Transnational geographies of academic distinction: the role of social capital in the recognition and evaluation of ‘overseas’ credentials

Globalisation, Societies and EducationVol. 7, No. 2, June 2009, 113–129

ISSN 1476-7724 print/ISSN 1476-7732 online© 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14767720902907895http://www.informaworld.com

Transnational geographies of academic distinction: the role of social capital in the recognition and evaluation of ‘overseas’ credentials

Johanna L. Waters*

University of Liverpool, UKTaylor and FrancisCGSE_A_390961.sgm10.1080/14767720902907895Globalisation, Societies and Education1476-7724 (print)/1476-7732 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & [email protected]

This paper examines the role of specific and place-based social capital in therecognition and evaluation of international credentials. Whilst research on labourmarket segmentation has contributed towards an understanding of the spatialvariability of the value of human capital, very little attention has been paid to theways in which the credentials of more privileged social groups may in certain localcontexts become valorised. At the same time, an increasing body of work insociology has drawn attention to the globalisation of credentials and labour marketcompetition. This paper brings together these perspectives, demonstrating howtransnational social connections are put to work in the valorisation of ‘overseascredentials’ within a particular local labour market – Hong Kong’s financialservices sector. It reveals the extent to which social capital, which is at oncetransnational and locally embedded, confers value upon particular internationalcredentials, with consequences for individuals’ employment prospects. The paperstresses the continuing need to examine international academic credentials inlocalised contexts.

Keywords: credentials; social capital; international education; transnationalism;local labour markets

Introduction

Credentials help define the contemporary social order, in the medieval sense of ordo, aset of graduations at once temporal and spiritual, mundane and celestial, which establishincommensurable degrees of worth among men and women, not only by sorting and allo-cating them across the different slots that make up the social structure, but also, and moreimportantly, by presenting the resulting inequalities between them as ineluctable neces-sities born out of talent, effort, and the desire of individuals. (Wacquant 1996, x)

In this case, one sees clearly the performative magic of the power of instituting, thepower to show forth and secure belief… to impose recognition. (Bourdieu 1986, 248)

Over the past decade, debates surrounding the ‘deskilling’ of highly skilled immi-grants have gained significant momentum (Smart 1994; Boyer 1996; Pendakur andPendakur 1996; Borjas 1999; Ley 1999, 2003; Hiebert 1999; Chiswick and Miller2000; Reitz 2001; Geddie 2002; Iredale 2003; Bauder 2003; Pemberton and Stevens2006). They reflect, in part, an increasingly well-established tradition of researchwithin economic geography on segmented labour markets, which has sought toaddress the problem of credential evaluation, focusing upon the spatially differentiated

*Email: [email protected]

114 J.L. Waters

employment experiences of women, young people, disabled, ethnic and racial minor-ity groups, as well as immigrants (Hanson and Pratt 1995; Peck 1996; Hiebert 1999;Bauder 2001, 2003). In these accounts, the mismatch between human capital andemployment outcomes is stressed, at the same time highlighting both the spatiality andthe social basis of credentials.

Within this body of work, however, surprisingly little attention has been paid tothe ways in which the credentials of relatively privileged social groups may in certainlocal contexts become valorised. The labour market advantages enjoyed by ‘success-ful’ groups have tended, on the whole, to evade scrutiny. Giving prominence to theprocess of credential valuation is, therefore, one of the primary goals of this paper.

In particular, I am interested in the valorisation of ‘overseas’ credentials withinlocalised labour markets in East Asia. In international financial service centres suchas Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, certain occupations explicitly recognise andreward an ‘overseas’ or ‘Western’ education (Moir 2000; Lee 2001; Fenton 2003; Hui2003; Yeung 2003). Consequently, aspiring middle-class families actively seek outinternational qualifications by sending their children abroad for their education (Koba-yashi and Preston 2007; Mitchell 1997; Ong 1999; Waters 2003, 2005, 2006a). In thecompetition for particular jobs, locally educated graduates, in contrast, can encounternegative forms of stereotyping and discrimination (Waters 2006b).

Taken as a whole, these observations, stressing the variability of credentials andtheir value, seem at odds with claims that education is becoming increasingly stan-dardised and global (i.e., a-spatial) in nature (Dale 2000). National educationsystems are scrutinised by supra-national organisations such as UNESCO, andglobal forums and conventions concerning different aspects of academic qualityassurance seek to guarantee universal standards (Gould 2000; Robertson 2003). Inaddition, the now widespread use of terms such as ‘brain drain’, ‘brain circulation’and ‘brain exchange’ suggest the ability of human capital, embodied in the individ-ual, to travel unproblematically over and through space; Iredale (2003), for example,has recently noted that a ‘global labor market now exists in some occupations andskills that are important assets to be bought and sold’ (149), whilst Hannerz (1996)describes cosmopolitans, who come ‘equipped with special knowledge, and theycould leave and take it with them without devaluing it…They are “the new class”,people with credentials, decontextualised cultural capital’ (108). In his analysis ofthe international banking industry, Beaverstock (1996) argues that ‘the globalisationof human capital is an important process in providing the knowledge necessary forthe accumulation of capital in the world economy, particularly within the global-cityhierarchy’ (459; see also Beaverstock 2005; Faulconbridge and Hall 2008; Hall2009). These claims about the spatial transferability of credentials sit uneasily along-side observations regarding the ‘deskilling’ of immigrants and peculiarities in thefunctioning of local labour markets, which in contrast reveal distinctively localisedgeographies of human capital.

Issues surrounding the geographies of academic distinction have become increas-ingly salient with the growth of a multi-billion dollar ‘international education industry’(The Economist 2003). Presently, there are more than 2.8 million international students(OECD 2007), whilst many more families emigrate to obtain an ‘overseas education’for their children (Waters 2005, 2006a). In contradistinction to the assertion thateducation, globally, is becoming ever more standardised and universal (providing a‘level playing field’), this emergent market hinges on the necessity of differentiation –students and their parents migrate in response to perceptions regarding the geography of

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relative value. Simply put, some locations provide a more valuable (and desirable)education than do others and, despite claims to the contrary stressing the existence of aglobal labour market, credentials continue to be evaluated within local and nationalcontexts, as cogently argued by Philip Brown (2000). With a spatially differentiatedinternational education market providing the backdrop, this paper addresses the issue ofcredential evaluation and exchange in the context of Hong Kong’s internationallyoriented service sector economy. It draws on original data to examine the socio-spatialprocesses through which academic capital is exchanged into economic capital. Theresearch included in-depth semi-structured interviews with immigrant and internationalstudents in Vancouver (50), returnee graduates in Hong Kong (23),1 representatives ofVancouver School Board, British Columbia Ministry of Education, University ofBritish Columbia’s International Office and UBC-Hong Kong Alumni Association, andHR personnel at six different MNCs in Hong Kong, plus a focus group with returneegraduates. The data point to the systematic valorisation of so-called ‘overseas gradu-ates’ in certain sectors of Hong Kong’s labour market. My primary concern here is withexplicating this valorisation in a ‘trans-local’2 context, the mechanisms that enable theeffortless (for some) conversion of credentials into money and success, and the circum-stances under which these mechanisms function and why. In so doing, I progress thecritique of human capital theory proffered by writers on segmented labour markets, bydemonstrating the social and spatially varied nature of educational ‘value’. Through anexamination of the relationship between academic credentials and geographicallyembedded social networks (or social capital) in affecting the employment experiencesof ‘overseas-educated’ university graduates, I also attempt to initiate a dialoguebetween research on the sociology of education and prominent debates within economicgeography.

The paper begins with a discussion of work on the sociology of education, whereineducational attainment is related to the possession and acquisition of different ‘formsof capital’ (Bourdieu 1986). I then suggest the important role that social capital playsin the process of evaluating credentials, proposing a critique of recent scholarship thattends to perceive human capital and social capital as somehow separate entities.Finally, drawing on my research, I demonstrate the pivotal relationship between socialcapital (that is at once localised and transnational) and credential evaluation in alocally specific labour market (Hong Kong’s financial services industry), supportingBrown’s (2000) claims that a global market for credentials and jobs is significantlyoverstated.

Sociology of education, academic achievement and capital

In examining the nature of ‘overseas’ credentials in the context of East Asia, this paperadopts a particular perspective on education, emerging from a recent tradition of workin sociology, and established within the writings of Pierre Bourdieu. It is notconcerned with the pedagogic aspects of education per se; rather, in order to under-stand the process of credential evaluation, I focus on the symbolic meanings andmaterial consequences of the acquisition of an ‘overseas’ education for aspiringmiddle-class families from East Asia. Credentials are not assumed to solely or evenlargely reflect the natural talent and intelligence of students (Goldthorpe 1996; cf.Young 1958). Instead, I concur with the view that: academic qualifications can bestrategically accumulated through the purposeful actions of shrewd social subjectswith access to particular (financial, cultural and social) resources; the practices of, and

116 J.L. Waters

success in, accumulation are largely determined by ‘social class’ (Bourdieu 1984,1996; Brown 1995; Ball 2003); and accumulation strategies are inextricably linkedto an elemental concern with social reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977;Bourdieu 1984, 1986; Mitchell et al. 2004; Waters 2006b).

Worldwide, more people have access to higher levels of education than ever before(UNESCO 2003a, b), suggesting the potential for a global shift, in Collins’s words,‘from ascription to achievement, from a system of privilege to a technical meritoc-racy’ (1979, 5). And yet it is far from apparent that this shift has in fact occurred.Research examining the consequences of educational expansion has generallyobserved the perpetuation of existing societal divisions and in some casesthe intensification of social inequalities (Bondi and Matthews 1988; Brown 1995;Goldthorpe 1996). As this suggests, the relationship between formal educational struc-tures and social class has provided a central focus for recent scholarship on the soci-ology and geography of education (Bourdieu 1984, 1996; Ehrenreich 1989; Brown1995; Halsey et al. 1997; Goldthorpe 1996; Gibson and Asthana 1998, 2000; Ball2003). Different forms of capital are central to this debate.

According to Pierre Bourdieu, capital, in its various forms, is integral to the strat-ification of society. He writes:

… the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at anygiven moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e., the setof constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning ina durable way, determining the chances of success for practices. (1986, 242)3

Capital can take three principal forms: economic capital, ‘which is immediately anddirectly convertible into money and may be institutionalised in the form of propertyrights’, cultural capital, ‘which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economiccapital and may be institutionalised in the form of educational qualifications’, andsocial capital, ‘made up of social obligations (“connections”), which is convertible, incertain conditions, into economic capital’ (1986, 243). For Bourdieu, economicexchanges are perceived as only a ‘particular case of exchange’ (1986, 242) – heattempts to bring to light the social and cultural strategies that underpin ‘economic’activity, and yet are often perceived as separate and somehow ‘disinterested’.

Cultural capital in its ‘institutionalised’ state (represented by academic creden-tials) can be exchanged for economic capital in the labour market. As Bourdieu haswritten:

By conferring institutional recognition on the cultural capital possessed by any givenagent… it makes it possible to establish conversion rates between cultural capital andeconomic capital by guaranteeing the monetary value of a given academic capital. (1986,248)

Although the academic qualification may translate relatively directly and easilyinto economic capital as this statement implies, I would argue that this often does notoccur in such a straightforward fashion. In Hong Kong and throughout East Asia, the‘overseas educated’ appear to convert their cultural capital almost effortlessly intoeconomic capital (jobs). However, I want to stress the often hidden role that socialcapital plays in this seemingly natural process. The value of the cultural capitalpossessed by overseas-educated graduates depends, crucially, on particular, embeddedand localised social relations. Social capital both determines, and is determined by,


membership of a distinctive and self-referential social group (Waters 2007) – whatBrown (2000, 642) describes as ‘the continued importance of Membership rules instructuring the competition for employment’. This is something that economic geog-raphers have discussed in terms of the deskilling of immigrants and the identificationof ‘out’ groups, but not, to date, in terms of relatively privileged overseas-educatedmiddle-class graduates (although see recent work by Faulconbridge and Hall 2008 onthe role of professional education in the socialisation of professionals).

The erroneous separation of social capital and human capital in status attainment

Whilst work on the sociology of education has had an important role to play indemystifying the process of academic achievement – exposing the ongoing salienceof social class – it generally stops short of evaluating the socio-economic outcomesof credential evaluation. These have been the concern of economic sociologists andgeographers, who (as noted above) have focused on ‘deskilling’ and segmentedlabour markets. Regrettably, however, there has been very little dialogue betweenthese two perspectives, consequently obscuring the extent of the relationshipbetween the acquisition of credentials and their subsequent exchange. In this paper, Iattempt to bring these two bodies of work together. Due to the pervasive influenceof human capital theory in discussions of education and employment, the objectivenature of credentials is often wrongly assumed. Instead, I argue for the need to scru-tinise the process of becoming valuable – a process that is inherently spatial anddependent upon the social capital possessed by an individual or group (socialconnections developed over time and in situ). I will now briefly outline the conceptof social capital deployed in this paper.

Pierre Bourdieu defines social capital as:

… the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to the possessionof a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquain-tance and recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group – which provideseach of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a ‘credential’which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word. These relationships mayexist only in the practical state, in material and/or symbolic exchanges which help tomaintain them. They may also be socially instituted and guaranteed by the application ofa common name [e.g., a family or of a school]… (1986, 248–9)

This definition of social capital is reflected widely in work within the sub-disciplineof ‘economic sociology’ that uncovers the socially embedded nature of economicaction, rejecting neoclassical explanations of economic life (Granovetter 1985; Portes1998; Peck 2005). Some of this research has sought to explicate the role of social capitalin ‘status attainment’ (see Lin 2001 for an overview), including academic achievement.This is exemplified in James Coleman’s (1988) prominent article on the role of family-based resources in children’s success. Research has also examined the relationshipbetween social capital and employment outcomes (Portes 1995; Lin 2001); perhaps thebest-known work in this vein is Mark Granovetter’s (1995) Getting a job, whichunderlines the importance of social connections in providing vital information onemployment opportunities. Granovetter aims ‘to bring the operation of chance into itssocial context, where it can be more properly understood’ (xi), demonstrating howfriends and family facilitate job seeking. Fernandez and Weinberg’s (1997) research

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on the hiring practices of a US retail bank similarly reveals the crucial role of socialcapital. Examining 5568 initial employment inquiries, they were interested in howapplicants had become aware of a job opening; whether a current employee had referredthem; and whether or not they were subsequently granted an interview and offered ajob. They found that 27% of external ‘non-referrals’ were granted interviews, comparedto 79% of ‘referrals’. When considering job-offer rates, ‘referrals’ were offered jobsat three times the rate of external ‘non-referrals’. They examined factors at each stageof the job-application process and found that the benefits of social recommendationscompounded.4

Intriguingly, in all of these examples, credentials are understood to exist apartfrom, and alongside, social capital. Lin (2001, 25), for example, claims that it is neces-sary to carry out ‘a parallel analysis between social capital’ and human capital in orderto establish the relative importance of human capital vis-à-vis social capital in ‘statusattainment’. Such a view of the relationship between academic credentials and socialcapital is widespread and yet, I would suggest, misleading. It detracts from the factthat the value of human capital (or credentials) is socially constructed and spatiallyvariable; human capital and social capital are inextricably linked. Aguilara (2003)goes some way towards articulating this link when he argues that ‘perhaps it is animmigrant’s ability to market his/her human capital through social capital that largelydetermines job tenure’ (56). In this vein, it is argued here that the distinction derived,by individuals, from particular ‘skills’ and ‘credentials’ is substantially dependentupon their social capital (Bourdieu 1984) – their credentials are given value throughsocial recognition in locally embedded labour markets. Extending the claims made byBourdieu (1984), I endeavour also to demonstrate the inherently spatial nature of thisvaluation process.

Background and context to research

During 2002–2003, examining the relationship between transnational migration, educa-tion and employment, I investigated the experiences of a group of young migrants asthey moved from Hong Kong to Canada seeking education (50 individuals), and thenback to Hong Kong to seek work (28 individuals). Most were attending/had attendedthe University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. In addition, as noted above,I interviewed organising members of the UBC-Hong Kong Alumni Association, thedirector of UBC’s International Office, the director of international education atVancouver School Board, the Inspector of Independent Schools at British ColumbiaMinistry of Education, and HR personnel at six different MNCs in Hong Kong’s finan-cial district.5 In what follows, I substantiate my argument concerning the relationshipbetween educational credentials and social capital with examples drawn from these data.

Participants’ immigration to Canada was largely motivated by education. Theywere part of a substantial migration (numbering tens of thousands) that flowed fromHong Kong to Canada during the early to mid-1990s (Skeldon 1994). Many havesubsequently adopted a transnational existence, with family members and assets inmultiple locations. They move frequently between Hong Kong and Vancouver in anattempt to balance employment and personal circumstances (Ley and Kobayashi2005; Kobayashi and Preston 2007). Whilst anecdotal evidence would suggest largenumbers of such transnational (educationally-motivated) migrants, they are difficult toquantify. Most, along with their parents, qualified as ‘landed immigrants’ to Canada,and were therefore enrolled in Canadian schools and university as ‘local’ students


(consequently not figuring in statistics on international students). Data on returnees(from Canada to Hong Kong) are generally thought to underestimate the extent ofreturn migration, although these figures are nevertheless informative. Ley and Koba-yashi (2005) describe a special run of the 2001 census of Hong Kong for the entirepopulation, which suggested 86,000 returnees, 40% from Canada:

The cohort was primarily at a career-building stage. The largest single group of Canadianreturnees, 37.5 per cent, were young adults aged 20–29, with another 21.5 per cent aged30–39. Half the returnees from Canada had university degrees (70 per cent of theseearned overseas) and the same proportion held professional or assistant professionalpositions. (2005, 116)

Whilst we do not have definitive data on the number of young immigrant gradu-ates educated in Canada choosing to return to Hong Kong to find work, therefore,existing statistics along with other recent qualitative work would suggest that to returnfor employment is a common practice (Kobayashi and Preston 2007) and not ananomaly.

The reasons underlying the decision to return are clear in the context of the locallabour market in Hong Kong. Interviews with HR personnel at MNCs located in HongKong’s international financial district revealed an unequivocal preference for employ-ing individuals possessing the embodied traits/attributes associated with an ‘overseaseducation’ (irrespective of the actual degree or qualification achieved), includingcommunication skills, confidence, English-ability, ability to speak one’s mind (anextroverted character), possessing a ‘different perspective on the world’ and comport-ment. These findings would seem to provide some support to Aihwa Ong’s claimsregarding the importance of embodied cultural capital for East Asian elites (Ong1999).6

In what follows, however, I will focus on two broad aspects of these graduates’social capital (drawing upon their own accounts of their employment experiences),with significant implications for the way in which their credentials are evaluated in thelabour market. The first concerns the generic importance of networking and contactsin facilitating employment, particularly the role of friends and family. Secondly, Iillustrate the work that place-based transnational social capital does in the positiveevaluation of graduates’ human capital. These observations underscore claims thatlabour markets function in locally specific ways (Peck 1996).

Networking and the value of credentials

The economic and social return of academic capital depends in many cases on the social(or even economic) capital that allows it to acquire its full value… (Bourdieu 1984, 286)

And you want to have more friends so maybe you will go to the party. (RM, Interview,Hong Kong, 2003)

As Bourdieu (1986) has suggested, family and friends play an important role in deter-mining ‘the value objectively and subjectively placed on the academic qualification’(143) – in this case ensuring that graduates’ ‘overseas’ credentials were both recogn-ised and esteemed. This role was especially marked in accounts of how they acquiredtheir first job:

120 J.L. Waters

HF: Well, first job, in Hong Kong sometimes you apply through the newspaper butusually they ask for experience. It is usual to have some referrals, from family andfriends, if they can introduce you to somebody else, that kind of stuff. That’s howI got my first job to be honest… at Deloitte and Touche, an accounting firm, at thecorporate finance department doing mergers and acquisitions. (Interview, HongKong, 2003)

The role of the family – specifically the notion of ‘familism’ – is prolific in recentdiscussions of Chinese capitalism. Distinguished from a ‘Western model’ that empha-sises individualism, the ‘affective model’ (said to characterise Chinese economicactivities) extols group orientation and familial ‘emotional bonds’ (Tai 1989; seeMitchell, 1995, for similar claims regarding specifically Hong Kong business prac-tices in the context of contemporary global economic restructuring). Whilst this strongnotion of familism is not absent from participants’ accounts, only a small number hadactually sought (or intended to seek) employment through a family-run business. Thevast majority had professional occupations in large (and presumably ‘non-family’)multi-national corporations. And yet, even in this context, family members continuedto exert some influence. Several participants claimed that securing work in HongKong had been ‘easy’ as a result of family connections:

AT: There were a lot of jobs, there were about five of them. There were lots ofconnections with my family too, like, my dad had some connections and mycousin had some connections. So I tried to interview for the job and they justhired me.

CB: I was lucky because I was referred by one of my friends. Actually she was myuncle’s friend… He said, ‘oh, you like sport, right? I have a friend who owns asports-wear company and if you don’t have a job then I can introduce you’. I wentfor the interview and I got the job. Maybe one of the reasons was my friend.

AT: Hong Kong is all about connections – relationships with companies. Like, refer-rals. You won’t get jobs easily if you don’t have referrals from others – friends,family.

CB: It’s not a must. You can get a job on a regular basis, but it’s easier for you to geta job maybe with more benefits.

BL: Actually, it’s easier for you to get a better job, a job that you really want to do.(Focus group, Hong Kong, 2003)

As this extract clearly conveys, family and friends provided a vital foot-in-the-doorfollowing graduates’ return to Hong Kong.

Olivia provides an apposite example of the role of social capital in employment.Both she and her husband relied on social connections to find work. As she describes,her husband’s lack of qualifications should have limited his job options:

OT: Given his academic qualifications, a college diploma, I mean… in Hong Kongthey needed at least a degree in finance or whatever. And given his deficit – hedidn’t have a major degree or anything – I think it was a gold opportunity…Hissister tried to help me line up some job interviews for me, because she knew some-body in marketing and advertising, and my brother-in-law helped my husband finda job [in a multi-national retail bank]. (Interview, Hong Kong, 2003)

This demonstrates, in rather stark terms, the apparent ability of social capital to‘over-ride’ the value of ‘objective’ qualifications. In fact, this relationship betweensocial capital and human capital, whereby social connections give value to an individ-uals’ cultural capital, was widely evident.


Interestingly, although family members were clearly important, so-called ‘weakties’ (Granovetter 1973) seemed to play an even greater role in credential recognition.As Bourdieu (1986) has noted:

The volume of the social capital possessed by a given agent… depends on the size of thenetwork of connections he can effectively mobilize and on the volume of the capital(economic, cultural or symbolic) possessed in his own right by each of those to whomhe is connected. (1986, 248)

Graduates were keen, therefore, to have ‘more friends’ – to expand their networkrather than deepen individual friendships. A close examination of the nature of thesenetworks reveals the blurring of boundaries between friends, work colleagues, leisureand work spaces, as the following example attests:

BW: I am building up my relationships now and I think that I can have it when I wantto use it, in the future… Sometimes when you are, for example on Saturday andSunday you want to take a break yourself. You want to stay at home reading,sleeping, but you cannot do this – you know that. You have to hang out with yourfriends to build up your relationships, not staying at home reading by yourself.(Interview, Hong Kong, 2003)

Social capital is also, then, ‘the product of an endless effort at institution’ (Bour-dieu 1986, 249), requiring constant work and attention on an individual level. Thesignificant effort constantly expended on the development of social capital was palpa-ble. The notion of ‘friend’ is redefined, and friendships are invested in and developedstrategically:

RM: They can help you when you need them.BW: Yes, they can help me, or I can help them. Nowadays, I think it is hard to get a

best friend. My friend friends are the ones I knew when I was studying in highschool. Nowadays, if I know a new friend I think it is hard to be a best friend.

RM: Friends from your work place, you won’t become best friends.JW: Why?BW: Competition with them. You don’t know what they are doing, you don’t know

what they are thinking.

New friendships do not often involve the exchange of personal information.

BW: We will go out for a drink or dinner or lunch, but we won’t say something in depth,personal. I have enough friends from high school and UBC, so I don’t need todevelop that kind of relationship with those people.

One senior colleague offered valuable advice on the development of strategicfriendships. In the following quotation, the link between social capital and employ-ment success, irrespective of qualifications, is explicitly drawn:

BW: One of our friends told us… don’t waste your time on people that can’t help you.You must hang out with those that can help you – who have the ability to help youwhen you need them. He is forty-something and is very experienced. He has workedin large firms, the top financial institutions… It really helps if you have thosenetworks. We know some people who don’t have experience in the industry andknow nothing about it but still she can get a job… Hundreds of people applyingwho have experience, who have a couple of years experience, were more qualifiedthan her. But she got the job. Why? Because she knows the head of that departmentso she got the job.

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RM: Especially in our business, in the banking industry, I don’t think there’s someonereading the classifieds… to get a job. Everybody is introduced by somebody.Everybody. (Interview, Hong Kong, 2003)

Thus, as the data show, overseas-educated graduates are not automaticallypreferred over locally-educated graduates, but they have to rely, to some significantextent, on influential social connections.

Trans-local social capital and the local labour market

Whilst these general observations regarding the importance of social capital providean insight into the means by which credentials are evaluated and assessed (Simon andWarner 1992; Granovetter 1995; Lin 2001) they do not sufficiently examine onecrucial element of social capital in relation to human capital – its geography. In theintroduction to this paper, I highlighted the ‘problem of accreditation’, and suggestedthe importance of geography for understanding the seemingly irregular and variablevalue of credentials. Some credentials are highly localised in nature whilst others(such as an Oxbridge degree) would seem to travel over space and distance fairlyunproblematically. For my research participants, the distance between Vancouver andHong Kong did nothing to hinder the smooth conversion of their credentials into anoffer of work - this was a surprisingly straightforward process. In what follows, Idemonstrate how ‘social group membership’ provided graduates with resources thatdirectly facilitated job-seeking in a specific transnational, trans-local context.

Only one participant was unemployed at the time of the research and several hadreceived job offers from large international firms in Hong Kong before their gradua-tion (and whilst they were still students in Vancouver), as described here by Jenny:

JC: And then my friend told me – I had no intention of going into a bank – but thenmy friend told me that there was this position in a bank and that’s why I lookedon Citibank’s web page and there’s the posting of what I want. And so I appliedfor it and then I came back to Hong Kong.

JW: So you applied before you came back?JC: Yes, but then they tried to call me but I had left my Vancouver contact so we were,

like, running around chasing each other. Eventually he found me and I startedwork two weeks after I went back to Hong Kong. (Interview, Hong Kong, 2003)

The ease with which overseas graduates were able to secure work was common-place and widely acknowledged:

JW: How easy was it to get a job?DG: How easy? In the third week after I came back [to Hong Kong] I was working.

That wasn’t a record though, because a few of my friends doing civil engineeringat that time, they got a job already in position before they went back to HongKong.

JW: They applied from Vancouver?DG: Yeah, they sent their CV… They may have connections with some people… But

before the convocation they were working. (Interview, Hong Kong, 2003)

Their credentials were clearly valued in this particular job market, which is locallyregulated. The place-dependent nature of their qualifications was underscored by theexperiences of a minority of graduates who tried and failed to find commensuratework in Vancouver.


JW: Did you look for a job [in Canada]?AT: I tried for a month, a month or two, and there was no reply at all… Since all my

friends are leaving then I just come back [to Hong Kong]. (Interview, Hong Kong,2003)

There are no data available on the number of Canadian-educated immigrants whotry unsuccessfully to find work in Canada. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that, incases when an attempt is made, failure is common (Kobayashi and Preston 2007).Most, however, seem not even to try. They are cognisant of the nature of their owneducation, their social capital, and how these relate to the two very different labourmarkets (Vancouver and Hong Kong). Simply put, in Vancouver the exact samecredentials are not as valuable. They become valuable through return to Hong Kongand the simultaneous mobilisation of place-based social capital. Although it is beyondthe scope of this paper, a detailed examination of the experiences of Canadian-educated immigrants who encounter difficulties in securing employment in Canadawould provide a much-needed insight into the ‘problem of accreditation’ confrontedby immigrants educated elsewhere.

Institutionalising social capital: the importance of alumni

All of my friends, nearly, if they graduated from business or economics… are all aroundthis area – the financial area here in Central. (Interview with AT, Hong Kong, 2003)

As described by Bourdieu (1986), the power of social capital depends in part on itsability to confer ‘institutional recognition’. In the relationship between credentials andlabour market outcomes, much of this recognition is achieved through the work(formal and informal) of alumni. The alumni association has a key role to play in insti-tutionalising the value of particular credentials through the creation of social capital.The UBC-Hong Kong Alumni Association is the University of British Columbia’sbiggest and most active alumni association outside Canada. It has an office in thedowntown area (from which I conducted several interviews), a newsletter and acurrent membership of 1200. It also hosts the University of British Columbia AsiaPacific Regional Office. Alumni events are organised monthly, and include hikes,boat trips, windsurfing, a Dragon Boat party, barbeques and a Christmas dinner. Thewebsite boasts: ‘members enjoy numerous social and business networking activitiesthroughout the year that help to promote friendships and business relationships’(UBC-Hong Kong Alumni Association, no pagination). The majority of my graduateresearch participants were members of this association, with varying degrees of activeinvolvement in its organised events and activities.

Intertwined with the formal work of the alumni association is the informal workcarried out (consciously and unconsciously) by individual returnees. Chat amongstcolleagues and friends results in the circulation of discourses about the overseaseducation that propagate an associated image of success and achievement. This, Iwould suggest, has had a direct impact on the relative value of particular overseascredentials. When asked whether employers in Hong Kong were generally aware ofthe University of British Columbia, one participant replied: ‘Yes! They know, becausea lot of people from UBC come back – go back to Hong Kong from UBC. There area lot. Especially from Commerce, I think’. There are, another participant asserted,‘many Canadian citizens who are Chinese who are working in Hong Kong right now.

124 J.L. Waters

So it’s not surprising to be talking to a UBC grad on the street’. Yasmin, who worksfor a multinational bank, described the process by which she came to obtain hercurrent job. She replaced a colleague who had also been educated at UBC (and whohappened to attend the same high school as her in Vancouver.) She said:

And my boss liked him and thought that reputation wise UBC is not that bad, so theykind of liked to hire me. And there are lots of people from UBC who are now in Citibank.It’s kind of like a reputation thing. Once you get someone working well in that companythey will look at your resume and think, ‘oh, you are from that university’.

Many employers, it transpired, were themselves part of this exclusive ‘overseas-educated‘ club and had either direct or indirect experience of the Canadian educationsystem. Invariably, employers will reward in others what they perceive in themselves,thereby preserving the value of their own cultural capital:

DJ: My boss, the managing director, OK I just found out! He graduated from McGill[Montreal, Canada]. Yeah, that’s true! I didn’t know until this week. Someone toldme. I didn’t ask. You wouldn’t ask your boss ‘where did you graduate?’

NW: Actually, the boss who hired me was working in Toronto, I think in the tax depart-ment or the government department… He was like a mobile Canadian. (Interview,Hong Kong, 2003)

The social capital operating in this context was truly trans-local – being at oncetransnational and localised. Reflecting the recent history of emigration from HongKong, employers and work colleagues had a personal connection to Vancouver. Asone interviewee reflected:

MP: Some people [employers] who haven’t been to Vancouver, they don’t know [thevalue of a UBC degree]. But once they’ve been to Vancouver and they know UBCthey’ll just employ you. The reputation is really high, as long as they know Canadaand Vancouver. (Interview, Hong Kong, 2003)

Employers’ personal knowledge of Vancouver has impacted the value of UBCgraduates’ cultural capital.

Other uses of social capital

Whilst friends and family often relayed information on existing job opportunities,arranged introductions and made referrals, they also proffered forms of assistance nottypically associated with social capital, yet crucial to graduates’ employment pros-pects nonetheless. Reflecting the transnational nature of their mobility (and theirwealth), many households owned property in both Vancouver and Hong Kong. Thisproved to be an invaluable resource for graduates returning to find work, affording asignificant degree of flexibility and attenuating the usual financial and materialpressures attached to job-seeking:

AT: Since all my friends are leaving [Vancouver] then I just came back [to HongKong]. And my dad is here so I have a place to stay. I had to have support frommy family, some financial support. I don’t see there’s much problem. If I can’tfind a job I can just go back [to Canada] any time I want. (Interview, HongKong, 2003)


On her return to Hong Kong, Olivia was able to move straight into the family flat,recently vacated by her sister:

OT: It just so happened that the flat that I was talking about – the one flat that mymother owned but never sold – I took over the flat because my sister, after livingthere for so long, they found a place of their own. They moved out. So I thought,it’s going to work out as at least we don’t have to pay for rent or anything like that.(Interview, Hong Kong, 2003)

Social capital, it would seem, can include the provision of material as well as lesstangible resources that are clearly place-based and highly localised in nature. Theseresources can have a bearing on the labour market outcomes of individual job searches.

Conclusion

The relationship between human capital and employment outcomes is an issue oflong-standing concern amongst economic geographers. Widespread evidence of the‘deskilling’ of immigrants in many Western cities – the so-called problem of accred-itation – has fairly recently served to underline both the social and spatial nature ofcredentials. Work by geographers on labour market segmentation has shown howparticular (usually minority) societal groups become confined to low-skilled, low-paidjobs, regardless of the level of their human capital, indicating spatial variations in thevalue of credentials and the importance of studying the vagaries of local labourmarkets.

Paralleling but rarely engaging in these debates are discussions amongst sociolo-gists concerned with the competition for jobs in an ostensibly globalising labour market(Brown 2000, Brown and Hesketh 2004). In theory, education, too, is becoming glob-alised as millions of students seek credentials overseas (OECD 2007). Increasingly,however, we are becoming aware of the fallacy of borderless international credentialsthat travel unproblematically, not least through the evidence derived from the ‘problemof accreditation’. This paper argues that, in fact, even international qualificationsremain locally embedded, demonstrating the role of personal social connections inconferring value upon them.

In this paper, I have approached the issue of the social and spatially variable natureof credentials and their value, extending the critique of human capital theory, from theperspective of more privileged groups, and how their cultural capital may becomevalorised and rewarded in a local labour market. I have attempted to suggest some ofthe mechanisms by which this valorisation can occur. Bringing together these differ-ent literatures and concepts from sociology of education, economic sociology andeconomic geography, the notion of social capital proved useful. Drawing on researchin Canada and Hong Kong that has included interviews with immigrant students,returnee graduates and HR personnel at several MNCs, I have illustrated the essentialrole that social capital (arising out of social group membership) plays in bestowingvalue upon an ‘overseas’ education and particularly, in this case, a UBC degree. Thepaper asserts and demonstrates, through examples, the place-based nature of socialcapital, illustrating the transnational, trans-local nature of graduates’ social connec-tions forged through similar personal histories of emigration to Vancouver and returnto Hong Kong. It also makes the theoretical point that human capital and social capitalshould not be considered separate entities but should be examined together.

126 J.L. Waters

The relationship between credentials, the process of credential evaluation andlabour market outcomes is an important one, not least given a burgeoning multi-billion dollar international education industry that includes the aggressive marketingof overseas degrees and the mobility of millions of students worldwide. Increasingly,we need to understand what gives different institutional qualifications their particularvalue, or ‘positional good,’ in a globalising labour market (Brown 2000). This paperhas made two basic points in relation to this: first, that social capital has an importantrole to play in mediating the value of credentials. In this case, graduates’ social capitalincreased the value of their UBC degree. Second, and connected to the first point,social capital affects the value of different credentials in particular, localised labourmarkets. Here, hiring practices in Hong Kong’s financial services sector are related toa dense web of transnational networks connecting Hong Kong to Canada and specifi-cally to Vancouver. To understand the international value of institutional capital,sensitivity to the spatiality of academic distinction in relation to networks of socialcapital is required.

Notes1. The numbers in brackets indicate individuals interviewed.2. I use ‘trans-local’ after Smith and Guarnizo (1998) to describe the way in which two

specific localities can be linked transnationally.3. In this description, there is an implicit allusion to the geography of capital, through refer-

ence to its varied distribution, although Bourdieu does not explicitly develop this point.4. They have offered several possible explanations for this result. Employers may perceive

referral policies as a way of encouraging bottom-up involvement in personnel decisions.They may therefore take employees referrals more seriously – ‘by soliciting referrals [thecompany] is, in essence, asking employees to put their personal social networks to workfor the company’ (899). Other reasons involve post-hire outcomes. Employees may givethe newcomer additional information on the job, facilitating their initial transition. And,newly employed persons may also perform well as a consequence of a sense of social obli-gation to the person who referred them: ‘newly hired employees may be concerned withhow their on-the-job behavior affects the reputations of the people who referred them’ (899).

5. I would like to thank two research assistants at The University of Hong Kong for their helpwith this latter task.

6. I have discussed elsewhere (Waters 2006a) the specific importance of cultural capital inthis context and so will not expand on this aspect here.

Notes on contributorJohanna Waters is a lecturer in human geography at the University of Liverpool. She obtaineda BA (Hons) degree from the University of Oxford, UK, and MA and PhD degrees from theUniversity of British Columbia, Canada. Her current research interests include the relationshipbetween transnational migration and education, the internationalisation of higher education,and individual and family experiences of transnationalism.

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Documents

Transnational geographies of academic distinction: the role of social capital in the recognition and evaluation of ‘overseas’ credentials