Parental School Choice in Kashmir: Decisions, Constraints, and Aspirations

Abstract

This paper examines parental school choice in Kashmir within a context marked by educational uncertainty, infrastructural unevenness, and shifting social aspirations. Moving beyond dominant rational-choice approaches to school selection, the study investigates how parental decisions are shaped through the interaction of aspirations, structural constraints, and socially embedded perceptions of schooling. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital, the paper conceptualises school choice not as an entirely autonomous decision-making process, but as a socially conditioned practice emerging from historically and contextually situated experiences. The study adopts a qualitative exploratory design and is based on semi-structured interviews with parents across selected educational zones of Kashmir. Thematic analysis was employed to examine how parents negotiate concerns related to safety, proximity, affordability, educational quality, discipline, and future mobility while choosing schools for their children. The findings suggest that parental school choice is deeply shaped by constrained agency, where educational aspirations coexist with economic limitations, uncertainty, and unequal access to institutional resources. Parents frequently perceive schooling not only as a site of academic learning but also as a mechanism for social mobility, stability, and moral formation. The paper argues that school choice in Kashmir must be understood as a socially embedded process shaped by habitus, rather than merely a rational educational preference. In doing so, the study contributes to the sociology of education by extending Bourdieusian analyses of educational decision-making into contexts characterised by prolonged instability and structural uncertainty. The paper further highlights the need for context-sensitive educational policies that recognise the unequal conditions under which parental educational decisions are made.