Socio-spatial strategies of school selection in a free parental choice context

The geography of education literature has demonstrated remarkable similarities in school choice strategies across different educational and spatial contexts. The literature finds that school choice strategies of the middle classes rely on deploying different forms of capital (economic, social, and cultural). At the same time, it is evident that the specific geography and institutional idiosyncrasies of the educational landscape are navigated in locally specific ways that are not just classed but also strongly intersect with ethnicity/race. In most contexts moving house plays a central role in school choice. However, residential relocation as part of school choice strategies is highly contingent on national and local regulations of school allocation and enrolment. Investigating the case of the metropolitan area of Amsterdam, this paper uses longitudinal individual, geo-coded register data to study the socio-spatial school choice strategies of an entire cohort of first-born children (2012) in a free-school choice landscape. Employing an analysis of the interconnections of residential relocation and school choice, this paper uses multinomial logit models to assess how school is differentiated by social class and migration background and how it is related to residential (re)location. It finds that school choice strategies are differentiated by both class and ethnicity, but also very strongly depend on residential context. Remarkably, the paper finds that while a substantial number of highly educated, high-income parents move and enrol their children in homogeneous middle-class schools, a majority of households do not move and hence navigate the school landscape in which they find themselves. It suggests that school choice policies indeed reduce the need for residential relocation, but at the same time are conducive to school segregation.