From a worldwide perspective, growth and differentiation of international school models can be observed especially in economically strong regions and urban metropolises. From a global viewpoint, transformation tendencies can be found in relation to the development of the student body of these institutions and the strategies of school choice, which also has an impact on the educational concepts and forms of these school models. Besides the globally mobile families – Ball and Nikita (2014: 82) speak of a “global middle class” – international schools are increasingly chosen by non-mobile middle-class families resident in the respective countries (e.g.,  Hayden, 2011; Keßler et al., 2015). Simultaneously, a general development tendency can be noted from a stronger normatively oriented concept of education aimed at promoting an intercultural dialogue contributing to a better international peace and understanding towards a pragmatic oriented understanding of international education, in the context of increasing globalisation and marketisation (Vieira, 2003; Hayden, 2011; Schippling, 2016).

In Portugal, international school forms already have a long tradition and are mainly concentrated in the Greater Lisbon area. New international schools have been founded since the 1990s, for example the CLIP – Oporto International School in Portugal and Oeiras International School (OIS) in Greater Lisbon. Although the international dimension and the attendance of an international college play a key role in the elite formation in Portugal, there are only a few very isolated studies in this research field (Vieira, 2003; Cortesão et al., 2007; Macedo, 2009).

The contribution presents the first research results of a study about the field of international schools in Lisbon (1). On the one hand, a general overview will be provided of the field of international schools in the Greater Lisbon area, which includes an analysis of the different models of international schools and their forms of organisation, curricula and educational qualifications; it also refers to the historical context of these institutions and examines their entrance conditions and procedures. On the other, the results will be presented of an analysis of the school programs and their related concepts of education, which characterise the respective institutions.

From a theoretic perspective, the project, which aims primarily at analysing the institutional identity of international schools in Greater Lisbon, is based firstly on elements of the theory of habitus and the field of Pierre Bourdieu (e.g., Bourdieu, 1989), which can be developed during the research process such as, for example, the concept of habitus in an institutional dimension (e.g., Reay, 1998; Schippling & Allouch, 2015). The study also gains impetus from transnationalisation research, which up to now has rarely been applied in the area of school research (Krüger et al., 2015: 82). An example is the concept of “transnational spaces of education” (Adick, 2005; Hayden, 2011), which represents another theoretical reference of the study.

In general, the study aims on the one hand at generating new insights into the field of elite education in Portugal with a special focus on the dimension of inter-/transnational education; on the other, at developing comparative perspectives in relation to the formation of elites in other European countries.

(1)  The contribution is based on a research project entitled “The internationalisation of the elite formation in Portugal. A qualitative study on international schools in Greater Lisbon” (CIES-IUL, Lisbon; Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg) and funded by the Foundation of Science and Technology (FCT).

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