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.

This paper scrutinises the underlying motivations of short-term international students by unpacking the notion of 'leaving the comfort zone' for self-discovery and selfchange. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Canadian exchange students volunteering and studying in the Global South, the paper contributes to scholarship on everyday and emotional geographies of international student mobility and wider debates in mobility by examining how emotions of comfort and discomfort as well as everyday practices are productive for self-discovery, belonging, home-making and distinction. It reveals how students align the boundaries of their comfort zone and an un/reflexive self along the international and imaginative borders of the Global North/South. Contrary to tourism and mobility studies, I argue that students view everyday life and their relative immobility while abroad as both a distinctive and reflexive exercise. I suggest that students want to extend the boundaries of their comfort zone and their sense of 'home' to the Global South.

Moving beyond the 'world-class' institutional model of international student mobility, this paper examines alternative narratives of distinction relating to place of study. Drawing on semistructured interviews with international students at universities in the UK, Austria and Latvia, we illustrate how students inside and outside mainstream reputable higher education institutions narrate and reconfigure markers of distinction to validate their international mobility and location of study, in part to compete with peers at other (more prestigious) institutions. We demonstrate the importance of lifestyle and experiential places within a global differentiated higher education landscape and argue that many students engage in comparative narratives of place of study to authorise the symbolic capital associated with international education. The findings also consider how experiential places and mobility capital are used for distinction not only during educational mobility but within post-study aspirations.

This paper provides a critical review and discussion of the literature on intra‐national and international student mobility. Although student mobility is gaining attention from social geographers, much research is still needed to address the complex and diverse geographies of student mobility. The literature indicates that current trends in mobility within higher education in the UK challenge traditional assumptions of student mobility. Although there is a growing trend of ‘immobility’ among students in the UK, international student mobility is on the rise globally. This paper will focus primarily on international student mobility and will discuss trends, motivations and student identities. The current body of work on student mobility focuses on mobilities within, and to, the Western world with an absence of work on mobilities from the North to the Global South. I suggest that future research should explore student mobilities to the developing world as well as the impact of place and mobility on students' personal, national and global identities.

This paper investigates the complex ways in which young people engage in social distinction within international mobility. The study offers novel conceptual and empirical insights by examining how distinction and social advantage is reproduced through short‐term student mobility from the Global North to the Global South. In doing so, it elucidates the iterative process of distinction‐making within mobility and argues that young mobile people negotiate a tension between different forms of distinction. Specifically, it unpacks and conceptualises distinction into dual categories—collective and individual—and suggests that students alternate and waver between these categories in order to both validate and elevate their position within a mobility hierarchy. The paper also considers how particular places are viewed as more distinctive and affording greater gains in cultural and symbolic capital. It concludes with future interrogations and ways forward for research on international mobility and distinction.