This paper ®rst draws attention to the scant literature in population geography on international student migration, or ISM. Yet students comprise an important element in global and European population mobility, especially of highly skilled movements. This study is set within the context of intraEuropean ISM and looks speci®cally at thè Year Abroad experience' which has been subsidised over the past 15 years by the Erasmus and Socrates programmes. Empirical data come from questionnaire surveys to three groups of University of Sussex students, surveyed during 2000±01. The main survey was a large postal survey to graduates who had spent a year abroad (YA) in another European country as part of their Sussex degree. This questionnaire was designed to test two sets of hypotheses: ®rstly that the YA had given students/graduates a more`European' identity or consciousness, and a greater insight into European issues; and secondly that YA graduates would be more likely to pursue their subsequent career/migration paths in continental Europe. These hypotheses were tested against a control sample of Sussex graduates who had not been on a YA, matched by degree type and time of graduation. A third sample was undertaken with second-year undergraduate students about to embark on their YA, in order to test pre-and post-YA perspectives. The results broadly con®rm the research hypotheses, although with a variety of nuances and outcomes.
Abstract. This paper explores aspects of the geography of international Student migration. By listening to the voices of British students we make a methodological contribution in terms of extending understanding of the intentions and values of Student migrants as developed over their life course. On the one hand, students stressed the social and cultural embeddedness of their actions, while on the other hand interviews with university staff and mobility managers pointed to the existence of other social structures that shape the networks of mobility that are available to students. Policy makers seeking to re-shape the geography of international Student mobility need to address the deeper socio-cultural forces that selectively inhibit movement although European integration processes have long paved the way for international living and work experience.
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.
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