Jurgen GerhardsHans SilkeSoren Carlson - Social Class and Transnational Human Capital: How Middle and Upper Class Parents Prepare Their Children for Globalization

Our sample consists of job advertisements in four national and local newspapers from Germany ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [ FAZ ] and Berliner Morgenpost ) and the Netherlands ( de Volkskrant and Leeuwarder Courant ) published in the years 1960, 1980, 2000, 2010, and 2014. The four newspapers are among the most important local and national newspapers in their respective countries. A random sample of 250 job advertisements per year was drawn from issues published in early February or March.

The job specifications were analyzed according to the method of systematic content analysis. The coding unit is the single advertised position. Thus, one job advertisement could contain one or more job offers. Postings that referred to inaccessible sources (such as the Internet) or offering directorships, trainings, apprenticeships, internships, voluntary services, and so forth were not coded. The coding scheme includes measures of the exact job title (open code), its professional field, and required qualifications as well as the required transnational human capital. We coded four different dimensions for transnational human capital. The first dimension was foreign language skills. We coded whether a job posting asked for a foreign language, and if so, which one(s). The second dimension of transnational human capital refers to knowledge about or expertise concerning other countries and societies. The third dimension of transnational human capital is defined as cross-cultural competence. It refers to the openness, understanding, and empathy required to properly communicate and interact with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Postings that asked for such things as ability to work in international teams or openness towards other cultures received this code. International experiences constitute the fourth dimension of transnational human capital. This code was given when advertisements asked for, for example, educational experiences abroad.

Apart from transnational human capital, the coding scheme takes into account two further dimensions of the globalization of labor markets with two indicators each: first, the internationality of the employer measured in terms of the employers international orientation and the geographical location of the headquarters and of the job position in question, referring to whether a job requires foreign