Based on multi-sited ethnographic research conducted in South Korea and the United States from May 2014 to August 2016, this dissertation examines elite reproduction of Korean families who sent their children to the United States for their education. Despite recent debates and active discussion on transnationalism and immigration populations, international student communities in American universities, especially those from the upper class of Asian countries, have not gained much attention. By focusing on a specific subgroup of Korean elite educational migrants, or yuhaksaeng, in the United States, my study attempts to begin filling this void and to add further value to anthropological studies. To explore how elite reproduction occurs, I examined the narratives of Korean elite families—250 yuhaksaeng who received higher education from top-ranked American universities and forty of their parents. In addition, I engaged in participant observation of various social gatherings in the Gangnam area of Seoul, Korea; New York City; and other major US cities in the Northeast. Drawing on the ethnographic data, my dissertation demonstrates that elite reproduction is an on-going venture fraught with numerous obstacles requiring continuous and deliberate effort and practice to overcome. It explores how yuhaksaeng and their parents attempt to navigate the arduous process of maintaining and reproducing the privileges across generations. Furthermore, it examines each step and educative practice that the participants collectively figure out within their exclusive transnational elite networks.

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The past 45 years have witnessed unprecedented growth in social and economic inequality in the U.S. Much has been studied regarding the economic, sociological, and educational conditions that have led to increasing inequality, but it has mainly focused on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. Recently there has been an increase in research on elites, but one area that has remained relatively understudied is the private, independent school industry. Since the Civil Rights Era of the 1960’s, most of the 1,600 independent schools in the U.S. have attempted to become accessible to more students, mainly by admitting growing numbers of students of color. However, over the last 20 years financial aid relative to school revenue has remained essentially flat, suggesting that “diversity” in independent schools has taken on a particular meaning. This study traces the history of “diversity” and interrogates why “diversity” is a problem worth addressing, how it has been conceived at different times, and what doing so has accomplished for independent schools. Previous literature has relied on Marxist and Bourdieusian structuralist theories to describe the mechanisms of social reproduction in elite schools. Instead, this study employs a Foucauldian framework and discourse analysis to examine the primary industry journal, Independent School, to construct a genealogy of “diversity” discourse since 1976. This approach endeavors to broaden the theoretical perspectives of elite research and reconceptualize independent schools’ role in perpetuating inequities in the U.S. The study finds six distinctive eras of “diversity” discourse within these 45 years, each with its own “diverse” subjectivities. “Diversity” has functioned in two primary modes corresponding to different regimes of truth. The first that spans 1976 to 1998 appreciates “diversity” as a matter of threat that must first be neutralized and then can be harnessed for the benefits of elites. In the second period (1999 to 2021) “diversity” transitions to a series of actions and skills that elites can equip themselves with to better their chances of success in their futures as societal leaders. The implications extend from there that by producing conceptions of “diversity” like these, particularly as matters of race, sexual orientation, and gender, (and not socioeconomic status) the institutional apparatus maintains a moral façade and obscures the role it plays in maintaining social stratification in the U.S.

Education is a crucial site and primary driver of elite status maintenance and reproduction. Decades of research highlight how elite colleges and universities use various forms of gatekeeping to admit and represent the interests of dominant groups. This body of research explains that most elite private schools served White, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant upper-class children, preparing them to be the country's future leaders. These schools and colleges work together, creating well-trodden pipelines for young elites. However, there is limited research considering how parents think about securing their child's place in elite schools or how organizations external to the educational institutions facilitate this decision-making process. What logics of justification and frameworks do parents and organizations use to secure their child's place in the proven pipeline for elites? This dissertation investigates how parents and organizations decide to socialize children in elite independent schools, beginning at preschool or kindergarten. The empirical context for this work is the early admissions process for independent schools in New York City. I draw on 52 interviews with parents, ten interviews with expert service providers, and 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork at a for-profit educational consulting firm that supports families in the elite independent school admissions process. By centering parents and early childhood admissions, I examine a critical moment when parental decision-making and organizational maneuvering have the potential to impact life-long outcomes. I also highlight how social positions of race, class, and gender complicate parental and organizational logics. The first chapter introduces this dissertation’s motivating research questions and situates it within the broader literature on elites, parental investments during early childhood, rising inequalities and the fear of downward mobility, and the literature on educational admissions. In Chapter 2, I examine the parenting logics of justification during the early childhood admissions process. I argue that parents have "speculative projects" for their children, defined as ideas parents have about their children's imagined futures that underlie parents' day-to-day choices. I examine how parents allocate resources to these speculative projects and how education shapes the projects. Chapter 3 illustrates how organizations facilitate and influence parental decisionmaking. I present research on how brokers of the educational marketplace – in this case, educational consultants – regularly realign the moral boundaries of their work to justify profiting off their chosen commodity – in this case, the potential outcomes of young children. I also demonstrate how educational consultants make tremendous non-economic gains through their line of work, gaining trust and being seen as “experts” in a high-status social field. Chapter 4 examines how parents feel about their decisions one year later. I review their range of outcomes and show how other social positions mediate their ability to access privileged spaces and identities. Finally, I end with Chapter 5, highlighting the broader implications of this work and directions for future research. Together, these chapters illuminate how parents of young children attempt to understand, navigate, and manage elite educational admissions processes under conditions of uncertainty. This work has broader implications for understanding the cultural meaning and the social value of children in the 21st century, a time when parents are placing a premium on education amidst a landscape of unprecedented economic inequality.