Page - (000112) - in Knowledge and Networks

104 level (i.e., beyond bachelor’s degree) represents an important means by which early- career fi nancial elites are inculcated into the meanings and competencies associated with normalized, legitimated business practices in London and into the corporate culture of their employing fi rm. I suggest that these forms of education, alongside the more widely studied forms of educational background, have important implications for both the spatial and social mobility of fi nancial elites. My approach advances understandings of the spa- tial mobility (or otherwise) of fi nancial elites. In this respect work on elites has more generally often labeled them as, for example, a transnational capitalist class (Sklair, 2001 ) or global elites (Castells, 1996 ). These labels, and the discourses that sur- round them, suggest a highly mobile group of topologically linked individuals who are only loosely embedded in topographical space while being situated within par- ticular geographical locations, cities, or regions. However, by focusing on the role of education in elite formation, I suggest that elites combine elements of both topo- logical mobility and connectedness with topographical specifi city because their working practices and careers are shaped in part by the still largely national educa- tional systems in which they are produced and the distinctive working cultures asso- ciated with different, place-based economies—the international fi nancial centers in the case of the fi nancial elites I study here. Meanwhile, I suggest that socially the case of fi nance demonstrates how many of the networks created through postgradu- ate education continued to be structured along social lines. In particular, mobility into and within elite fi nancial labor markets remains comparatively limited to an educational and occupational elite, in spite of the widely held view that the growing importance of postgraduate education signaled the rise of a more meritocratic global economy—and City of London in particular—where individuals can succeed if they invest appropriately in their human capital (Becker, 1994 ). Taken together, I there- fore argue that postgraduate education is an important but hitherto comparatively overlooked element in creating fi nancial elites who combine elements of topologi- cal fi nancial networks inseparable from the topographical dimensions of socioeco- nomic practice in fi nancial services. I develop these arguments over four further sections. In the next section, I exam- ine how work on the role of educational background, particularly in the sociology of education, can be developed to provide a fuller understanding of the role of ongo- ing education in shaping socioeconomic practice within elite labor markets. I then introduce the different elements of the postgraduate landscape as they pertain to fi nancial elites working in investment banking in the City of London. In the fi nal substantive section of the chapter, I consider the spatial implications of this ongoing education for a group of early- career fi nancial elites employed by investment banks often assumed to be unproblematically transnational and highly geographically mobile. I conclude by refl ecting on the implications of this argument for work on the geographies of elites more generally and on their spatial and social (im) mobility. S. Hall