Accidental achievers? International higher education, class reproduction and privilege in the experiences of UK students overseas (original) (raw)
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Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2022
International higher education (IHE) and with that international student mobility (ISM) and internationalization have become widely embedded in the educational mobility literature as commonplace conceptualizations in a world which is everywhere imagined as globalized. The present response paper considers the contribution of the papers of this special issue to our understanding of ISM and to international study-abroad in Asia while also locating this in the wider context of ISM in a capitalist modern world-system. The testimonies of the participants in these papers concerning their inter-Asian study-abroad experiences evidence their keen consciousness of the marketized nature of international higher education while also demonstrating how they negotiate and often resist this. The inter-Asian experience of international study-abroad while revealing of the racial and linguistic prejudices which some sojourners can face, also show how these international students may additionally discover accidental and unlooked for ‘fringe’ capitals which disrupt their ‘neoliberal’ positioning and are potentially transformative and self-liberating. In this brief response paper, I place ISM and inter-Asian study-abroad within a Marxist and critical realist dialectical ontology so as to be able to delve more deeply into this experience and to give greater theoretical context to the transformative possibilities which ISM presents.
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Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2012
This paper explores the motivations and meanings of international student mobility. Central to the discussion are the results of a large questionnaire survey and associated in-depth interviews with UK students enrolled in universities in six countries from around the world. The results suggest, first, that several different dimensions of social and cultural capital are accrued through study abroad. It is argued that the search for 'world class' education has taken on new significance. Second, the paper argues that analysis of student mobility should not be confined to a framework that separates study abroad from the wider life-course aspirations of students. It is argued that these insights go beyond existing theorisations of international student mobility to incorporate recognition of diverse approaches to difference within cultures of mobility, including class reproduction of distinction, broader notions of distinction within the life-plans of individual students, and how 'reputations' associated with educational destinations are structured by individuals, institutions and states in a global higher education system that produces differentially mediated geographies of international student mobility.
‘Vive la différence?’: The ‘international’ experiences of UK students overseas
Population, Space and Place, 2010
As interest in the geographies of student mobilities grows, this paper examines the experiences of UK students overseas. More specifically, it considers the ‘international’ nature of their experiences, asking: to what extent do students actively seek out and encounter ‘cultural difference’ through their educational choices? International students are often described by those advocating the internationalisation of education as potential ‘global citizens’, cosmopolitans and ambassadors of inter‐cultural understanding. However, our research on UK students has suggested a more complex engagement with ‘diversity’ through international education. First, we examine the motivations of UK students, and show that whilst many claim to be seeking ‘something different’ from an overseas education, at the same time they also desire a ‘knowable’ destination. Film and television were very significant in terms of making certain places familiar to students and thereby influencing their decisions. Seco...
This paper unpacks the meanings and implications of the mobility of international students in vocational education - an under-researched group in the field of international education. This four-year study found transnational mobility is regarded as a resourceful vehicle to help international students ‘become’ the kind of person they want to. The paper justifies the value of re-conceptualising student mobility as a process of ‘becoming’. Mobility as ‘becoming’ encompasses students’ aspirations for educational, social, personal and professional development. Theorising mobility as ‘becoming’ captures international students’ lived realities and has the potential to facilitate the re-imagining of international student mobility with new outlooks. Mobility as ‘becoming’ is construed through the manners in which overseas education facilitates not only the redistribution of social class capital but importantly the pursuit of the integrated forms of profession-advanced capital and migration-oriented capital. This research suggests the importance to draw on the integrated and transformative nature of Bourdieu’s forms of capital in understanding the logics and practice of the social field - international student mobility.
Ever reluctant Europeans: the changing geographies of UK students studying and working abroad.
Findlay, A., King, R., Stam, A. and Ruiz-Gelices, E. (2006) 'Ever reluctant Europeans: the changing geographies of UK students studying and working abroad.' European Urban and Regional Studies, 13(4): 291-318., 2006
Students have been little studied as a mobile population, despite their increasing importance among human flows in the contemporary globalizing world. This article examines changing mobility patterns, attitudes and behaviours of UK higher education students who spend a part of their degree programme studying or working abroad. The research was stimulated by perceptions that UK students were turning away from international mobility, especially to Europe. Using a multi-method approach, based on further statistical analysis of existing data sources, notably the UK Socrates–Erasmus student dataset, and on a range of questionnaire and interview surveys to staff and students in selected UK higher education institutions, the article explores the changing patterns of student movement and the drivers and barriers to mobility for UK students. We find that UK students's decreasing mobility to Europe is more than compensated by rising flows to other world destinations, especially North America and Australia. Questionnaire and interview data reveal the prime significance of language and financial factors as barriers to European mobility. Evidence also points to the embeddedness of personal mobility in relation to social class and the ways in which the varied practices of a socially differentiated higher education system may reproduce relative social advantage and disadvantage through access to international mobility opportunities. The article concludes with further attempts to conceptualize student mobility and to draw out policy aspects.
'It was always the plan': international study as 'learning to migrate'
International student mobility has mainly been theorised in terms of cultural capital accumulation and its prospective benefits on returning home following graduation. Yet, despite a growing body of work in this area, most research on post-study mobility fails to recognise that the social forces that generate international student mobility also contribute to lifetime mobility plans. Moreover, these forces produce at least four types of post-study destination, of which returning 'home' is only one option. Our findings challenge the idea that a circular trajectory is necessarily the 'desired' norm. In line with wider migration theory, we suggest that return may even be seen as failure. Instead we advance the idea that cultural and social capital acquired through international studies is cultivated for onward mobility and may be specifically channelled towards goals such as an international career. We contribute a geographically nuanced conceptual frame for understanding the relation between international student mobility and lifetime mobility aspirations. By building on studies that highlight the role of family and social networks in international student mobility, we illustrate how influential familial and social institutions – both in the place of origin and newly encountered abroad – underpin and complicate students' motivations, mobility aspirations and life planning pre-and post-study. We argue for a fluidity of life plans and conclude by discussing how geographies of origin matter within students' lifetime mobility plans.
Student migrants from former sending regions now form a substantial share of non-EU migration flows to Europe. These flows represent the convergence of extensive internationalisation of higher education with increasing restrictions on family and labour migration. This paper provides the first examination of student migrants' early socio-cultural and structural integration by following recently arrived Pakistani students in London over an 18 month period. We use latent class analysis to identify both elite and two 'middling' typesmiddle class and network-drivenwithin our student sample. We then ask whether these types experience different early sociocultural and structural integration trajectories in the ways that the elite and middling transnational literatures would suggest. We find differences in structural, but less in socio-cultural outcomes.
International higher education and the mobility of UK students
Journal of Research in International Education, 2009
In the context of increasing academic interest in the internationalization of education and the international mobility of university students, this article draws on findings of a recent research project examining students from the UK as they seek higher education overseas before entering the labour market. The discussion is framed around four key themes (the importance of `second chances'; `global circuits of higher education'; `experiences of travel' and `labour market outcomes'), which address the motivations and experiences of 85 individuals who are seriously considering or have recently obtained an international degree.
‘Going the other way’: the motivations and experiences of UK learners as ‘international students’
Most literature and research studies on 'international students' tend to be uni-directionalin other words, they focus on non-native-English-speaking students entering higher education institutions (HEIs) in Anglophone countries (a few of many examples include Thorstensson (2001), who examined the experiences of Asian students in the USA; , who focused on Chinese students in New Zealand; and Tian and Lowe (2009), who looked at Chinese students in the UK). This chapter aims to address this imbalance by scrutinizing the perspectives of UK students whoin apparently growing numbers after a long period of decline ) -decide to study abroad for part of their degree. An analysis of existing research looking at issues faced by English-speaking students when studying overseas is followed by a discussion of survey data collected through an online questionnaire. This was completed by over 150 students, enrolled at five HEIs in different parts of the UK, who had all spent at least one semester studying at universities in different parts of the world. The following research questions formed the focus of the enquiry: