Global mobility and middle class families—parenting and education

Increasing numbers of high-skilled professionals, many with families, are relocating regularly for work. This kind of mobility, across different national spaces, has implications for understandings of belonging, desires for the future, and the kinds of orientations they want to develop in their children. School choice, maintenance of transnational social networks, relations pursued in new cities they relocate to, all point to new practices of social reproduction. It is too early to substantiate empirically whether these globally mobile professional families are a distinct fraction of the middle classes—the so-called “global middle class”. However, the article summarizes the research to date and shares some of the concepts drawn on to understand how global mobility alters the nature of being middle class.