) found in her study of Hong Kong students in international

education in Canada, who saw Canadian universities (and Canadian education in general)

as superior to Hong Kong’s. Similarly, Waters’ (ibid) found that the value of a Canadian

education was largely based on the recognition of Western education as a superior and

valued cultural capital. In conjunction with my own findings, such studies suggest that

prevailing discourses of the superiority of West at ‘home’ framed the participants’

perception of their international education. If we also take into account Moerman’s

research into the consumption of Western goods in rural Thailand (Moerman, 1964) and

Winichakul’s (2000) study of Siamese/Thai civilizational discourses, it suggests that

international education in Thailand is framed by wider post-colonial discourses. These

discourses retain historical notions of coloniser superiority over the colonised (or in

Thailand’s case, the colonisable) which are rooted in an unequal global power structure.

As such, in the next section, I will be discussing how these historically informed discourses

have come to influence the ways that Thai society has conceived of the West, and how

that, in turn, has influenced the value of international education as a form of

deterritorialised cultural capital.

3. Discourses of Progress and Hierarchy

In the previous sections I have shown that English, the language of the Anglophone West,

is seen as an important factor in Thai students’ choice of where to study overseas. The

participants made an equivalency between the Anglosphere and the Western. They

believed that having access to the Anglosphere would mean having access to the West,

and so in turn, perceived important forms of distinction dependant on apparent

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proficiency in farang culture. This emphasis, and the evidence from the previous chapter

which highlighted the high value placed on a Western education, only superficially

supports arguments of a process of cosmopolitanisation. The participants’ valorisation of

international education might be viewed as a move away from nationally-bounded ways

of thinking and as showing more acceptance of the foreign other, whether brought on as

an impact of globalisation or globalising technologies (Beck, 2006; Beck and Levy, 2013).

Certainly, these technologies have made possible the digital submission of applications,

have made information about the West and Western education more readily available, as

well as making international travel more affordable. For some, this increase in flows

between cultural centres has caused a shift in values towards ones based on a more

global conception of self (Beck, 2006; Delanty, 2006; Savage et al., 2005). However, I have

argued in this thesis that, when we look at the context of my participants’ narratives,

valuing international and desiring contact with a foreign other, we can identify a markedly

different underlying discourse. These apparently ‘cosmopolitan’ narratives were focused

primarily on the West and constitute a system of deterritorialised cultural capital whose

underlying logic is the assumed superiority of the West, in which being ‘civilised’

invariably involves being Western. This narrative can be seen in Thailand’s history of a

close-but-unequal relationship with the British empire (Kitiarsa, 2010; Peleggi, 2002), and

the Western-oriented discourses of progress that are commonplace in research into

Thailand’s relationship with the West (Kitiarsa, 2010; Peleggi, 2002; Winichakul, 2010, 2000).

There is a power imbalance within the East/West relationship which is not accounted for

in the concept of cosmopolitanism, which tends to assume a relatively flat field of power,

or at least does not address power relations very directly (Beck 2006, Savage et al, 2005,

Nava, 2007, Nussbaum and Cohen 2002). This criticism also applies to Pöllmann’s (2013,

2009) related concept of intercultural capital, in which the value of intercultural contact is

ascribed to its intercultural nature rather than the power inequalities, giving greater

cultural value to the interlocutor. In this section, I will show that historical power

inequalities matter a great deal in constructing the participants’ perceptions of the West.

Specifically, I examine the context of the participants’ interactions with the international

other, and how past colonial interactions impacts on the construction of the participants’

conception of the West. To do this, an approach that takes account of the colonial

discourses that have shaped contemporary Thai views of the West is required.

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As discussed in Chapter 2, the historical literature on the Thai interaction with the colonial

powers indicates that Thai narratives of the Occident have been mediated by imageries,

goods and services created by the West (Carrier, 1995; Herzfeld, 2010; Kitiarsa, 2010).

Postcolonial analysis of Thailand has faced criticism in the past, as those who take the

concept at face value argue that it does not apply to Thailand’s situation, as Thailand was

never officially colonised (Herzfeld, 2010). However, it has also been contended that

Siam/Thailand is a semi-colonial hybrid, a country which was never officially a colony, but

still suffer from immense power disparity in its relationship with colonial powers (Jackson,

2008; Winichakul, 2000). The semi-colonial hybridity of Thailand’s frame of reference to

the West was created through the voluntary adoption of a colonial mode of governance

and its casting as a more siwilai and charoen way of life (Winichakul, 2000). Given this, I

would argue that within a Thai context, there is explanatory value in theories normally

applied to postcolonial societies, in particular those of hybridity: which address the ways

in which cultures of the colonisers are appropriated as a means to resist colonial control

(Bhabha, 2004), or co-opted as a means of internal control (Canclini et al., 1995). This

process of hybridisation is often mediated through consumption (Friedman, 1994; Ger

and Belk, 1996; O’Dougherty, 2002; Üstüner and Holt, 2010). As a result, McClintock’s

(2013) study of colonial discourses surrounding Imperial commodities can also be applied

to the Thai situation.

To begin my discussion of how the sample participants perceived their relationship with

the West, I consider the reasons why people chose to pursue their studies in their specific

universities and countries. This analysis needs to bear in mind how Thailand’s past

interactions with colonial powers have informed these choices. As discussed in the

previous chapter, these reasons were often portrayed by the participants as pragmatic

and result-oriented, particularly among the Thai-schooled participants. For those who

chose to go to the UK for a master’s degree after a Thai bachelor’s degree (the majority of

the participants), this was seen as the quickest, and cheaper, option.

As for England, the good point that made me want to go study there is that you

only study for a year there. So like, we only use up a year's worth of time, and we

can use the other year that we saved - compared to the US because you have to

study for two years in the US right? (Lisa, TS).

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While some of these choices were pragmatic, as discussed in the previous chapter, there

were other reasons raised by TS participants which were less pragmatic. This reasoning

revealed the colonially-informed assumptions underlying the ostensible pragmatism of

the participants. For example, Casey offered another perspective on ‘why England’ aside

from the ‘because a UK master’s degree takes only a year’ reason. To provide context,

this quote was a reply to the question ‘why not another Anglophone country?’

Because in the beginning, people [in Canada/Australia/NZ] came from England

right? It is the centre of architecture, the centre of art, things like that mainly

came from there. So, I thought I wanted to be there. And like I said, it was like the

gateway to Europe, so when I am there, if I want to go to a European country, it

would be easy for me (Casey, TS).

Sam, also a TS participant, made similar comments when he was asked why he would

‘have to’ (his words) think of England first when it came to an Anglophone education.

Because they are the owner of the language? That is all, nothing else…*laughs*

(Sam, TS).

In these quotes we can see a theme common to many in the sample: the idea that Britain

– specifically England – is seen as the originator of Anglophone culture. This theme was

echoed by the majority of TS participants. However two of my Thai-schooled participants

– Glenn and Anna – chose the United States in contrast to the majority of the Thai-

schooled participants. They gave similar reasons: suggesting there are too many Thai

people in Britain. Glenn wanted to avoid the Thai community in Britain, based on the

experiences of his friends. In the previous chapter, I discussed the longing for other Thai

people as one of the ways participants chose to deal with the dread of habitus/field

disjuncture, but for Glenn and Anna this was narrated as something to avoid.

From what I know there are a lot of Thai people in England. So… From the

experiences of my friends, you cannot avoid being in the Thai community even if

you want to maximise your English (Glenn, TS).

Glenn said that he wanted to avoid the Thai community, ‘because we are social animals I

will have to socialise with other Thai people who will welcome us with open arms as a

matter of course’ (Glenn, TS); fearing he would have difficulty fitting in with Westerners.

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Glenn’s reasoning reflects an anxiety over his ability to fit in, and he chose to remove the

temptation of socialising with co-nationals by going somewhere where he thought there

would be no other Thai people. Anna, a TS participant, made the same point as she

explained why she chose to go to the United States, based on her experience in a high

school exchange programme with the UK.

Most of the famous universities are in London right? And London has a lot of Thai

people until it is like...I suspect that I will only meet Thai people, like where ever I

would walk I would bump into Thai people (anna, TS).

Both Casey and Sam’s reasons for going to the UK, and Anna and Glenn’s reasons for

going to the US, all shared the same desire for an authentic experience of the West. In the

case of Casey and Sam, their desires for authenticity took them to the place they saw as

the ‘home’ of anglophone culture. For Anna and Glenn, their search for an authentic

experience took them to a place where they believe they would be far away from other

Thai people allowing them to immerse themselves in the Western lifestyle. This notion of

authenticity, of purity of experience, feeds in to how notions of the ‘Western lifestyle

myth’ (Üstüner and Holt, 2010) gives power to deterritorialised cultural capital. Üstüner

and Holt argue that in exercising deterritorialised cultural capital, individuals with high

cultural capital tend to compete on the basis of the sophistication of their consumption of

Western culture (Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 52). In this chapter and the previous one, I

have illustrated the importance that participants from all educational backgrounds gave

to doing international education ‘properly’, and having an ‘authentic’ Western

experience. In this way, the participants’ ability to claim the ‘authenticity’ of their

experience of Western culture, and whether or not they did international education

‘properly’, lent credibility to their claims of a more nuanced understanding of Western

culture upon their return to Thailand, enhancing their proximity to that source of cultural

capital.

This valorisation of Western-ness is the key difference we can identify when we compare

the narratives of the Thai students with those found in studies on Western international

students who have studied in other Western countries. Brooks and Waters’ (2009)

research found that British international students viewed international education as a

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‘second chance’ if they could not get into prestigious institutions at home, seeing their

selected foreign institution not as a superior alternative, but an acceptable equivalent:

A number of participants similarly perceived education overseas as a way of

avoiding ‘failure’ (or potential failure) ‘at home’. Another sixth-form participant,

Oliver, was interested in applying to Oxbridge (i.e. Oxford or Cambridge

Universities) but became concerned that ‘it’s really hard to get there’ and so had

settled on an overseas alternative, claiming that: ‘apparently there are more

places in American universities, so it’s easier to get [in] there’. Like Jessica, he was

thinking only of the ‘top’ US institutions (again Harvard, Princeton and Yale) as

these were perceived to offer an acceptable alternative to Oxbridge (Brooks and

Waters, 2009a, p. 199).

The difference to the perspective of the Thai students is especially visible when the above

quote is contrasted with Casey’s narrative on the value of the status of the Dek Nork45 and

why they are different from ordinary people:

I just think about the brand, the connections and how people would perceive me

after coming back. I felt that Dek Nork has seen more of the world, have seen

more of a varied world, have been out of the Kala [lit.trans: coconut shell, often

used as a metaphor for being closed off in a narrow world] more often, more open

to things, less narrow-minded. (Casey, TS)

When I asked her to explain this further, she described it in terms of having seen and

done things that are different.

[If] someone is happy with staying in Thailand and think that they are happy then

it is not important to them. but, to someone who have been I would think of how

much it changed my life, and if I could reverse time, I would still choose to go. […]

before I went, I had no expectations it is like... going to rest, to study, thinking like

a kid. But when I came back it changed my life, my perspectives, my world views,

how I see other people, how I live my life and... and... opportunities that came by

through my changed perspectives. (Casey, TS)

45

Dek Nork: literally ‘Outside Child’, someone who is educated overseas while younger

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The ‘widening of world view’ narrative found here and in many other of the participants’

narratives, is similar to that found by Snee (2013) in her study of British gap year

students. In line with my own conclusions, Snee argues that, rather than being indicative

of cosmopolitan openness, the narrative instead suggests a reproduction of existing value

systems. For while her participants were keen to widen their world view through foreign

travel, they are still reproducing established discourses of foreign otherness.

On the other hand, established discourses are reproduced of an ‘Other’ that is

exoticized, romanticized, or even criticized. We might see this as a globally

reproductive element. The participants are not either/or when narrating their

encounters with place; this is a continuum that is negotiated. Their blog accounts

suggest there is a greater tendency towards more habitual ways of consuming

places using pre-established notions of value, for example resonating with ideas

about ‘good taste’, (Bourdieu, 1984) rather than providing examples of Giddens’s

(1991) ‘cosmopolitan person’ (Snee, 2013, p. 158).

Snee’s findings suggest that encounters with foreign otherness need to be contextualised

within the established discourses of the fields in which the participants consider home.

Therefore, any interpretations that equate experiences of the foreign other with

moments of cosmopolitan openness or global reflexivity needs to be paired with evidence

of ‘sustained reflexive engagement’ (Snee, 2013, p. 159). As in Snee’s research, the

narratives of the participants in this thesis rely on their established cultural frames rather

than any form of reflexive engagement. This can be seen in the way discourses of charoen

and siwilai have coloured the participants’ perception of the West. The participants’

narratives about the value of Western education can thus be taken as a reference to their

conception of the farang other as to what constitutes ‘civilisation’. This can be seen in the

common set of assumptions about the West frequently articulated in Thailand. Many of

the Thai-schooled participants went overseas with these assumptions in their heads.

When asked about his impression of British society, Anton, a Thai schooled participant

said that:

I did not see any stray dogs. I only see squirrels *laugh* it is still better, it is cuter

and more orderly not like the stray dogs at home. I never see any stray dogs there,

maybe a fox once in a while. Once in a very long while, I may have only seen it

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once running across the street, mostly just squirrels. I feel that it is clean,

disciplined, unlike Thailand (Anton, TS).

As discussed in the previous chapter, this idea of cleanliness and orderliness and its

contrast with Thailand, was common among the Thai-schooled participants. Mentioned

there was Sam, a Thai schooled participant, if there were anything he found odd when he

first arrived overseas, it was a surprise that London was not clean.

And Anika who talked of Britain as ‘muang phudee’ or ‘land of the genteel46’.

Similarly, Glenn was disappointed that his host country – America – claims the status of a

developed nation, but does not live up to these ideals.

Another thing I was shocked by… yes, I thought America, the country that claims

that it is a developed country would be cleaner (Glenn, TS).

When I asked him to elaborate further, asking whether cleanliness is an indicator of how

‘developed’ a country is, he added his surprise at the lack of order as well.

Yes. And I thought that the crime rate should be lower like there were reports

that… kids getting robbed, stabbed, shot. In a month, there would be at least

three incidents. And I think that… It is not right (Glenn, TS).

The idea of cleanliness and order appeared quite frequently throughout my discussions

with my participants – particularly for the TS participants for whom the West had not

been quite as normalised in their perceptions as for the IS and OS participants. In the

three examples above, aside from ‘clean and orderly’ there was also a third theme – the

comparison to Thailand (whether it was to state that Thailand is inferior, or the surprise

to find out that it was not inferior). Although comparisons to one’s home country during

one’s travels might not be surprising, it is interesting that these comparisons occurred

alongside the dual themes of cleanliness and order.

The idea of cleanliness and orderliness was firmly locked into TS participants’ perception

of the West, with the assumption that either the West is cleaner and more orderly than

Thailand, or that ‘the West’ claims to be more developed by asserting that they are

46

A very common slang reference to England.

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cleaner and more orderly than Thailand. The crucial point here is that there was a

generalised belief that the West should be more developed and civilised, within a certain

framework of what the participants believe development and civility ought to look like –

clean, ordered, and disciplined.

This idea of cleanliness and order is also reflected in the Turkish view of the West.

(Üstüner and Holt, 2010), suggesting that these perceptions are part and parcel of how

the West historically has presented itself. These discourses of order, discipline and

cleanliness articulated by the participants in this thesis (and also found in Üstüner and

Holt’s participants) is notable in that they echo how Imperial commodities has been

presented within Victorian Britain. In ‘Imperial Leather’ McClintock argues that Victorian

advertisements helped to reinforce and distribute imperial narratives, using examples

such as the advertisement for Pear’s soap, where “dirt, waste and disorder” is

transformed in to “cleanliness, rationality and Industry” (McClintock, 2013, p. 217), which

carries over to transmitting an image to the outside world of the imperial West being a

place which embodied cleanliness and discipline. Aside from the advertisement in Pears’

soap, McClintock also demonstrated that the ideas of cleanliness, order, and thus the

superiority of Western civilization, was interwoven in to the branding of all imperial

domestic commodities (McClintock, 2013). While McClintock’s research was focused on

domestic advertisement, it is clear from the above quotes from my participants and

Üstüner and Holt’s research that similar messages have made its way across national

borders, and became embedded in the ‘Western lifestyle myth’ of other countries. In the

Thai case, Winichaikul (2000) suggests that such ideas of the West have travelled to

Thailand through popular culture of the late 19th and early 20th century. At the time,

magazines about the West, and travelogues written by Thais who had travelled to, or

studied in the West were popular reading materials and via their lens, ‘the trope of

Europe as the desirable model for siwilai was confirmed’ (ibid, p. 539). As such, it is

possible that ideas of cleanliness, order and discipline became part of the Thai discourse

on the west through these magazines and travelogues.

This historical link shows that the way the West has represented itself, both past and

present, have engendered a certain image of ‘the West’ which has in turn engendered a

particular set of values linked to the consumption of Western modernity. The idea that

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one can become more charoen, more siwilai by being educated in the West is couched

within the same imageries that resulted in my sample’s stylised conception of what

England and America ought to be like. The value of Western education as a form of

deterritorialised cultural capital is rooted in historically informed imageries of the West,

mediated through the consumption of Western consumer goods. This framing can be

seen in the participants’ discourse of what they had expected to find in the West, and by

conceiving the West as a more powerful, more civilised other. The participants in turn

then ‘buy in’ to and reproduce a narrative in which the West's charoeness becomes the

source of the value of their Western education. This helps explain why, unlike Brooks and

Waters’ (2009) British participants, who saw elite universities in other Western countries

as equal, more easily accessible substitutes to a local elite university, the Thai participants

in my thesis saw any Western institution as superior to any domestic institution, simply

due to the virtue of its Western-ness. However, this is not to say that deterritorialised

cultural capital is valued in every facet of life. Indeed, as noted in Kitiarsa’s study of the

use of the term farang, the term refers to a construction of the Western other as both a

superior and suspicious other (Kitiarsa, 2010). In the next section, I discuss the limits of

deterritorialised cultural capital, arguing that the thai ‘western lifestyle myth’ was created

through a process of intellectual bifurcation, which is simultaneously responsible for the

discourses that gives deterritorialised cultural capital its power, as well as discourses that

limits deterritorialised cultural capital’s power.

4. Intellectual Bifurcation and the West

In this section, I follow up on the point of the West as a ‘superior but suspicious’ other

made in the previous section by demonstrating the various ways in which my participants’

valued Western culture but still saw it as potentially damaging or inferior in certain

aspects to Thai culture. The first question I will address is how was this reconciled in the

participants’ interpretative frame. I discuss this using Chatterjee’s (1993) framework of

intellectual bifurcationsim – a frame of thought which splits the social world in to a half

where the west’s superiority can apply, and a half in which it cannot. I argue that because

of the inherent ambiguity of an intellectually bifurcated field, any attempt to apply

concepts of deterritorialised cultural capital cannot be done wholesale, and must take in

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to consideration the specific limitations placed on deterritorialised cultural capital within

certain contexts.

My starting point for this discussion, as flagged in Chapter 5, is the narrative linking

‘family’ and ‘Thai culture’ which is prevalent in Thai discourse. Whatever else the

participants might say about Thailand being inferior to the West, this was never extended

to the family as an institution, and the family was seen to be an intrinsic – highly valued

and culturally superior- part of Thai culture. While there is an infatuation with

experiences of the West, this high valuation of the West results in the devaluing of one’s

own national culture which can be potentially challenging for self-identity. However

discourses of Thai family values countered this. With the use of Chatterjee’s (1993)

concept of intellectual bifurcationism, the historical roots and the impact of such a way of

thought becomes clearer. The hierarchical nature of the Thai relationship with the West

means that there is always a possibility that this superior but suspicious other could

choose, at will to become an irresistible existential threat. Chatterjee’s (1993) work in

Bengal identified a similar dilemma. To deal with this perceived existential crisis, the

nationalist discourses of his Bengal subjects create a ‘bifurcation’ between the inner and

the outer, the material and the spiritual. In this discourse, the West was seen as

demonstrably materially superior, with their technological prowess and know-how, yet

simultaneously, they could not understand – nor conquer – the superior spiritual essence

of the national self. Chatterjee saw this as ‘an ideological justification for the selective

appropriation of Western modernity’ (1993, p. 120) in that it provides a framework where

Western ideas and things could be appropriated without threatening the ‘core essence’ of

their nationhood. Winichakul also applied this concept to historical texts in Thailand, and

noted that bifurcation seems to be an intellectual means by which colonial and

postcolonial subjects try to ‘negotiate between the power of the modern West and the

persistent strength of local culture and identity’ (Winichakul, 2010, Kindle location 3583).

Such bifurcation between the superiority of Western order and civilisation and the

countervailing superiority of Thai moral, family and spiritual values, can be seen in my

discussions with my participants where they revealed there were certain contextual

limitations to the application of their deterritorialised cultural capital. During my

conversations with Glenn, a Thai schooled participant, he talked about the rigidity of

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hierarchy in Thailand on two occasions, in the first context he viewed it as a good thing, in

the second a bad thing. In the first quote, he spoke of why felt he ‘had to’ come back to

Thailand after his overseas study.

Why do I have to? Okay, one, my parents want me to return and that connects to

number two which is that I am Thai, so I love Thai culture as a matter of course.

Even though I have an appreciation for Western culture be they American or

British,[…] they lack things that Thai culture has, for example respect for one's

elders and being […] humble. This is unlike the white people who have to be loud

and outspoken so that other people would know what they are talking about, but

Thai people are not like that (Glenn, TS).

Above, Glenn links hierarchical rigidity with his respect for his familial elders, his

obedience to his parent’s wishes, and the fact that he is Thai and he loves Thai culture.

This places his sense of Thailand’s hierarchical rigidity positively within the family context

– a context which is firmly constitutive of Thai-ness (as discussed in Chapter 4), and which

makes it unassailable by Western sensibilities. However, when put into a professional

context his views changed far enough that he cast Thailand as ‘less developed’. Here,

Glenn explains why he feels hierarchical rigidity makes Thailand less developed than the

West.

Hierarchy is of very high importance in Thailand, and I feel that this slows down is

both business and ordinary life […] compared to an American organisation, where

we can just go straight to the management level person without being afraid of

society going against us. […] The way information transmission was in Thailand is

that it must pass through several people and we do not know what that person

would be like, will they be smart or stupid? Did they receive our information? Was

it unclear and they ended up making errors in retransmitting that information?

(Glenn, TS)

These extracts illustrate the bifurcatory discourse that Glenn employs. Even though he

‘loves Thai culture as a matter of course’ in the first quotation and valorises the ideals of

humbleness, respect for one’s elders, when these concepts are applied on a professional

level, they simultaneously become the things which make Thailand ‘less developed’.

Glenn’s account provide a clear example of the bifurcation in the participant’s narrative,

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recognising on the one hand Western attributes which would be looked upon with favour

in the professional world, but were simultaneously negative within the Thai cultural

interior (which is seen to exclude the professional world).

Jessica, an overseas schooled participant, framed her recollection of her experience of

being in the United States from a very young age by describing her sense of self in a

dichotomous, bifurcatory way. She saw a Westernised and Americanized side, as well as a

Thai-Chinese47 side to her sense of self (part of Jessica’s family is from Thailand’s ethnic

Chinese minority).

It was important, especially to my mom that she... umm... instilled sort of values

that are important in Thai culture, Chinese- Thai culture. I think that got through

to me, and I embraced it. I did not reject it. I knew it was not the case for my sister

who went even younger than I did um... but yes, I have a....yes, yes I am

Westernised and Americanised, but a good chunk of me is very much based in

Thai and Chinese culture (Jessica, OS)

In this example, Jessica’s represents her post-education selfhood as being comprised of

two halves, a Thai-Chinese half and a Western/American half, following the same logic as

that of intellectual bifurcation. These examples of bifurcatory logic can be seen as a form

of symbolic violence that simultaneously acts as a defence against that itself. What I

mean by this is that the intellectual bifurcaitonism simultaneously asserts Western

modernity as being superior, and thus a source of cultural capital. At the same time, the

narrative of a ‘spiritual’ sphere could be seen as a forms a defence against that first

symbolic violence, an attempt to contain the exercise and perception of western

superiority to particular social fields. The categories of difference discussed here are

entirely arbitrary, a difference based on a perceived distinction between the Western

other and the Thai we/us. This arbitrary distinction constrains the applicability of

Western-derived deterritorialised cultural capital to fields which are also of Western

origin. This bifurcatory symbolic violence also creates a delicate balance between the

desire of the elite to be able to utilise Western things and discourses of progress as 47

Thailand, and Bangkok in particular, have a large Chinese minority, and the Thai interpretation of Chinese culture still play a large part in the Thai cultural life, much like the way American interpretation of Irish culture still play a large part in the cultural life of places like Boston, Massachusetts. The Chinese minority has integrated in to Bangkok society to the extent that one would be hard-pressed to find a Bangkokian without a Chinese ancestor.

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cultural capital, and yet still be able to maintain the traditional and spiritually valued

order of things, as was discussed by O’Corner (2003) in his study on Thai urbanism.

The Thai adapted modernity to suit their own ways, even strengthening some

traditional structures. We might say the Thai imported the parts, assembled the

Mercedes themselves, and then used it to display status for traditional ends

(O’Connor, 2003, p. 252)

O’Connor’s assertion that western modernity has been appropriated, and used to uphold

traditional power structures is also echoed by several others (Herzfeld, 2010; Jackson,

2008; Winichakul, 2000). As discussed in chapter 2, when seen in terms of Canclini’s

(1995) notion of hybridity as a means of hegemonic control through selectively

hybridising aspects of western modernity that would benefit a post-colonial society’s

elite, bifurcationism could be regarded as a form of selective hybridity. In the case of my

participants, the narratives above indicate the possibility that powerful members of the

elite could be able to control the discourses that determine what part of Western

modernity is acceptable to them. This, in turn, shapes the general framing of Western

modernity as seen in the participants’ narratives.

Some of my participants’ narratives of their job search upon their return to Thailand

indicated that the border that defines what is Thai and Foreign is not a clear-cut one, that,

within the logic of the bifurcation between Thai-ness and Western-ness, there is enough

ambiguity where conflict regarding what does and does not constitute Thai-ness can

occur. Glenn’s quote from above gives a clue to the fact that Thai-ness can be criticised,

but it is something that must be done within a hybrid space – in this example, the Thai

business/company; a ‘Thai’ entity that exists within the field of capitalistic commerce, a

‘foreign’ import. Before finding her current employment (at the time of interview), Anika,

a TS participant, had struggled with accepting Thai ways of doing business, which to her

seemed unfair. She was upset when a prospective employer refused to let her see her

contract before the signing day.

When I asked to see my contract, they said no. I asked why they said that I could

see it on my signing day, they said that ‘maybe nong [little sibling] never worked in

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Thailand, so you do not know our system’. I also have to put down a deposit48 I did

not even have to touch money in the job, […] I said... in that case, I am not happy

because it is not what I am used to. They say ‘this is Thailand, you will not be able

to get what you want anywhere’ (Anika, TS).

Anika did not take the job and eventually found work with a company with Western

management. She seemed a lot happier working there, with her personal account

suggesting that with her Western manager there appeared to be more of mutual respect

and agreement rather than a top-down power play, as in the example of the lack of

transparency with the contract.49 This was a common theme, with a general aversion to

working for ‘Thai’ companies among the participants. Not all of these aversions were

fuelled by vivid bad experiences like Anika’s, some were formed by their preconceived

notions, as when Jeff was applying for jobs and found himself more attracted to foreign

companies because they seemed more ‘open’.

They are willing to listen, they listen, and they are not like closed off or are critical

and say that it should be done this way, or it should be this way, and they listen so

ok, I do not know what they think but it was like they did not block me (Jeff, TS)

Or take Helen’s case, where an internship at a Thai company left a bad taste in her

mouth, because of what she saw as resistance to change that a colleague was trying to

implement

From my internship, I could sense that Ashley could not really get along with the

people who have already been there because Ashley wanted to implement a new

computer system there but… the people who were already there are like… they

are not happy that Ashley has just come in and suddenly have this power to

change things. It was uncomfortable; I cannot quite explain it (Helen, TS).

In all these cases, though the personal reasons are different, they share a common

thread. Each of these individuals referred to the problematic companies as ‘Thai’

companies, standing in opposition to the superior practices of foreign, international or

48

It is a common practice for retail workers in Thailand to have to put down a deposit as a guarantee against theft by themselves. 49

This exchange involved a lot of side-tracking and back and forth between Grace and myself, for the sake of brevity I chose to summarize the conversation here.

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multinational corporations. It was not that these positively viewed ‘international’

companies were always Western managed or owned, rather it was that they needed to

be perceived as Western in outlook and operation. Take, for example, how Anna talked

about the company she ended up working for:

The [company] that I work for is Thai, but they are like... the founding partners

used to work for [a field-leading western company], and they are like... fed up

with [industry] life that's... too much. […] This was one of the [companies] that I

wanted to work for because the scale of the job is as large as the international

[companies], but my life is better... it is is not as... wretched. *laugh* (Anna, TS)

Lisa, who did not specifically mention ‘international’ companies, made her (negative)

judgement of the ‘Thai-ness’ of a company based on whether or not they interviewed her

in English. If they did not, then they were ‘too Thai’.

It is too Thai... like, the companies I apply to, almost a hundred percent of them

would interview me in English, there's some Thai like at first, the interview would

be in English, and then they would change to Thai (Lisa, TS).

The ‘Thai-ness’ and ‘internationalness’ of companies was not quite clear-cut in the

sample’s accounts. With the right outlook, a company of Thai origin could be

‘international’, and as a result viewed more positively. The mixed and uncertain nature of

the field of commerce thus created a situation where there is sufficient ambiguity that

Thai-ness could be questioned. With a bifurcatory logic in place, the interface between

the local and the global takes on a whole new meaning. Through the framework of

intellectual bifurcationalism, the local has been constructed as part and parcel of national

identity. This means attempts to globalise the local can be cast as attempts to dilute that

national identity. This view of the ‘local’ influenced the form of reflexivity towards foreign

others seen demonstrated by the participants’ accounts thus far. It shows that the

participants did not see seeing the world as the co-equal localities as discussed in

cosmopolitan literature (e.g. Beck, 2006; Nava, 2007; Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002; Savage

et al., 2005). Rather, my sample’s views of foreign others were entrenched within a frame

of reference that casts the local as an inferior place into which superior things and

practices could be imported from the Western other.

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Additionally, while the participants’ utilisation of international education fits with the

concept of deterritorialised cultural capital, acceptance is not always guaranteed. The

bifurcation between Thai-ness and Western-ness shows that there were certain fields

where others could challenge their Western-derived cultural capital by invoking Thai-

ness. The excerpts from my samples’ narrative in this chapter and the previous chapter

demonstrate that international education provides a form of deterritorialised cultural

capital within the Thai context. By having been educated overseas, the participants felt

they would be seen as having a better education than a Thai-educated individual. This in

turn would help them be more able to engage with Western culture and language,

strengthening their job market appeal. However, as can be seen in the quotes above, as

the participants try to enter the employment market, they came in to conflict with

companies or individuals within companies that would attempt to highlight the Thai-ness

of their companies to insist upon the participants (or in Helen’s case her friend) fitting in

to the established power structure. In the end, these participants purposefully sought out

companies that were more ‘international’ in their outlook. This discourse of conflict,

ambivalence and disagreement about the place of Thai-ness within the professional fields

highlights how bifurcation was not a straightforward exercise, resulting in ambiguities

where Thai-ness could be questioned. Because of this lack of straightforwardness, the

applicability of the participants’ deterritorialised cultural capital should not be taken as a

given, that studies in to deterritorialised forms of cultural capital should be mindful of not

only a society’s ‘western lifestyle myth’ but also the contexts in which deterritorialised

cultural capital can and cannot be applied. In the case of my sample, Thailand’s western

lifestyle myth of charoeness and siwilai has been applied within the context of a social

order where ‘[bifurcation] has become so elemental and familiar that it has unconsciously

dictated the terms by which other strategies are understood and employed’ (Winichakul,

2010, kindle location 3684). This means that the application of deterritorialised cultural

capital in Thailand needs to be done within the context of this bifurcation, and as a result,

needs to consider the ambivalence of other actors who interpret a particular field as

‘Thai’ in nature, questioning the value of Western-derived cultural capital in that

particular field. As such, any future research in to the use of deterritorialised cultural

capital of a particular society, needs to consider that society’s ‘Western lifestyle myth’,

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alongside the manner and context in which it is applied in that society’s engagement the

West.

5. Conclusion

This chapter has expanded on the previous chapter’s assertion of the importance of a

participants’ conceptual frame when considering cosmopolitanism as a possible

explanation for the value of international education. In this chapter, I argued that the

participants’valuation of Western-derived deterritorialised cultural capital can be linked

back to discourses of charoeness and siwilai. I showed that these discourses reproduce a

set of historically informed assumptions about the West which fuels the value of Western

education, similar to what Üstüner and Holt (2010) refer to as the ‘Western lifestyle

myth’. I then went on to argue that due to the bifurcated nature of Thai discourses

regarding the West, as shown in (Jackson, 2008; Winichakul, 2010), there are limitations

in where and when deterritorialised cultural capital is valued. This was in turn reflected in

the way participants talk about their families.

I first examined TS participants’ narrative of English fluency as a major advantage of

having an international education. On the surface this value of English fluency could be

seen as a part of the participants’ desire for greater connectivity with foreign others, yet

when examined more closely, the participants’ narratives instead aligned more closely

with a desire to engage with a very specific Western other, as discussed in the previous

chapter. When studied in detail, the participants' valorisation of English fluency is linked

to their perceived ability to perform Western-ness. As Üstüner and Holt (2010) have

suggested, the production and reproduction of deterritorialised cultural capital is ‘based

upon the ability to properly interpret, learn, internalize, and then enact the consumption

of a distant other’(Üstüner and Holt, 2010, p. 50). By becoming fluent in English, the

participants felt they could become closer to and better able to interpret ‘the distant

other’ – in this case the anglophone West. This is markedly different from a British

international student’s interpretation of elite international institutions being an

acceptable and equal substitute for local elite institutions (Brooks and Waters, 2009a). In

contrast, the Thai international students in this study saw international education as an

avenue to gaining deterritorialised cultural capital through their experiences of the West.

Implicit in this was the assumption that these Western institutions were automatically

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superior to anything at home. This difference in narrative between British and Thai

international students showcases the importance that local and post-colonial interpretive

frames have on the way people interact with a foreign other.

The participants’ narratives of their international education demonstrates a link to past

studies on civilizational discourses in Thailand (Winichakul, 2000). It also shows the same

frame of reference on Western otherness as a source of cultural capital as described in

Moerman’s (1964) study of the use of Western goods in rural Thailand in the 1960’s.

Furthermore, the link between international education and past civilizational discourses

within the participants’ narratives shows that the Thai frame of reference towards the

West is rooted in a power structure which in turn is linked to a semi-colonial past.

Through the examination of the recurring theme of the cleanliness and order of the West

which is inherent in the sample’s accounts in this study (and also found in Üstüner and

Holt’s [2010] Turkish research), I have argued that historical representations of the West

continue to inform the participants’ contemporary frame of reference. McClintock’s

(2013) work has demonstrated how the representation of the imperial self as clean,

ordered, and disciplined suffused the discourses surrounding consumer goods that came

out of the West. Such processes, have clearly influenced the Thai notion of what it means

to be charoen and siwilai. Indeed, such concepts are so firmly established that some

participants were of the impression that their Western host societies were supposed to

be clean, ordered, and disciplined. The value of Western education as cultural capital is

deeply rooted in historically informed images of the West as culturally (if not morally)

superior, so that the West's assumed charoeness became a source of value for the

sample’s Western education.

However, the nature of intellectual bifurcations as simultaneously a form of symbolic

violence and a defence against that symbolic violence complicates the analysis of

international education as a form of cultural capital. While this bifurcation gives value to

Western deterritorialised cultural capital, it also sets up barriers for the deployment of

those capitals. This is demonstrated via the participants’ discourses on their families and

their job hunting experiences. As a conclusion to these contrasting aspects of bifurcation,

one needs to be careful when ascribing value to deterritorialised cultural capital in a field

where the West has been conceived as both an existential threat and a potential source

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of civility and advancement (Kitiarsa, 2010). Again, this was highlighted through the

participants’ discourses of their job hunting experience, which brought to the forefront

the ambiguity of the intellectual bifurcations within the field of Thai commerce. The

participants’ accounts demonstrated an innate conflict between the participants who see

value in ‘international’ ways of doing business, and firms (or employees of those firms)

who see the established ways of doing business as a part of the Thai-ness of their identity.

Therefore, when analysing the use of the ‘Western lifestyle myth’ as a deterritorialised

form of cultural capital, one needs to bear in mind not only a society’s Western lifestyle

myth but also how that myth is variably applied in the differing contexts of that society’s

engagement with the West.

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Chapter 7: Conclusion

1. Introduction

This thesis investigates the practice of international education among Thailand’s elites,

examining international education as a form of strategy that is used to maintain or

enhance an elite’s status through the importation of deterritorialised cultural capital. In

studying the relationship between the Thai elite and foreign education, I have explored

three main research questions. The first question is: ‘What role does foreign education

play in status reproduction for elite families in Thailand?’ The second research question is

‘How does international education function as a mode of distinction for elite Thais?’

Finally, the third and final question is: ‘To what extent has Thailand’s semi-colonial

experience shaped the participants’ perception of Western modernity in general, and

Western education in particular, as a mode of distinction?’ Employing a research strategy

of in-depth semi-structured interviews with a sample of elite former international

students, I have examined the logic and discourses behind the participants’ decision to

study overseas, their perceptions and practices while studying overseas, and how they

deployed their new-found cultural capital upon their return to Thailand. These narratives

were then analysed with respect to historical references outlining the ways in which

Siamese/Thai elites have employed western-derived cultural capitals as status symbols in

the past. I have demonstrated a link between these historical engagements with western

modernity to the contemporary practice of international education among Thailand’s

elite, showing how these these historically informed discourses have shaped the

participants’ assumptions of the west and their educational strategies, in which their

choices have been shaped by their perception of a international hierarchy of culture, with

western tertiary institutions seen as automatically superior to Thai institutions.

In this chapter, I discuss the main conclusions of my research. I address the broad

theoretical context in which this research makes a contribution, discuss the main

theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies adopted in the study and

summarise the main findings revealed by the research. I then reflect in greater detail on

how the findings of this research makes a contribution to debates in the field of

international education, international cultural capital and cosmopolitanism but also in

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terms of the analysis of post-colonialism and global inequalities, an analysis which must

take a distinctive twist because of the particular nature of Thailand’s ‘semi-colonial’

relationship with the West. Finally, I conclude with some final reflections on the

implications of conducting this research.

2. Theorising and Researching International Education

Chapter 1 outlined the history of how international education came to become a part of

the Thai elite’s educational strategy. It demonstrated a link between the Thai practice of

international education to Siam/Thailand’s past interactions with Western powers. I

showed how the practice of sending princes and promising bureaucrats to school and

universities in the West by the Siamese government in the 19th century has created a

valorisation of Western education and has established a cultural precedent for Thai elites

to go to university overseas to ‘finish off’ their education.I discussed how the practice of

overseas education stemmed from 19th century Siamese elites adopting notions of

civilizational progress as a mode of distinction, justifying their position through their

familarity with western civilization and progress and casting Bangkok as the centre from

which civilization flows to the rest of the country (Peleggi, 2002; Winichakul, 2000).

Through the framing of western civilization as the pinnacle of ‘progress’, western

education came to be viewed as the best means to become familiar with a superior mode

of being, a source of cultural capital that fuled Siamese/Thai elite’s distinction until today.

Chapter 2 began with an overview of the state of the current body of research into

international education. I argued that whilst there is an extensive, and growing, body of

literature on this topic, much of the focus of this work is too instrumentally focused and

there has been a lack of consideration of the historical and structural influences that

shape international students’ experiences. With a growing market for international HE,

education research has increasingly examined study abroad, but with a main focus on the

impact on the receiving institutions and how they manage the integration of international

students. Within the current body of research, there is a shortage of attempts to situate

the students experiences within the context of how their frame of references was

constructed, or to consider how different national contexts and global - or post-colonial –

relationships affect this. I started with a discussion of the post-Second World War ‘U

Curve’ and ‘W Curve models, which essentially set up a model of the adjustment,

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assimilation and ‘culture shock’ experiences of overseas students (Anderson, 1994;

Bochner, 1982; Hotta and Ting-Toomey, 2013; Ward et al., 1998).

These early studies had a very narrow focus and have been largely dismissed as having a

weak empirical basis. The chapter then moved to discuss more recent perspectives on

international education literature arguing that this is split the into two main categories of

approach based on their different objectives. Firstly, are those approaches that focus on

students as ‘customers’, addressing questions of improving pastoral care for international

students (Brown and Holloway, 2008; Fritz et al., 2008; Ladd and Ruby, 1999). These

studies often adopt an institutional perspective, being more concerned with facilitating

how students accommodate to the institution than with wider questions of the motives

or cultural frame of reference of the students. The second category of research focuses

more on how students adapt to their own particular international education

circumstances (Brooks and Waters, 2009a, 2009b; Collins et al., 2016; Waters, 2006, 2005).

These studies adopt a more generalised research interest into why students choose to

study overseas, and how their lives have been affected afterwards, falling more in line

with the sociology of education tradition, and drawing on Bourdieusian theories of

education as a form of cultural capital, class competition and social reproduction. These

studies take a more student-centric approach, and have explored how international

students’ perception of their respective host institutions or countries have affected their

overseas education choices.

From a methodological perspective, this research also shows that in-depth qualitative

discussion with students can reveal the structural factors which influence their decisions.

Most significantly, in this research, we can identify a difference in the perceptions of

international education by British international students, as discussed in Brooks and

Waters’ (2009a, 2009b) research, compared to that of Hong Kong international students,

as discussed in Waters’ (2006) research. In both cases, overseas education was explained

as part of class competition in response to credential inflation, with higher cultural capital

resulting from international study, and with international higher education apart of a

larger global social system of inequality and privilege, with HE choice affected by family’s

economic and cultural capital, their habitus, and their social circles. However, there were

marked differences in the way the two groups of students perceived foreign education,

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with British students viewing international education in places such as Harvard or Yale as

on a par with Oxbridge, whereas the Hong Kong students saw foreign universities as the

superior choice to anything domestic. Such studies indicate that there is a fundamental

difference between the way Western students interact with international education

within the West and the way that post-colonial students interact with Western education.

These differences are not explored in any detail however, and I argued that the existing

literature on international students fails to properly examine the historical and structural

reasons behind why students from different national contexts perceive international

education in the way they do. My research with Thai students shows similar attitudes to

that of Brooks’ Hong Kong students, and suggests significant differences depending on

the global and post-colonial positioning of international students.

In response to the limitations in the existing literature on international education, I

therefore set out my theoretical framework with the intention on focusing analysis on

this crucial difference between western and non-western international students, in

particular to consider theoretical approaches which would help to examine the reasons

behind why East-to-West students view overseas education in this manner. I began by

reiterating the usefulness of Bourdieu’s work on cultural capital, tastes and distinction

(Bourdieu, 2002, 1984) for understanding Thai international students but also indicating

some important limitations. I discussed the usefulness of the Bourdieusian concepts of

cultural capital, habitus and distinction in studying the link between family and education

choices, which has been demonstrated in past educational choice research (e.g. Archer et

al., 2012; Ball et al., 1995; Reay, 1998). By using the family as a frame of reference to

discuss distinction and cultural capital, I demonstrated that it was necessary to expand on

Brooks and water’s (2009a, 2009b) concept of ‘global’ circuits of education, itself

originally an extension of Ball et al.’s (1995) concept of circuits of education.

The idea of circuits of education refers to the idea that social classes have different social

and cultural capitals, which shape their children’s habitus and expectations, and their

views and choices of education routes. Brooks and Waters extend this argument to

suggest that a minority of highly privileged young people are predisposed by their capitals

and habitus to engage in an international circuit of higher education. This thesis further

elaborates the idea of global circuits of education by suggesting we can also identify

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different (classed) circuits within international education, which we can identify by

examining different kinds of movements between international and national circuits. In

my research I have identified two distinct types of participants following different routes

into the international circuit: one highly elite group who have spent their entire lives in

the ‘international’ circuit and another less elite group who have been in a national circuit

but have consciously decided to ‘cross’ into the international circuit of education. In

making this distinction between the act of crossing from one circuit of education to

another , I show the value of Bourdieu’s identification of two modalities of cultural

competence (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 66). The first mode of cultural competence is acquired

through family contexts and early socialisation, a form of ‘total, early, imperceptible

learning’, and describes to the educational choices of my first group of participants, whilst

the second mode is more strategically and reflexively acquired, a ‘belated, methodical

learning’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 66) and best describes the second group in my sample. In

the context of this thesis, I argued that alertness is required to the question of how

cultural competences are acquired and embodied, in order to examine how different

participants go about their overseas education and to explore how this can be a means

for distinction amongst the internationally educated.

However, despite the usefulness of Bourdieu’s framework, I also pointed out a significant

shortcoming of the approach in its application to my research, because Bourdieu's

original work is focused on the study of a single society, and national fields, rather than

the relations between societies. We therefore need to consider how cultural

competencies and capitals cross national fields by exploring how cultural capital works in

an international or cosmopolitan context. To address this international dimension, I

discussed the potential of concepts such as intercultural capital (Pöllmann, 2013), which

focuses on the intercultural nature of interaction as the source of cultural capital. To

contrast this, I also discussed the concept of deterritorialised cultural capital (Üstüner and

Holt, 2010) which focuses more on how foreign others are constructed within a particular

field, and how that perception of the foreign other creates the value of cultural capital

derived from the practices and commodities associated with specific foreign others. One

way of thinking of overseas education is as a more global form of cultural capital, in which

studying abroad operates as a form of status consumption, and as a mode of distinction.

From this perspective studying abroad has value not just in intrinsic educational terms,

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but also because the study occurs overseas, and so acts as a status marker by virtue of

the economic, cultural and social capital required to achieve admission to an international

institution. This puts international education into a broader framework of international

status consumption. Üstüner and Holt (2010) argue that it is essential to take into account

global power inequalities to understand international status consumption. Their review of

cultural globalization research demonstrates that rather than a literal emulation of

Western consumption practices, the Western lifestyle adopted in what they term less-

industrialised countries (or LICs) is often ‘a myth constructed within the national

discourse of the LIC’ (2010, p. 39). The argument here is that the economic, political and

cultural dominance of the West means that such power relationships have strongly

influenced the structure of the consumption field in non-western countries, and given rise

to global cultural capital which is valued simply because it is from the West (and harder to

acquire) – a form of national distinction which draws on Western culture for its effect. In

their Turkish study, however, global status consumption also works differently to

Bourdieu’s account. Because global cultural capital is ‘deterritorialised’ it has to be learnt

(rather than dispositionally acquired) and is never an embedded aspect of the field, or

wholly embodied in the habitus in the way Bourdieu suggests. My own research supports

some of these arguments, but also indicates significant differences with elite

consumption of global cultural capital, with some forms less deterritorialised and

methodically acquired than others.

Another way of thinking of international cultural capital is Pöllmann's (Pöllmann, 2009,

2013)

notion of ‘intercultural capital’, defined as the ‘intercultural experiences and skills (e.g.

experience of living abroad, intercultural friendships, and language skills) that enable the

respective individual to competently engage in intercultural encounters’ (2009, p. 540).

For Pöllmann, the value of intercultural capital emerges because it crosses national

cultural fields, and provides ‘skills that allow their bearers to successfully compete in

global markets’ (ibid). But he is most focused on the potential impact of intercultural

capital on ‘intercultural tolerance and understanding in contemporary multicultural

societies’ (2009, p. 540),however so his emphasis is therefore more in line with Beck’s

notion of cosmopolitanism, and suggests a need to consider cosmopolitanism as an

analytical frame. This is particularly important considering my participants’ accounts of

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their overseas education stressed values like cultural openness and the desire to

experience personal development through the experience and exploration of foreign

others.

I began the consideration of cosmopolitanism by building an overall definition from

literature on the topic, which sees it as a mode of thought and action that presupposes a

world view that defines the local as a part of an interconnected, interdependent network

that forms the global, giving the individuala sense of belonging that is global (Beck, 2011;

Calhoun, 2008; Nava, 2007; Nussbaum and Cohen, 2002; Savage et al., 2005). Beck, for

example, speaks of a ‘cosmopolitan imperative’ in which global forces such as

international trade and technologies that transcend borders not allow for more

intermingling of culture and identities but also require it, and we might argue this is

particularly true for economic elites (Beck, 2006). I also discussed how the general

concept has been deployed, and argued that it has often been conceived as a normative

good, but a key weakness has been the neglect of the impact of historical power

differences on the construction of an individual’s frame of reference, and how these

influence people’s perception of the local and the global.

I argued that Savage et al.’s (2005) concept of global reflexivity is useful however, as they

distinguish between different levels of global reflexivity (a ‘shallower’ kind that could be

described as a general awareness of ‘otherness’and a ‘deeper’ form which allows people

to look at their lives from a comparative perspective that does not take home as

the referent) and this framework was useful for discussing the nuances in my participants’

narratives of the foreign other. I assessed the nature of my participants’ seemingly

cosmopolitan discourses, according to whether they were placed ‘in some kind of a

broader global comparative frame’ (Savage et al., 2005, p. 191) or if they still use ‘home’

as a referent, showing a reflexivity that was still based on a locally situated frame of

reference (ibid).

‘Local’ frames of reference are signicant elements in both Savage et al. (2005), and

Üstüner and Holt (2010)’s analytical frames. However, accounts of the value of

‘intercultural capital’ or ‘deterritorialised cultural capital’ only make sense in the context

of the globalisation of culture, and also global inequalities and postcolonial cultural

hierarchies of value. The general weakness of theories of cosmopolitanism for addressing

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such global power imbalances, however, means that we need to address questions of

post-colonial relations (as well as discuss the specificities of Thailand’s semi-colonial

relations towards the West) and for this reason I turned to several key post-colonial ideas

as a tool to address the impact of the historical global power structure on my

participants’ interpretive frames of the West. I began with a discussion of the literature

on the relationship between Siam/Thailand and the West. Specifically, I showed that

Thailand’s semi-colonial history demonstrates a relationship to colonial powers similar to

countries that were colonised (Jackson, 2008; Kitiarsa, 2010; Peleggi, 2002; Winichakul,

2000).

I discussed how this relationship creates a view of the West consistent with Bhabha’s

(2004) and Canclini’s (1995) ideas of hybridity. ‘Hybridity’ for Bhabha occurs through

colonial mimicry, when a discriminated against colonial subject appropriates the culture

of the coloniser as a means of resistance to colonial control (Bhabha, 2004, pp. 120–121).

However appropriated imageries of the West can be used as both a means of resistance

(Bhabha, 2004) and as means of internal control (Canclini et al., 1995), suggesting that the

uses of Western culture in post-colonial contexts is complex and differentiated. Jackson

has argued that this idea of hybridity and colonial mimicry can be applied to the Thai

notion of siwilai [civilised] as a hybrid discourse showing Thai elites’ resistance to Western

imperialism, but also suggested that it has been used for internal forms of control

(Jackson, 2008, p. 149), similar to Winichaikul’s (2000) account of how the notion of

siwilai has been used as a way to support the legitimacy of the ruling classes.

Given this differentiation of practices, I then used these concepts to expand on

Chatterjee’s (1993) concept of intellectual bifurcationism. Intellectual bifurcation is a

strategy for intellectually dealing with a powerful but suspicious imperial ‘other’. In

Chatterjee’s research, the West presents an undeniably more advanced industrial

economy, that provides both an opportunity and a threat. To take advantage of the

opportunity and ameliorate the existential threat, Chatterjee suggests that Indian

nationalists bifurcate the social word into two halves – the spiritual and the material

(ibid). Chatterjee’s research can be seen as an analysis of the logic behind a post-colonial

Elite’s selective hybridity, accepting Western modernity as ‘progress’ in the material

realm, but rejecting it in the spiritual realm where a superior national essence cannot be

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sullied by things Western, let alone ‘improved’. I linked the arbitrary split between

spheres that Western practices and commodities be of benefit and spheres where they

cannot (Chatterjee, 1993) with the idea of selective hybridity as a means to maintain an

elite’s control (Canclini et al., 1995).

My theoretical discussion, as I have summarised above, was focused on examining the

international education of Thai elites from the perspective of the influence of historical

power imbalances upon contemporary relations between societies. I discussed this

imbalance by integrating a Bourdieusian analysis with an account of the experiences of

those ‘cosmopolitan’ elites whose societies have been shaped by their relations with a

more powerful, colonialist foreign other. I situate this analysis within the postcolonial

experience, I brought together concepts from the debates to show that analytically and

empirically it was necessary to examine how postcolonial hierarchies of values and

culture have impacted on the framing of my participants’ interaction with foreign others,

and how that framing works to produce and reproduce cultural capital within the Thai

field. In conducting this analysis, this thesis provides an insight into how members of a

private and influential section of Thai society see themselves on the world stage, and how

that vision of themselves impacts the way they interact with the world-at-large. I now

turn to summarise my research strategy and my empirical findings.

Chapter 3 discussed in detail the practical considerations of this thesis. I examined the

difficulties of defining and accessing ‘elite groups’ for research purposed, and argued that

the use of in-depth semi-structured interview with a sample of participants obtained

through snowball sampling was the best way forward to acquire the data required for this

thesis. By using semi-structured interviews, I was able to flexibly explore the participants’

narratives, and to gain clues to the context of the participants’ narratives. The failure of

my attempt to recruit participants through a conventional purposive sampling method

indicated that my target group was relatively difficult to access. Because of this, I used

snowball sampling, with key participants acting as points of introduction to various social

networks. Through snowball sampling, I was also able to identify Bangkok’s

internationally educated elites through their social networks. I also discussed my

positionality as an insider studying his own social group. While some (Hammersley and

Atkinson, 2007) have argued that researchers need to distance themselves from their

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participants, I argued that this was not possible. I adopted the stance that researchers are

always influenced by their perceptions and modes of thought, and that to ignore this is to

ignore the influences that the researcher’s habitus has on their research project. I argued

that it was my insider status that allowed this project to be possible, and my native

fluency in Thai allow me to translate the interviews into English without losing social

nuance.

3. Families and International Education

Chapter 4 started the empirical analysis with an examination of the family as an entry

point to the participants’ narratives. Family was not only the most mentioned theme in

this research but has also been identified in the literature as a significant influencing

factor Thai students’ overseas education choices (Pimpa, 2003). This chapter pointed out

that the family’s influence on the participants’ international education choices extended

beyond the point of decision, encompassing subtle influences that determined how the

participants approached the value of international education as a whole as well as their

reasons for returning home. This chapter identified a very significant difference in the

participants’ narratives of their approach to international education, in that they are split

between two distinct groups, the Overseas Schooled (OS) and International Schooled (IS)

participants - who viewed studying abroad as a natural progression from their schooling –

and the Thai schooled (TS) participants - whose approach to international education was

a more calculative and strategised one. All the participants articulated a perception of

education as a part of a system of hierarchies, with the OS and IS participants feeling that

it ‘didn’t make sense’ for them to go to a Thai university if they had already experienced

their earlier education in the Western system. By contrast, the TS participants saw

international education as the logical ‘step up’ from domestic education. Western

education was seen as a superior alternative to anything available domestically. This view

was particularly clear with participants who went to elite Thai universities, who perceived

no better alternative than going overseas to continue their education.

I argued that this difference in approaches to international education between OS/IS and

TS participants fits with Ball et al.’s (1995) concept of circuits of schooling. I noted that we

can the differential impact of family capitals and habitus here, as the choice of

participant’s parents’ about how they were schooled had a significant impact on the

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participants’ later-life decisions regarding their international education. OS/IS participants

who had participated in an international circuit of education for a significant part of their

education careers produced narratives that suggested they saw a ‘flow’ of the

international circuit of education which ‘naturally’ lead to Western universities. In

contrast, the accounts of the TS participants showed that they needed to shift from a Thai

circuit to an international circuit more consciously and strategically. I argued that this

movement between circuits was revealed in their narratives of international education

choice as a far more deliberative and calculative process than that of the OS/IS

participants.

I also discussed how the TS participants’ narratives showed an interesting difference

between their accounts of their affective obligation to their parents and a seemingly

contradictory narrative of their sense of freedom from their parents while overseas. I

argued that this stemmed from the TS participants’ lack of experience within the

international circuit of education, which caused them to feel more keenly the impact of

habitus/field disjuncture once they arrived in at their destination country, and found

themselves in a foreign field. I suggested that their sense of freedom was not simply a

case of ‘out of sight out of mind’ but rather, the combined impact of their experience of

disjuncture, and their perception that their time overseas was only a temporary break.

Their time overseas was understood as a liminoid experience, a temporary break from

normalcy where ‘normal’ role expectations did not apply (Thomassen, 2012; Turner,

1974) and not as transformative as turner’s classic description of liminal experiences

(Turner, 1967). The temporary nature of this break was highlighted when TS participants

signalled their commitment to their families as a key part of their decision to return to

Thailand. This commitment to family was not only limited to the TS participants, however,

as OS and IS participants also possessed this deep-seated sense of filial duty and

commitment to their families. I argued that this shows the deep-seated nature of

familiality within my sample, and located my participants’ narratives of their dedication to

their families as an indication of how strongly the importance of family has been woven

into the Thai cultural discourse. Regardless of whether or not they were schooled

internationally or overseas, the participants’ discussion of their families reflected the

strong ideals of familiality in Thai culture that have been constructed by the state, and –

212

as I discuss in later chapters – can also be seen as part of a bifurcatory logic, that valorises

the spiritual realm of the Thai family.

4. International Education as cultural capital

In Chapter 4, I addressed the participant’s narrative of their family in relation to their

international education. In this discussion, I identified a narrative that assumes the

superiority of an international education over a Thai one as being a key part of the

participants’ decision to study overseas. I explored this theme in greater detail in Chapter

5, with an eye to examining how the valuing of Western education – because it was

Western - affected how international education operated as a form of cultural capital for

my sample. This was accomplished through looking at international education as both a

deterritorialised form of global cultural capital and as a cosmopolitan form of cultural

capital. The distinction between these two concepts lies in the locus of value.

Deterritorialised forms of cultural capital take their value from a particular perception of

the identity of the foreign other, while cosmopolitan forms take their value from the fact

that there is an interaction with, and openness to, globality.

I discussed the participants’ desires to see the world, to explore and experience new

places and practices as a key part of their narrative outlining the benefits of an

international education. I argued that the participants' narratives of a desire for

connection with a foreign other could, on the surface, be seen as a sign of the

cosmopolitanisation process as described by Beck (2006). However, a deeper analysis of

their narratives, using Savage et al’s (2005) account of different degrees of global

reflexivity revealed that while my particpants did articulate a desire to experience and

explore otherness, they still relied heavily on Thai referents. As such, in Savage et al’s

(ibid) terms, this indicates a limited and less-than-fully-cosmopolitan form of reflexivity,

where the participants still interpreted their experiences through a locally situated frame

of reference rather than a broadly global one.

I extended this argument by examining the participants’ use of Thai conceptions of

Western modernity, in which their understandings of the West's ‘charoeness’ – its

perceived material and civilizational progress – was a key factor driving the participants’

valuing of the West and Western institutions as superior to Thai ones. I demonstrated

that these discourses best fit with Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) concept of deterritorialised

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cultural capital. The participant’s use of the charoeness discourse can be seen as a form of

what Üstüner and Holt call the ‘Western lifestyle myth’ (ibid) that is used to situate and

give value to Western practices and commodities. By explaining the participants’ practice

of international education as a form of deterritorialised cultural capital, I was better able

to account for the participant’s localised narratives and how these related to the power

differentials between different global regions than with the concept of cosmopolitanism.

However, I also indicated some points of departure from the concept of deterritorialised

cultural capital. In Üstüner and Holt’s (ibid) research, I argued that the nature of their

sample (which included both ‘low cultural capital’ (LCC) and ‘high cultural capital’ (HCC)

participants) did not sufficiently examine nuances that exist at the upper end of the

cultural capital scale, underestimating the extent to which very elite individuals with

extensive experience of Western education can develop greater ‘ease’ with global cultural

capital. I have shown that for my sample, there were significant differences between how

the TS and OS/IS participants engaged with the Western other during their time studying

overseas. I have shown that while TS participants often narrated a sense of unease and a

disjuncture dread – the feeling of a lack of safety and ease that accompanies their

habitus/field disjuncture – in relation to their overseas experiences, the OS/IS participants

had the advantage of an early familiarity with Western education and culture that was

inculcated through their schooling, so they articulated a narrative of overseas study

significantly more in line with a ‘typical’ student experience.

There was a marked disparity in the social comfort and forms of engagement with

Western culture between TS and OS/IS participants. I argued that this shows an additional

layer of nuance to the operations of deterritorialised cultural capital. While TS

participants expressed a similar sense of unease in their relations to their deterritorialised

cultural capital as that of Üstüner and Holt’s Turkish HCC participants (Üstüner and Holt,

2010, p. 53), the OS/IS participants showed a very different engagement with the West.

From this, I argued that the OS/IS participants represented a distinctive group with very

high cultural capital (VHCC), for whom deterritorialised cultural capital operates

differently than for LCC and HCC individuals. In particular, this group’s engagement with

the West employed greater ease, sophistication and nuance – in line with Bourdieu’s first,

and more instinctive mode of cultural competence - which suggests that we must modify

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Üstüner ’s and Holt’s argument about just how deterritorialised this form of

deterritorialised cultural capital is for very elite groups.

5. International Education and the semi-colonial context.

Chapter 6 further established the usefulness of Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) concept of

deterritorialised cultural capital in analysing international education as a source of

cultural capital, but also highlighted the importance of understanding a particular field’s

conception of the Western other, or how their ‘Western lifestyle myth’ was created. To

make this argument, I used my TS sample’s narrative of ‘improving their English’ as a

point of entry to this discussion. The participant’s discourse demonstrates not only a

belief that English fluency was linked to professional success but was also seen as a

means of becoming better acquainted with the ‘source’ of Western culture and so could

improve their ability to grasp its nuances, and allow them to show more finesse and

nuance in their consumption of charoen things and practice, and so increase their

deterritorialized cultural capital. But this was largely seen as a strategy of distinction

within the Thai context.

It is also important to recognise that the cultural ease that the participants sought was

not just a deterritorialized form of international cultural capital, it was also a more

specifically post-colonial form of cultural capital. I therefore also demonstrated that the

TS participants’ narratives of their desire to improve their English were couched in a

specifically Thai understanding of the West. This was shown by the TS participants’ use of

the concepts of charoen and farang, a stylised representation of Westerners and the

West, used to conceptualise and consume Western-ness as a ‘powerful but suspicious

other’ (Kitiarsa, 2010). I argued that the Thai assumption of Western superiority, framed

by its post-colonial situation, and as those found within the discourses of charoen and

farang, can help explain the differences I have noted between studies of East-to-West

international students and studies of West-to-West international students. Studies of

West-to-West international students show that they see international education as an

equal, acceptable substitute for domestic education (Brooks and Waters, 2009a, 2009b).

By contrast, the West, East-to-West international students, as evidenced in this thesis and

Waters’ research (2006), see international education as a superior option compared to

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any form of domestic education which I argue reflects different orientations to - and

power relations with – the West.

Having established the different understandings of Western education found amongst

students from the global North and South, I went on to discuss the importance of frame

of reference for analysing narratives of openness to global others. I pointed out the

similarity between the findings of this thesis and Snee’s (2013) research on Western gap

year students, in which she also found that rather than being a signifier of a cosmopolitan

awareness or global reflexivity, her participants’ narratives of openness was actually a

reproduction of established discourses of foreign otherness. As in Snee’s research, the

narratives of the participants in this thesis rely on their established cultural frames rather

than any form of reflexive engagement. I further argued that my participants’

contemporary frame of reference has been produced through Thailand’s unequal

relationship with colonial powers. Although Thailand has never been officially colonised,

it exists within a geopolitical environment that forces Thais to interact with colonial

powers at an immense disadvantage. From this, I demonstrated how my participant’s

narratives of their initial impressions of the West reproduce a discourse of a Western

other that was born out of unequal power relationship. For example, the idea of the

cleanliness and orderliness of the West appeared quite frequently throughout my

discussions with my participants, generally linked with third theme, an assumed unequal

comparison to Thailand (whether it was to state that Thailand was inferior in this respect,

or the surprise of finding out that it was not inferior).

I also argued that discourses of the farang as a threat-come-treat (Winichakul, 2010) have

produced an intellectually bifurcated discourse of when and where deterritorialised

cultural capitals of Western origin are valuable and can be used. For example, whatever

else the participants might say about Thailand being inferior to the West, this was never

extended to the family as an institution, and the family was seen to be an intrinsic –

highly valued and culturally superior– part of Thai culture. I demonstrated this by

exploring the participants’ narratives of Thai and Western culture, which demonstrated a

bifurcated logic that split the world into a ‘material’ half , where Western-sourced cultural

capitals were superior and could be applied, and a ‘spiritual’ half, constitutive of their

Thai identity, where Western cultural capitals were of lower value and could not be

216

applied (Chatterjee, 1993). I argued that as this bifurcation is based upon a subjective and

ambiguous identification of what is, and is not, constitutive of the Thai national identity,

there was room for ambivalence and conflict. This was shown in some of my participants’

narratives of their job search. A number of people in the sample referred to their

problematic experiences with companies as they described as ‘Thai’ companies, standing

in opposition to the superior practices of foreign, international or multinational

corporations. It was not that the more positively viewed ‘international’ companies were

always Western managed or owned, rather it was that they needed to be seen to be

Western in outlook. The problem that my participants were confronted with here were

employers and colleagues that insisted on the Thai-ness of the field of commerce,

breaking down the bifurcatory logic in which their Western cultural capital would have

value. This shows that any attempt to apply the concept of deterritorialised cultural

capital in research in the global South, such as this thesis, need to bear in mind not only a

society’s ‘Western lifestyle myth’ but also how that myth is variably applied in that

society’s engagement with the West.

6. Reflections on Researching International Education and Thai Elites

In this thesis I have investigated the practice of international education amongst the Thai

elite, and argued that we can identify distinct educational strategies influenced by the

participants’ family capitals and habitus, notably through the prior schooling choices the

participants’ parents have made for them. Participants who had been schooled overseas

or at an international school demonstrated higher levels of ease with the western other,

enabling them to engage more closely with the ‘source’ of western culture, and allowing

them to show greater nuance in their consumption of western things and practices. Their

schooling history placed them at an advantage to participants who had been schooled in

the Thai educational system, whose narratives showed a more anxious, deliberative, and

by-the-book approach to their engagement with western culture.

This study confirms findings from previous studies into international practices.

Specifically, it shows that narratives of openness to foreign others does not necessarily

automatically indicate a cosmopolitan or globally reflexive world view, and that these

narratives need to be analysed within the context of the participants’ frame of reference.

In the case of this thesis, the participants’ narratives of openness to foreign others, and

217

their valuing of international education, proved to be a reproduction of a culturally

hierarchical frame of reference, with its roots in the unequal relationship between

Siam/Thailand and the western colonial powers. This frame of reference resulted in the

west being perceived as the source of modernity and progress. Moreover, this thesis has

also expanded upon previous research into deterritorialised cultural capital, broadening

the concept by bringing attention to the nuance between high cultural capital

participants, and very high cultural capital participants. This thesis has also demonstrated

how Thailand’s intellectually bifurcated discourse of its relations to the west complicates

the study of international education as a deterritorialised form of cultural capital. This

finding demonstrates the need for an approach to deterritorialised cultural capital that is

attuned to not just the nuances of a particular field’s western lifestyle myth but also the

nuances in how that myth was constructed.

Several additional questions have been thrown up over the course of this thesis, many of

which could be major research projects in and of themselves. This thesis has shown a

difference between OS/IS participants and TS participants and discussed some ways the

difference in their schooling could have advantaged OS/IS participants through the

superior social and cultural capitals their schooling imparted. However, the question of

how exactly this occurred is yet to be answered. There are 126 international schools in

Thailand, the overwhelming majority (83%) of which use the American or British schooling

system (International School Association of Thailand, n.d.). A study of these schools, along

the lines of Khan’s (2010) research into an elite American boarding school, would

contribute to discovering how deterritorialised cultural capital and its valuation is

reproduced within the context of normalising practices and privileges through both early

childhood education and family inculcation. The second possible avenue of future

research stems from the discovery of a discourse within the participants’ narratives that

equates hygiene and order with Western modernity. This discourse mirrored discourses

that were found in Üstüner and Holt’s (2010) Turkish participants as well as Mcclintock’s

(2013) work on discourses and representations within Imperial commodities and

advertising. The fact that this narrative appears in two contemporary studies on the

consumption of Western modernity and in one on Victorian British imperial discourses

indicates a possible link between the Victorian discourses in McClintock’s work and

contemporary perceptions of the West in multiple countries. As such, a study into this link

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could provide a deeper understanding of the construction of the ‘Western lifestyle myth’

in some less industrialised countries and further the understanding of how these myths

came to be. Finally there is the question of the bifurcated nature of the Thai frame of

reference towards the West. This thesis has demonstrated that there are some

ambiguities in the delineation between what is and is not constitutive of the Thai national

identity. Although there has been some research into this (Winichakul, 2010) it only

served to confirm that such bifurcation exists, and did not delve deeply into the nuances

of that bifurcation. A study into the ambiguities of this bifurcation, identifying what is and

is not constitutive of the Thai national identity, and the debates surrounding what is and

is not ‘Thai’, would be of great benefit to the study of the place of deterritorialised

cultural capitals within the Thai social order.

As discussed in chapter 2, this thesis’s sample is limited to a relatively narrow target

population, concentrating on the Bangkok-based elites of Thailand. This research left out

a sizable group of Thai international students, namely those who are only able to study

overseas because of a scholarship from the Thai government. The difference is key, as

government funded students are not necessarily from the elite. Many elites (from casual

conversations during field work) seem to indicate that they would rather pay for their

education than being contractually bound to work for the Thai government for two years

for every year of their education (Office of the Civil Service Commission, 2017b). Future

research that examined the experiences of scholarship students would be able to

consider the difference between the narratives of self-funded elites within this thesis and

the narratives of Thai government funded students, and further enhance the

understanding of the role of international education in Thailand. Research focusing on

government scholarship students rather than self-funded students would not only be able

to help better situate the practice of international education within the Thai social field

but would also situate the practice within the context of government policy and official

narratives of national development.

There are several policy implications of this Thesis. First example of which is its

implication for the pastoral care of and marketing to International students by Western

Universities. In their marketing, universities can take in to account the student’s

preconceived notion of the host country and specifically tailor their marketing with that

219

notion in mind could stand a chance of gaining an advantage in the market place. In

addition to this, TS participants’ accounts of the sense of alienation and liminal dread they

feel upon arrival shows that pastoral care of international students’ needs to be targeted

to address this. Specifically, a pastoral care strategy that helps international students

orientate themselves within the host community, and events that encourages

international students to socialised with their home student peers during the early

‘fresher’s week’ period would go a long way in improving the students’ overall

experience.

This thesis has argued that Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus as embodied, internalised

history that is ‘internalised as a second nature and so forgotten as history’ (Bourdieu,

2002, p. 56) can be used to explain how – for my sample at least - Thailand’s Western

lifestyle myth is reproduced. It makes present history, summarising decades of unequal

relationship within a frame of reference that reproduces the West as a superior other. I

have shown how, for my sample, the West is a source of practices and commodities that

carry with them a deterritorialised form of cultural capital (Üstüner and Holt, 2010) that is

resituated and recontextualised within the Thai field. However, the Thai habitus is also

embodied with an intellectually bifurcated worldview (Chatterjee, 1993; Winichakul,

2010), a self-limiting form of pedagogic violence, acting both to insist upon the value of

deterritorialised cultural capital, and the limits to which these capitals could apply.

However, there is an ambiguity in where these bounds lie that complicates the analysis of

the value of international education as a deterritorialised cultural capital, requiring a

more nuanced case-by-case approach rather than a wholesale implementation. While this

bifurcation limits the application of the cultural capitals that the participants gained from

their international education, there is no denying that the participants saw value in their

international education. None regretted having studied overseas, and all saw value in

their international education, adding to their reservoir of cultural capital. With regards to

narratives of openness to foreign others, this thesis echoes Snee’s (2013) findings in that

the narrative of openness to foreign others is not necessarily indicative of a cosmopolitan

or globally reflexive world view. Rather these narratives need to be analysed within the

context of the participants’ frame of reference. This emphasis on frame of reference also

helps to explain the difference between narratives of East-to-West international students

such as those in this thesis and Water’s study of Hong Kong Students, (2006) and West-to-

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West international students (Brooks and Waters, 2009a, 2009b). This thesis has shown

that the differences in the discourses that built the students’ habituses have had a major

impact on the way they perceive international education. From this, I argue that, in

studying experiences of foreign otherness, be it international education, ‘gap years’, or

the consumption of foreign goods, it is not enough to explore these practices and the

discourses surrounding them as discrete acts. Rather, the researcher should take into

consideration how their participants’ frame of perception have been constructed, the

discourses that their narratives are reproducing, and how these have influenced the

participants’ narratives.

This thesis has shown that Üstüner and Holt’s concept of deterritorialised cultural capital

has much to offer the study of status hierachy in post-colonial/post-semi-colonial

countries. It provides a framework that allows researcher to consider globalisation’s

effect on societies. However, unlike cosmopolitan theories, it does so while accounting

for the effect of the power differential between historically colonising and historically

colonised countries. This thesis also showed that the acceptance of deterritorialised

cultural capital is highly dependent on a society’s perception of western otherness.

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Appendix 1: Lyrics to ‘Duties of a Child’

‘หนาทของเดก’ เนอรอง: ชอม ปญจพรรค ท านอง: เออ สนทรสนาน

‘Duties of a Child’ Lyrics: Cha-um Pujapuk Music: Uea Suntonsnan

The song was composed to commemorate the first Children’s day in 1955 (Cultural Surveillance Bureau, 2015). The objective of Children’s day was to ‘increase children’s awareness of their rights, duties, responsibility, and discipline towards self and society, and their dedication to the Nation and religion’ (ibid). As such, Cha-um Pujapuk the national artist for literature at the time was tasked to write the lyrics to the song which reflect this message (ibid). The original Thai text is sourced from the Cultural Surveillance Bureau’s website (2015).

This song is still used this day, often played in public places and over state radio and television on the run-up to children’s day. School children are taught to sing this song during the period leading to children’s day.

English Translation Original Thai

Child, oh good child, These ten duties you must have. Child, oh good child, These ten duties you must have. One, honour the religion. Two, holdfast to Tradition. Three, believe your parents and teachers. Four, have speech that is polite and sweet. Five, always be grateful50. Six, Know and love your work Seven, Study until you are proficient [in what you do] Be determined and not lazy. Eight, be Thrifty Nine, be forever honest and loyal, have a brave sportsman’s sense of fair play, suited to this era of national advancement. Ten, make yourself useful, know right from wrong, keep safe our national treasures. Children of the national advancement era, Will be the children that make the Thai nation charoen51. Child, oh good child, These ten duties you must have. Child, oh good child, These ten duties you must have.

เดกเอยเดกด

ตองมหนาทสบอยางดวยกน

เดกเอยเดกด

ตองมหนาทสบอยางดวยกน

หนง นบถอศาสนา

สอง รกษาธรรมเนยมมน

สาม เชอพอแมครอาจารย

ส วาจานนตองสภาพออนหวาน

หา ยดมนกตญญ

หก เปนผ รรกการงาน

เจด ตองศกษาใหเชยวชาญ

ตองมานะบากบน ไมเกยจไมคราน

แปด รจกออมประหยด

เกา ตองซอสตยตลอดกาล

น าใจนกกฬากลาหาญ

ใหเหมาะกบกาลสมยชาตพฒนา

สบ ท าตนใหเปนประโยชน

รบาปบญคณโทษ สมบตชาตตองรกษา

เดกสมยชาตพฒนา

จะเปนเดกทพาชาตไทยเจรญ

เดกเอยเดกด

ตองมหนาทสบอยางดวยกน

เดกเอยเดกด

ตองมหนาทสบอยางดวยกน

50

The Thai word for gratefulness Katanyu has a more serious ‘duty to repay your betters for all that they have provided you’ connotation. 51

‘Charoen’ is a Thai word denoting civilizational progress, moving towards a status of a ‘civilised’ nation (Winichakul, 2000).

222

Appendix 2: Participant Profiles

Anika (TS)

Anika is an only child of professional parents, neither of her parents was educated overseas. She

went to Thai school and a Thai university. Anika never thought that she could have gone overseas

to study for a Master’s degree. She thought it was too expensive, something reserved for the

super-rich. After a talk with one of her western professors who introduced her to the idea; she

researched the issue and found that it was not so expensive after all. Her parents supported her

enthusiastically after she approached them with the information. She went to university in the

Midlands of England. Anika’s case is unique among TS participants in that she is quite an out-

going, curious person. She happened to become a live-in tenant with a series of locals who could

answer her questions and explain life in Britain to her. She also dated a local person and because

of this her social circle largely comprised of local people. She is now an educational consultant for

a company that specialises in British universities. She also owns a small business in the fashion

industry.

Anna (TS)

Anna is an only child of a small business-owning family, neither of her parents was educated

overseas. She was educated in Thai all the way through her Bachelor’s degree. She wanted to

study law so there was no question of going to an international university, as the Thai legal

system works in Thai and the bar exam will have to be taken in Thai. After her Bachelor’s degree,

she went straight to America for her Master’s degrees (she took two). She chose America

because, in her previous travels, she liked her experiences in America more than she did England,

and she felt that she would get more opportunities to Travel in America. She chose to go to an ivy

league university in the north-east of the USA. She picked this particular university because not

many Thai people are in that particular city. However, when she got there, she ended up

becoming quite involved in the local Thai Student’s Association. She struggled with the local

accent and the ruralness of the city at first but eventually coming to like it. Even prefer it to the

urban university in the south-east she moved to for her second degree. Upon her return to

Thailand, she works as an attorney for a large internationally-minded Thai law firm.

Anton (TS)

Anton is a son of a professional family, neither of his parents was educated overseas. He has been

Thai educated all the way through school and university. He worked as a programmer before

decided that he want to get his master’s degree overseas. His main motivation was to improve his

English and gain skill in a small, cutting-edge sub-field within his industry that hasn’t quite arrived

in Thailand yet. Anton decided on a university in the south of England, as British universities have

less onerous entrance requirements than American universities, and a British master’s degree

course lasts only one year. Anton also saw going overseas to study as a break; a holiday from “real

life”. However, because of the 100% final exam assessment nature of his coursework, he ended

up working and studying harder than he ever did due to his fear of failure. Because of this, he

largely kept to himself and study and didn’t make many friends while he was studying. Upon his

return to Thailand, he had difficulty getting a job in his new field as there are very few jobs in that

field. He ended up getting a job doing what he did before his master’s degree.

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Casey (TS)

Casey is an only child of a business-owning family, neither of her parents has studied overseas.

She went to an elite Thai school in Bangkok and went to a Thai university. She worked for a short

while after her Bachelor’s degree but then decided to go overseas out of a desire to experience

new things and the appeal of the idea of becoming a nakrian nork. Her original plan was to self-

fund a master’s degree but then changed to staying for a PhD when she discovered that she had

been offered funding from the Thai government. She initially started at a university in the south-

west of England but then moved to London after learning about her funding. She largely spends

her time with other Thai students who originally went to the same school as she did. At the date

of interview, she was working at a government-owned research institute in Thailand as part of her

funding conditions. She also writes travel and lifestyle articles for a Thai magazine.

Danni (TS)

Danni is an only child of a business-owning family. Her mother was not educated overseas.

However, her Father was educated in America. Danni went to a Thai school and completed her

Bachelor’s degree at a Thai university. The idea of studying overseas has been on her mind since

she was a child, mostly for its social implication of looking fun/cool. She originally went to a

Scottish university for her Master’s degree. However, she successfully applied for a funded PhD

place. Her social life in Scotland revolved around the Thai community and her PhD peers. She

made a point to not being too attached to the Thai community, as one of her goals for her time in

Scotland was to improve her English, and she believed she would not get that by spending time

with Thai people. Upon her return, she had some difficulty trying to find an Academic position as

most universities prefer to hire the people whom they have funded to study overseas themselves.

Danni ended up working in a law firm, helping lawyers understand the technical and scientific

details in patents.

Emmy (TS)

Emmy is the eldest of two children of professional parents, neither of her parents was educated

overseas. Bother her schooling, and undergraduate degree was completed in Thai. However,

because of her affinity for reading, and her dissatisfaction with translations, she ended up reading

a lot of English books. As a consequence, her English language ability is on par with those who

went to international schools (her IELTS score was 8.5, 0.5 away from a perfect score). She

wanted to study overseas both to further her education and as a chance to explore new places

and see new things. She chose the UK as she saw it as a base from which to travel to Europe. She

was at a university in North-East England. Her social group in England was an eclectic mix of

locals, Europeans and other Asians. She keeps in contact with Thai people but mostly socialised

with her International friends. Upon her return to Thailand, she became a freelance

interpreter/translator. She felt that the experience of independence and self-reliance when she

was in England helped her keep disciplined enough to be able to be successful as a freelancer.

Eric (OS)

Eric is the middle of three sons from one of Thailand’s most economically powerful families with

connections to the military/civil service. All his siblings and both his parents were educated

overseas, his father to a PhD level and his mother to an undergraduate level. Eric was educated

at a private boarding high school in north-eastern USA before attending an Ivy League university.

He had an eclectic mix of friends in in social group based around the activities he is interested in.

His story would not have been very different from a privileged American’s. He is currently an

entrepreneur with multiple small businesses in several industries.

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Gary (OS)

Gary is the younger of two sons of a business-owning family, neither of his parents was educated

overseas. He started his schooling at an international school in Thailand, however – what started

off as an exchange year ended up becoming a long-term commitment as he transferred to a

school in America for his senior high school. His reasoning for this is that he felt that he fit in

better with his American friends as opposed to the cliques of his school in Thailand. He remained

in the USA, choosing to go to a university in the mid-west. He did not particularly seek out other

Thai people as he socialised more with degree peers who have similar interests as he does.

Everything in his university town seems normal to him. From his experiences, he could have been

just another American student moving to the big city to study. After his undergraduate degree, he

went to a European country for his Master’s degree on the advice of his father. The Thai

government just made a major commitment to procure systems from this European country, as

such someone with an engineering degree from this country would be able to find a job with one

of the contractors easily. He now works for one of these contractors.

Gemma (IS)

Gemma is elder of two children of a business-owning family. Her mother was not educated

overseas; her father was educated in Britain for both school and university. She was sent to a

British international school which in turn guided her towards to a British university. She studied at

a university in the South of England. She found herself connecting most with European and South

American students; she did not feel that she had much in common with British students. She

discovered that her worldviews are more similar to southern Europeans and South Americans

which made up most of her close friends. She did not actively try to seek out other Thai students.

Upon her return to Thailand, she started an up-market retail business.

Glenn (TS)

Glenn is the younger of two siblings from a business-owning family from the South of Thailand,

neither of his parents were educated overseas. He went to a Thai school and an international

university. He is very nationalistic in outlook – believing in the moral superiority of the Thais – but

conceded that to further his career prospects, he would need western knowledge. Glenn was at a

university in the north-east of the USA; he picked an American university because an American

masters’ degree is longer than a British one, so he would have more time to absorb Western-ness.

His social life while studying revolves around other Thai people and international students. After

his return to Thailand, he went back into his old social circle from his undergraduate years; He is

currently working as a freelance project manager in the entertainment industry.

225

Helen (TS)

Helen is the elder of two siblings in a business-owning family, neither of her parents was educated

overseas. She went to a Thai school and an international university for her bachelor’s degree. Her

main motivation for going overseas for her master’s degree was to experience a ‘freer lifestyle’.

She worked at a large international consultancy firm before leaving to study in North East

England. She ended up choosing England because of the reputation England and America have in

Thailand and the fact that a British master’s degree would only take a year. Before leaving she

made sure she found Thai people who had a connection with that was at that university, or at

least living in that city to help her once she arrives. These people introduced her to the local Thai

community who helped take care of her during her first few days. While she made a point to get

to know a few Thai people she tried not to get too far into the community. She also has other

European and Asian friends that she socialises with as well. After she returned to Thailand, she

went back to the same consultancy firm before leaving again to pursue a PhD at a Thai university.

Jeff (TS)

Jeff is a son of provincial school teachers, neither of his parents was educated overseas. He went

to a Thai school and an international university in Thailand for his undergraduate degree. Before

his departure, he worked in the hospitality industry. He originally arrived in England on a work

and study programme (50% English course, 50% work). However, after doing some research

regarding costs, et cetera. He stayed for his Master’s degree at a university in the South-East of

England. His parents agreed to pay for his tuition while he worked part-time to cover his living

expenses. The Thai community played a significant role in his life in England. He also has some

local and European friends through his work. Most of his support, while he was in England, came

through the Thai community. Upon his return to Thailand, he found work as an educational

consultant for a company that specialises in British universities.

Jessica (OS)

Jessica is from a business-owning family, neither of her parents was educated overseas. Both she

and her brother were educated in American schools. Jessica went to America at the age of 11 and

stayed for eight years. She attended a private boarding school in north-eastern USA before

moving on to an ivy league university. Her experience at university sounded very much like a

typical American student’s experience. With the exception of her references to Thai culture and

values, and how important they are to her, she could have been another American student. Her

friendship groups are based around her activities. She is currently working at a western embassy

in Thailand while concurrently doing a part-time professional degree at a Thai university.

226

Karen (TS)

Karen is the only daughter of senior civil servants, neither of her parents was educated overseas.

However, they were insistent that their daughter gets that opportunity. Karen went to an elite

Thai school and an International University in Thailand for her undergraduate degree. She decided

to study overseas because of advice from her father that as she had graduated from a high-

ranking Thai university if she remains in Thailand, it will be a sideways move at best or a

downward move at worst. She went to a university in the West Midlands of England where her

social circle largely composed of British and Americans. She felt that if she were to become a part

of the local Thai community, it would defeat the purpose of her being in England in the first place,

that is to improve her English and learn more about western culture. Upon her return to Thailand,

she had some difficulty finding a job as most places she applied to saw her as overqualified or she

would be too expensive to hire because of her British degree. At the time of the interview worked

for a Non-Governmental Organisation in Bangkok.

Lisa (TS)

Lisa is the middle of three daughters from a medium-sized business-owning family, neither of her

parents was educated overseas. She went to an elite Thai school and received a business degree

from an international university in Thailand. She worked for a few years before deciding to do her

master’s degree in London. She chose so because to her; it is the ‘pattern’ of her family that she

must follow, all of her siblings followed the same pattern. She largely kept to herself and

concentrated on her studies while she was in England. After a few unsatisfying jobs, mostly

because she did not feel that the staff and management at those companies were able to work to

her standards of professionalism; she started her own food services company.

Macy (TS)

Macy is the eldest of two daughters from a very strict family where her entire life has been

planned for her, whether she wanted it or not. Neither of her parents was educated overseas.

After finishing her Thai schooling and a Bachelor’s degree at an international university in

Thailand, she was coerced by her parents into going straight into a Master’s degree course

overseas. Her parents wished her to go to a specific part of America where her father has friends

in, but she was accepted to a university in London and in the interest of saving time and not

having to wait another year, her parents allowed her to go to England instead. She spent all her

time in England within the Thai community, to the extent where her English language has

suffered, she regretted this, and if she could do everything again, she would not have spent so

much time with other Thai people. She is now an educational consultant for a company that

specialises in British universities. She now counsels prospective students to avoid getting too deep

into the Thai community. Upon her return, she was able to make peace with her parents, with

them now recognising her for her own person. She now makes her own choices.

227

Mark (IS)

Mark is a from a well-known political family. Neither of his parents was educated overseas. He

was educated in international schools from a very young age, after which he enrolled at a

university in Australia. He had family in the city he was at which helped him to settle into life in

Australia. His friend group was quite eclectic, with some people from Thailand, some other

international students, and some local. Essentially, people, he happens to meet throughout his

classes or his leisure activities. After his return to Thailand, he found it relatively hard to find a job

in Thailand as he did not have the connections that people normally build up throughout their

university years. He remedied this by doing a Master’s degree in Thailand to build his network

within Thailand. At the time of the interview, he was a mid-level civil servant.

Peter (TS)

Peter is the eldest son of 3 siblings; his father was an investment banker and mother a

homemaker. Neither of his parents was educated overseas, Peter was educated at a Thai school

and did his undergraduate degree at an international university in Thailand. He chose to do his

Master’s at a university in Australia as this university waived his language testing requirements

and waived some courses based on the courses he has already taken during his Bachelor’s degree.

Most of Peter’s friends were Thai, as there were very few westerners at the university – “they are

mostly Chinese, Indians, Thais” (Peter, TS). However, he was able to meet more locals and other

westerners when he moved out of halls and into private accommodation after six months. It was

in meeting these Australians and other travelling westerners that Peter discovered that one’s life

does not have to follow a single set pattern, that there are alternative lifestyles. After his return to

Thailand Peter found employment as a Financial Analyst for a large international bank.

Ryan (IS)

Ryan is the middle of three children in a business-owning family. His mother was not educated

overseas. However, his Father went to university in America. As some of his family lives in

California, the idea of studying overseas have always been there in his mind. He sees going to

study overseas as a means to open his mind and expose himself to new and different ideas. Ryan

went to a school on the West coast of Canada, to be within reasonable flight time to his family in

California. He seems to enjoy his time studying for is Bachelor’s degree in Canada, his social

groups tend to be activity-based, just whoever happens to share his pastimes. He knew a few Thai

people while he was studying in Canada but otherwise did not make any attempt to integrate

himself more into the Thai community. Upon his return to Thailand joined the family business,

bringing in western management practices. However, it took some time for the staff to warm up

to a more collaborative approach as they were more used to a top-down management approach.

Sam (TS)

Sam is the younger of two children of professional parents, neither of whom were educated

overseas. After Sam finished his schooling and Bachelor’s degree in Thailand, his father suggested

that he might want to go overseas for his Master’s degree. His father felt that knowledge of the

English language is crucial for any profession. Sam eventually settled on a university in London.

Sam felt more comfortable overseas than in Thailand, in that he can do what he wants when he

wants without having to consider the needs/wants of his family. He initially was a part of the

local Thai community, but after a minor disagreement he decided to go his own way and started

to socialise with other of his international student friends instead. Sam now works for a major

international Law Firm in Thailand.

228

Steph (IS)

Steph is an only child professional parents, neither of her parents was educated overseas. She

studied in an international school, after which she went to university in the south of England. She

chose England because her school was an English curriculum school, and the fact that her ability

to gain higher than 90% in the Thai university entrance examinations without having to study

lessened her faith in the Thai higher education system. She had a mix of Thai and other

international/local friends, about half her friends were Thai, but none of them are “super Thai” (in

that they exclusively socialise within the Thai community). However, she did feel closer to the Thai

people there than her other friends. After she returned to Thailand, she worked as a freelance

graphic designer before continuing with a Master’s degree in Thailand. At the time of the

interview, she was working full-time managing the social media presence for a prominent Thai

company.

Steve (OS)

Steve is the younger of two children in a business-owning family. Both of his parents were

educated overseas. He originally started his schooling in an international school in Bangkok; he

accepted his father’s suggestion to transfer to a school in rural Australia after a teenage

heartbreak. He initially returned to Thailand for university at an international university. After his

schooling in Australia, he attended university in eastern Canada. While there he mainly socialised

with Canadian students and non-Thai international students who shared his pastimes, He very

much enjoyed his time there but decided to move back to Thailand after university to be closer to

his family. Upon his return, Steve initially worked for a series of media companies, before quitting

to start his own business in the tourism industry.

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Appendix 3: Interview Prompts

Information Desired Interview Prompts

The Decision to Study Overseas

Was there a decision-making process or did the participant always assumed overseas education as natural?

When did you first think about the idea of studying in <country> Did you consider anywhere else? Why did you choose <country> over other places? Did anyone else in your family study overseas? Did that influence your decision? Why a master’s degree?

How involved were the participant’s family and social network in the initial decision?

How involved were your parents in your decision to study in <country>/<university>?

What were the participant’s views towards higher education in Thailand? (part 1)

Did you consider a Thai university as a possibility?

Basic Factual Information What did you study? (if was not clear in questionnaire – or if was clear, “tell me more about what you studied”) Why did you choose to study that? Did your parents come with you? How long did they say? How did you feel about that? How did you go about setting yourself up when you first arrived? (e.g. buying all the things you need)

What were the participant’s first reactions to being ‘out of place’?

Were there anything that struck you as strange at first? Did you miss Thailand? (Alternative: Did you feel homesick?) -> if yes, for what? If no, why not? How often did you call your family/friends back in Thailand? -> what did you talk about? What was your social life like when you first arrived? Did that change over time?

230

What steps did the participant take to remedy being ‘out of place’?

Did you feel like you fitted in? Did you join any student club/society? Did you seek out other Thai people? What did you think of the other students? How would you describe your friendship group while you were at <university>? (Thais, International Students, Locals – or other descriptors e.g. Dancers, photographers, punk rockers etc.)

How did the participant position themselves towards the host community and Institution?

What did you think of your professors? How did you find the classes? Did you speak up in class much? Why/why not? How what kind of work where you expected to do? What did you think about the work load? Did your experiences at <university> match your expectations? What did you think of your host community? -> take note if participant talk in terms of university, town/city, state, country, or ‘farang’.

231

Initial return experience (aprox first six months 'back')

How did the participant utilize their new cultural capital?

How did you find your first job after returning? Did having overseas qualification help?

How did the participant reflect upon their experience overseas?

What was it like when you first came back? Did you live with your parents when you first came back? Do you still live with your parents right now? Were you sad about leaving <country>? What was the first thing you wanted to do after your plane landed? Were you able to settle back in to your old social life? Were there any differences? Are there anything you miss about living in <country>? Are there anything that you miss from <country>? (e.g. products, food, tv show) Did you think your experience at <university> change how you see yourself? -> if yes, how? Overall, did you like your experience overseas? -> Discussion on the ‘good bits’ and ‘bad bits’ If you can change something about what you’ve done what would it be? Would you recommend others to go to <country> or <university> ?

has the dynamics in their relationship with Did you stay in <country> between finishing

232

their family/friends at home changed?

and graduation? Did your family and friends travel to your graduation? What was your family and friends’ reaction when you first came back? Did your family and friends treat you differently after you came back? Are you able to do the things you liked to do in <country> back in Thailand? (if not why not) Do you think your relationship with your family has changed?

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Appendix 4: Information Sheet

School of Social Sciences

Participant Information Sheet

What is the title of the research?

An Examination of the Socio-Cultural Reintegration of foreign-educated high Socio-Economic

Status Bangkokian.52

Who will conduct the research? Mr. Kunnaya Wimooktanon, a Sociology PhD student at the University of Manchester and Former lecturer at Mahidol University International College

What is the aim of the research?

The aim of this research is to further our understanding of the role foreign education plays in Thai society. There has been much theorising on this issue but no substantial sociological research to date. The researcher hopes to gain understanding of three key issues

1. What motivates people to seek overseas education? 2. What impact has that education had on that person? 3. How does that individual impact translate to an impact on their wider social

network?

Why have I been chosen?

You have been chosen because you fit the categories of

1. Being over 18 years of age 2. Having graduated from a degree programme in a university in Australia,

Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States of America

3. Having graduated from a degree program in one of the above countries 5 years ago or less.

4. Having been self-funded (or funded by your family) or Having received funding but would have been able to afford to self-fund otherwise

What would I be asked to do if I took part?

You would be asked to fill out a short questionnaire then participate in a semi-structured interview lasting approximately 1-2 hours (depending on how much you have to say). Semi-structured interview means that the interview will only have a few scripted questions and that those questions will be expanded upon in the style of a casual conversation, based on your replies to them.

What happens to the data collected?

52

The thesis was renamed ‘An Examination of International Education Strategies of Thai Elites’ after fieldwork was completed. The research questions was also changed in light of the data gathered.

234

The data collected will be transcribed for the purpose of analysis; all recording and transcripts will be stored in an encrypted external hard drive.

How is confidentiality maintained?

Only the researcher himself will have access to personally identifiable data, any interview material will be strictly controlled and shared only when it is deemed by both the researcher and his supervisor as being necessary for the successful completion of the project, all participants will be given the opportunity to choose a pseudonym (fake name). All data will be digitised and stored under 256-bit encryption.

What happens if I do not want to take part or if I change my mind?

You are free to change your mind about participating at any point

Will I be paid for participating in the research?

No, as there is only limited funding available for this research, however, should the interview take place in a café the researcher is happy to pay for the beverages.

What is the duration of the research?

The duration of the field work phase of the research is up to six months or until 40 interviews are collected (which is ever sooner) followed by an additional six months of analysis and a one year write-up period.

Where will the research be conducted?

The interview will take place at a place agreed upon between yourself and the researcher

Will the outcomes of the research be published?

The research’s outcomes may be published following serious consideration of impacts (if any) it may have on any participant. Participants will be consulted if there may be any possible impact on that person.

What benefit might this research be to me or other subjects of the research?

If successful, this research will provide deeper understanding of the role of the west and Western-ness play in Thai society – further, parts of the research will help to draw up documents that will help give parents and families better understanding of the impacts of overseas education upon their sons and daughters, helping families understand their recently foreign-educated members better and helping parents of future international students be better informed in making their decision to send their sons and daughters overseas

Contact for further information

For more information please email kunnaya.wimooktanon@manchester.ac.uk

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Appendix 5: Consent Form

School of Social Sciences

An Examination of the Socio-Cultural Reintegration of foreign-educated high Socio-Economic Status Bangkokian.

CONSENT FORM

If you are happy to participate please read the consent form and initial it:

Please Initial Box

1. I confirm that I have read the attached information sheet on the above project and have had the opportunity to consider the information and ask questions and had these answered satisfactorily.

2. I understand that my participation in the study is voluntary and that I am free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason.

3. I understand that the interviews will be audio recorded

4. I agree to the use of quotations that are anonymous

I agree to take part in the above project

Name of participant

Date Signature

Name of person taking consent

Date Signature

236

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