1. Educational pathfinders? : a study of international student mobility in China
- Author
-
Lee, Kris and Waters, Johanna
- Subjects
Migration ,Sociology ,Human geography - Abstract
To date, a significant body of qualitative scholarship on international student mobility has centred around migration flows to 'Western' destinations, particularly to Anglophone and/or European nations. On the contrary, educational migration from these established destination regions to newly emerging study abroad destinations is a relatively recent phenomenon and, consequently, remains eminently under-researched. To fill this gap in our knowledge, I discuss the findings of a qualitative study into European and North American students undertaking an English-taught undergraduate degree in China. Using literature from human geography, sociology, education, migration studies and tourism studies, this thesis explores the ways in which 'Western' transnational students engage with, and make meaning of, cross-border mobility, transnational higher education, and cosmopolitanism in neoliberal times. Drawing on a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews and social media content, I seek to understand the narratives that international students from Anglophone and European countries create and share during their study abroad experiences in China. The findings of this empirical research reveal that transnational students' desires for mobility constitute variegated combinations of economic and non-economic (i.e., personal, emotional, and intangible) considerations. Regardless of how students' motivations vary, in reflecting on their experiences of a 'less-taken' path, transnational students predominantly drew on neoliberal discourse of cosmopolitanism as an imperative part of the ongoing construction of the self as well as a narrative strategy to set themselves apart from others. In particular, visual and textual narratives on social media created by transnational students call for the need to conceptualise them as actively producing, performing, and curating cosmopolitan sensibilities while actively consuming the imagined and experienced differences of the host society. This study concludes by asserting the value of studying the emerging mobility of transnational students from the 'West' and its contribution to a wider project of understanding and intervening in international education's social, economic, and cultural role in the modern world.
- Published
- 2021