Applicant
Anne-Sophie Delval
Funded by
SNF Postdoc.Mobility, see Project Page
Duration
2021-2023
Careers of Swiss Hospitality Management Schools’ (SHMSs) alumni represent an excellent case study to investigate transnational strategies of social re/production in a context of globalisation. This PostDoc.Mobility research project aims to understand how international cultural capital acquired during hospitality management training in Switzerland - supposed to improve English proficiency, to develop a multicultural dispositions and ease in transnational mobility - is being valued and converted in various national contexts. Analysing SHMSs’ alumni socio-professional and migratory pathways will enable to examine whether and how the international education sector enhances employability by giving access to an alleged global labour market.
The project will develop an innovative theoretical framework to investigate strategies of social re/production occurring through educational and professional mobility in the global hospitality industry. In order to do so, we will conduct a multi-sited and online qualitative research study, interviewing 60 SHMSs’ alumni living in four global cities - Hong Kong, Shanghai, Paris, and New York. They were chosen with respect to their migration policy, the language(s) spoken there and the presence of SHMSs’ alumni networks.
Three research questions will guide our work 1) How are cosmopolitan dispositions and international capital acquired by SHMSs’ alumni variously being mobilised in professional careers? 2) How does the seniority of an alumnus’ international capital influence her/his migratory path? 3) How do geopolitical characteristics of global cities and the dynamism of their hospitality job markets offer different conditions for the mobilisation of such international cultural capital?
This two-year stay at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Copenhagen offers a collaboration with Prof. Claire Maxwell, expert in the internationalization of education and the educational choices of the global middle class.This project will be the opportunity to integrate and strengthen a very dynamic scientific network in these areas of research, particularly in Scandinavian countries and more generally internationally.
