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Paper short abstract

Based on fieldwork in a Hungarian small town, the paper examines how class, ethnicity, and spatial constraints shape parental school choice. It shows how middle-class mobility ideals and safety concerns are reworked differently across social groups in a resource-poor, polarised education system.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in a peripheral small town in Hungary, this paper examines how parents with different class positions and ethnic backgrounds make educational decisions for their children within a polarised, resource-deficient education system. While educational sociology has documented the intensification of middle-class parental investment in schooling, research largely focuses on metropolitan contexts where educational options and mobility routes are abundant. This paper shifts attention to small-town settings, where educational decision-making is shaped by limited institutional choice, spatial constraints, and locally specific class and ethnic relations.

The paper analyses how educational strategies are formed at the intersection of class, locality, and ethnicity by examining school-choice strategies among four groups: ethnic-majority („Hungarian”) middle-class parents, Roma middle-class parents, „Hungarian” working-class parents, and Roma parents living in poverty.

Findings show that both „Hungarian” and Roma middle-class parents face a shared dilemma: educational pathways promising future social mobility are often perceived as threatening children’s present emotional well-being, while locally available, more “child-centred” schools appear safer but offer limited mobility prospects. Although the dilemma is shared, its stakes and interpretive frameworks differ across groups. By contrast, among „Hungarian” working-class parents and Roma parents living in poverty, this dilemma is less pronounced; school choice is shaped primarily by concerns of safety. In both cases, the threat is posed by the other ethnic group.

The presentation highlights how small-town context and racialised class relations shape school choice, showing how middle-class ideals and exclusion are reworked in peripheral settings.