Abstract. This article presents the findings of a qualitative and
comparative study on the cultural experience of international students in North
and South Europe. I employ 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. To explore the meaning of geographical mobility in the
lives of these young people, I sketched a series of self-identity types
connected to mobility experiences: the Fated, whose biographical premises are all
pushing-pulling toward the status of international student; the Academic, who is fascinated by the idea of becoming a
worldly intellectual and sees the PhD as a natural step; the Globetrotter, whose mobility is an end in itself: the goal is
the next city-country; the Explorer, who is abroad looking for new cultural
challenges, with a genuine desire to discover and understand specific places
and people; the Runaway, who feels like a stranger at home and is
escaping abroad for political or existential reasons. I believe that the
interpretation of international students’ sense of self-identity can be
fruitfully achieved through the narrative path I have constructed (or a similar
one).
Keywords: International students’ mobility, Young
adult identity, Biographical narrative, Autoethnography, Cosmopolitan
Birindelli, P. (2023). The Experience of International
Students: Biographical Narratives and Identities. Society, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00809-0
