Conference of the Polish Sociological Association
Session: Social Change and the International Student Mobility
Home-worlds and abroad: Exploring students’ identity in academic mobility
Pierluca Birindelli
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, 2020 will probably represent a watershed, a liminal time. Is this a turning point towards the decline of academic mobility? Is it a temporary pause? In this paper the key question is not a quantitative one: it is not about the “how much” of the trend, but the “what” and the “who”. What will decline or resurge? What is the individual, collective and institutional significance of studying abroad, and how does it relate to the transit to adulthood? Although such meanings appear to be obvious, almost given, academic mobility is an axiom that needs to be questioned, now more than ever. To discover the real social and cultural meanings of academic mobility we need to hear students’ stories and explore the implications of educational travel within the broader context of their lives.
This paper presents the research itinerary and some key findings of the qualitative and comparative study The Cultural Experience of International Students: Narratives from North and South Europe. I have employed a narrative approach and the focus of the research revolves around the autoethnographies of 25 international students in Helsinki and 25 in Florence. The narratives were prompted by in-depth interviews following a template divided into the three phases of travel conceived as a rite of passage: departure–preliminal, transition–liminal, arrival–postliminal. Here I focus more on the departure-preliminal phase that reconstructs the social and cultural background against which the decision to study and live abroad took place. Students’ biographical past is often neglected, but a deeper understanding of their overall experience abroad and its significance in the transit to adulthood, demands an authentically narrative approach.
To explore the meaning of geographical mobility in the lives of these young people, their attitudes towards their particular home-worlds and the wider cosmopolitan elsewhere, I sketched a series of Self-Identity types connected to mobility experiences. For example, the Fated, where all the biographical premises are pushing-pulling towards the status of international student. As one student writes “I almost had no choice but to study abroad”. Or the Academic, who is fascinated by the idea of becoming a worldly intellectual and sees the PhD as a natural step. For the Globetrotter being mobile is an end it itself: the goal is the next city-country. The Explorer is abroad with a goal and cultivates a genuine desire to discover and understand specific places and people, always looking for new cultural challenges. The Runaway is escaping abroad for political or existential reasons: they feel like strangers at home.
I believe that the meta- (quest of) “self-identity abroad” can be fruitfully achieved through the narrative -hodos (path) I have constructed (or a similar one). While discussing the choice made at each study turn, I will anticipate possible lines of interpretation: the praxis for those adopting a grounded approach. I believe the researcher engaged in this field of study can benefit from a detailed description of this hermeneutic itinerary.
This paper presents the research itinerary and some key findings of the qualitative and comparative study The Cultural Experience of International Students: Narratives from North and South Europe. I have employed a narrative approach and the focus of the research revolves around the autoethnographies of 25 international students in Helsinki and 25 in Florence. The narratives were prompted by in-depth interviews following a template divided into the three phases of travel conceived as a rite of passage: departure–preliminal, transition–liminal, arrival–postliminal. Here I focus more on the departure-preliminal phase that reconstructs the social and cultural background against which the decision to study and live abroad took place. Students’ biographical past is often neglected, but a deeper understanding of their overall experience abroad and its significance in the transit to adulthood, demands an authentically narrative approach.
To explore the meaning of geographical mobility in the lives of these young people, their attitudes towards their particular home-worlds and the wider cosmopolitan elsewhere, I sketched a series of Self-Identity types connected to mobility experiences. For example, the Fated, where all the biographical premises are pushing-pulling towards the status of international student. As one student writes “I almost had no choice but to study abroad”. Or the Academic, who is fascinated by the idea of becoming a worldly intellectual and sees the PhD as a natural step. For the Globetrotter being mobile is an end it itself: the goal is the next city-country. The Explorer is abroad with a goal and cultivates a genuine desire to discover and understand specific places and people, always looking for new cultural challenges. The Runaway is escaping abroad for political or existential reasons: they feel like strangers at home.
I believe that the meta- (quest of) “self-identity abroad” can be fruitfully achieved through the narrative -hodos (path) I have constructed (or a similar one). While discussing the choice made at each study turn, I will anticipate possible lines of interpretation: the praxis for those adopting a grounded approach. I believe the researcher engaged in this field of study can benefit from a detailed description of this hermeneutic itinerary.
Keywords: International students, academic mobility, narratives, cultural experience, transit to adulthood.
