Shaping international capital through international education: the case of the French-Israeli school in Israel

The number of international schools such as the recently founded French-Israeli school in Israel is growing continuously around the world. International schooling, seen as a means to accumulate international cultural capital is increasingly viewed as a strategy of families’ social mobility. It is through international education that schools attempt to shape international capital, namely dispositions and competencies, to encourage openness to the Other and others’ cultures needed to function in the globalized world. The French-Israeli school provides two tracks: the Israeli track recruits mainly Israeli-born students while the French track students belonging to French-Jewish migrant and mobile families. The school offers language studies and a large array of multicultural activities aiming at enlarging students’ international capital. However, the two-track structure of the school and the cultural differences between the two majority groups—French and Israeli—hinder a successful cross-cultural encounter crucial for the development of international capital.