“In a period of ‘diploma inflation’ the disparity between the aspirations that the educational system produces and the opportunities it really offers is a structural reality which affects all the members of a school generation, but to a varying extent depending on the rarity of their qualifications and on their social origins.” (Bourdieu [1984] 2010, 139)

Diploma inflation has become an important issue nowadays, with rising student numbers across almost every country in the world and the development from “elite higher education” (< 15 percent of a cohort enrolled) to “mass higher education” (15 to 50 percent) or even “universal higher education” (Trow 1970) in many countries including Germany. Those definition of the widespread of higher education point to the problem and the foundation of the research questions of this paper. Higher education is not reserved for the elite anymore, but has become universal or at least much more accessible for the broader masses (e.g. through higher percentages of accomplished a levels). Massification or universalisation of HE degrees leads to the loss of distinction of the same degrees, that were limited to a smaller group in the past and hence were more valuable and connected to a higher degree of symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1984). With the relative loss of distinction of the degree itself, distinction practices shifted to other forms of extra-curricular activities, such as study-related mobility experiences (Courtois 2018). Apart from distinction through the symbolic capital itself, international mobility brings a lot of various benefits (and therefore additional indirect distinction), such as the development of self-confidence, language and organisational skills, adaptability, and qualification for (especially international) employment (Key et al. 2017). However, even international student mobility (ISM) has now become quite common among students and the share of student with ISM among the student population has risen substantially over the last decades (Netz & Finger, 2016). While ISM rose generally in European countries over the last decades and achieved partially very large growth rates, including Germany with a growth of 424 percent from 1975 to 2006 (King et al. 2010), it apparently peaked around 2010 in Germany and has fallen slightly till then (Prado et al. 2020). This relative decline can be explained with the introduction of the new tiered bachelor-master study system in Germany and the rising numbers of students at universities of applied sciences, which tend to be less mobile in general (Heublein et al. 2021). Nevertheless, what once was a form of extra credential has become an almost given or normal activity and phase in every student’s experience (Teichler 2012). Therefore, we argue, ISM faces the same problem that higher education degrees faced before: a loss of relative distinction within those higher education systems (HES) where ISM is on the rise – mostly driven by policies that are aiming for precisely this: a higher number of students with international experience. ISM is a keystone in the internationalisation of higher education and because internationalisation has become a strong paradigm for many HES and universities, ISM increased massively over the last decades (Altbach & de Wit 2015; Altbach & Knight 2007). What might be beneficial for society or economy in general and on the macro level (although this is a different discussion, see ibid.), poses a problem on the micro level. Studies-related mobility lost its “unique selling point” for the individual student through its general commonality. Therefore, this paper wants to shift perspective from the quantity of mobility to a closer look into the quality of mobility. Specifically, it asks what forms of ISM prove to be distinctive and are those forms specific to the upper class?

Our sample consists of 95 biographical-narrative interviews with master (or equivalent) students from the study programmes of management/business administration, medicine and musicology at full universities. The three disciplines represent different horizontal capital configuration in a Bourdieusian sense, with management highly focused on economic capital and less on cultural capital, whereas in musicology it is the opposite. Medicine in Germany has the highest percentage of students from academic households among all study programmes (Middendorff et al. 2017) and prepares for an occupation with very high symbolic capital in Germany. Before the interview, interviewees were sampled by a short questionnaire that would indicate their social background. This was done to ensure an adequate number of interviewees from the higher, middle and lower class (Vester 2003) for the purpose of comparative analysis. The interview opened with an open inquiry about the interviewee’s life, where they could talk freely about biographical aspects that are important to themselves, followed by a second part of open questions about family, school, studies, and closing with the third part of the interview with a battery of specific questions (Witzel & Reiter 2012). This type of interviewing can be described as a mixed form of interview, because it combines narrative with problem-centred aspects and becomes more focused in its questioning throughout the interview. Questions of the second and third part were only asked, when they were not addressed in the preceding part of the interview. The third part also featured three explicit questions about ISM (if, why, perceived relevance) as well as a question about their future geographical horizon. The analysis was realised with the help of the documentary method (Bohnsack 2014, Nohl 2010), which proves to be very prolific in explorative studies, as it not limits itself to the content of the interview, but also considers the implicit and habitual dimension of the interview and interviewee. To highlight the centrality of international mobility for the students’ educational strategy, diverge cases with the experience of ISM were compared over the same topics, that arose out of the interview, such as configuration of mobility, motivation, perceived relevance, orientation, and linking of mobility to other strategical activities. Based on our initial assumption about social differentiation and distinction this was mainly conducted among vertical and horizontal lines of social stratification of the students (Bourdieu 1984; Vester 2003). Therefore, we paired the empirical openness of the documentary method with certain theoretical considerations.

Preliminary findings show that the significance attached to ISM by upper-class students varies fundamentally between disciplines and therefore their orientation and strategies towards ISM vary, too. The general differences between the disciplines point to varying significance among upper-class students and the symbolic gain of ISM as part of distinction. The lower the overall appreciation and value of ISM is seen in the discipline, the easier it is to gain distinction from ISM, because of the relatively low activity in the field. ISM then becomes a nice bonus and ‘extra’ that complements other academic capital, which is bound to specific scholastic fields (Courtois 2019). However, in such a field it is also more unlikely that even upper-class students engage in ISM, because of different prioritisation. This can obviously change over the course of time and struggle for the ‘proper’ and legit symbolic power configuration in a field (Bourdieu 1990). Therefore, it is thinkable that ISM will gain more momentum even in those disciplines, that are relatively immobile compared to others. Beyond disciplinary discrepancies main distinctive practices arise through the realisation of more numerous, longer and especially more exclusive (almost always equals more expensive) stays abroad, especially in places of extraordinary symbolic power for the specific discipline (e.g. the USA in management studies). Furthermore, the combination of a stay abroad with other extra-curricular but study-specific activities, such as internships, voluntary work, student research, or part-time work, proved to be a very visible measure to enhance the symbolic value of ISM and to put oneself ahead of more widely used forms of ISM, especially institutionalised exchange programmes such as Erasmus.

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