Alone or together in the neighbourhood? School choice and families’ access to local social networks

Abstract

This study explores how the everyday geographies of city life and families' access to social networks in the neighbourhood influence families' school choices. The data consists of thematic interviews with parents of 8-14-year-old children (n=170) in three urban areas located in the cities of Paris (France), Milan (Italy) and Espoo (Finland) and are analysed via qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate that the families' access to local social networks influence the reasoning behind school choice to the local school. The children's relationships with other children and adults in the neighbourhood are considered important, but additionally the parents' networks with other parents in the area, mediated by the school, play their role. School choices as practices should therefore be analysed not merely as choices of an institution, as they comprise of various aspects concerning the surrounding neighbourhood as a physical and social space.

Neighborhood, Segregation, and School Choice

“…Market theory and rational choice theory, which were deeply discussed by Maile (2004) in the school choice context of South Africa, were also found in some of the other studies, such as Rowe and Lubienski (2017). On the other hand, a connection of school choice theory to social capital theory was also found in the argument that school choice is a social process and that schools are cultural institutions that provide children with social and cultural capital and safety (Bader et al, 2019;Kosunen & Rivière, 2018).…”

“…Regarding the qualitative and mixed-method articles, the results indicate that these studies used data from interviews with 30-50 parents, covering their school choice considerations and the ways their neighborhoods or social environments influenced their school choices. These interviews were analyzed by using content analysis (Kosunen & Rivière, 2018) or thematic analysis (Bader et al, 2019;Nielsen & Andersen, 2019).…”

“…That being said, parents that did make an active choice had various reasons for choosing or not choosing schools. In addition to Böhlmark et al (2016), this conceptual framework, or parts of it, has been used in at least nine other studies (e.g., Bischoff & Tach, 2018;Bonal et al, 2019;Kosunen & Rivière, 2018;Yang Hansen & Gustafsson, 2016).…”

“…Rowe and Lubienski (2017), for example, based their research on market theory and the significance of standardized test scores for middle-class parents. Kosunen and Rivière (2018) and Bader, Laureau, and Evans (2019), on the other hand, connected school choice theory to social capital theory. They argued that school choice is a social process and that schools are cultural institutions that provide children with social and cultural capital as well as safety.…”

“…Regarding the connection between neighborhood and school choice, the literature showed that neighborhood factors affected parents' school choice in various ways. For one, parents used their local social networks when assessing whether a school was the right choice for their child and assessed the neighborhood as a physical and social space for themselves as well as for their children (Kosunen & Rivière, 2018). Parents developed social networks through interactions with other parents in their neighborhoods.…”