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. key wordsinternational students higher education universities mobility globalisation difference

Students of European migration have been hampered by the legacy of those established forms of migration which have been historically most important ± settler migrations from Europe to the Americas, guest-worker migrations from the Mediterranean Basin to Northern Europe, and refugee migrations after the World Wars. We need to appreciate that many of the key questions that were asked to frame our understanding of the functioning of migration now have a very different array of answers from the largely economic ones which shaped our earlier analyses. Now, new mobility strategies are deployed to achieve economic and, importantly, non-economic objectives. In the new global and European map of migration, the old dichotomies of migration study ± internal versus international, forced versus voluntary, temporary versus permanent, legal versus illegal ± blur as both the motivations and modalities of migration become much more diverse. In offering an overview of the new typologies and geographies of international migration in Europe, this paper will be less a rigorous cartography than a qualitative exploration of a changing typology including migrations of crisis, independent female migration, migration of skilled and professional people, student migration, retirement migration and hybrid tourism±migration. These relatively new forms of migration derive from new motivations (the retreat from labour migrations linked to production), new space±time¯e xibilities, globalisation forces, and migrations of consumption and personal selfrealisation. More than ever, this multiplex nature of human migration and spatial mobility demands an interdisciplinary approach, enriched wherever possible by comparative studies.

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.

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Despite rapid growth in the student component of global migration flows, the study of international student migration/mobility (ISM) is a relatively neglected field in migration research. This special issue helps to address this lacuna. This introductory paper highlights the contradictions between international students as ‘desired’ because of their internationalism and fee contributions, and as ‘unwanted’ because of the politics of migration control especially in the context of the securitisation of study in the post 9/11 scenario. It argues that interrogating the terms ‘international’ and ‘students’ is critical to addressing the slipperiness that underlies these contradictions. Focusing on students per se ignores their multiple roles, as family members, actual or potential workers, or perhaps refugees and asylum‐seekers, while definitions of international students ignore the diversity of study that students undertake. After summarising the papers that follow, this paper concludes with an agenda for future research on ISM: greater theoretical insight drawing on the cognate field of mobility studies; more in‐depth ethnographic research on mobile students who recognise their multiple roles in knowledge diffusion and social reproduction; further research on ISM datasets and quantitative surveys, which employs statistical analysis; more attention paid to gender and race as they relate to ISM; and a stronger link to pedagogy and systems of higher education and knowledge production. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The paper engages with migration theory through a geographic perspective. It first argues that geographers, with their broad‐ranging subject matter, epistemological pluralism, and varied research methods, are ideally placed to carry out migration research and advance migration theory. Second, the paper casts a retrospective view at some highlights of geographers' theoretical contributions to migration. The third part reviews the recent and current states of play, which have seen a shift in the geographical study of migration from population geography to cultural geography, via the ‘cultural turn’. Four paradigmatic trends in the study of migration are reviewed – the mobilities turn, transnationalism, diaspora studies, and gendered approaches – and geographers' contributions to each of these are evaluated. The conclusion looks to the future, asks whether the cultural turn is over and, in the light of the global economic crisis, identifies new avenues of migration research for migration geographers. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This paper investigates the potential rupture that the United Kingdom's "Brexit" referendum of June 23, 2016, might bring about in intra-European Union youth mobilities, with a specific focus on the London region. In many respects, and counter-intuitively given the Brexit result, London has already become a "Eurocity": a magnet for young people, both highly educated and less educated, from all over Europe who, especially since the turn of the millennium, have flocked to the city and its wider region to work, study, and play. Now, these erstwhile open-ended migration trajectories have been potentially disrupted by a referendum result that few anticipated, and whose consequential results are still unclear. The main theoretical props for our analysis are the notions of "liquid migration," "tactics of belonging," "whiteness," "privilege," and "affect." Data are drawn from 60 in-depth interviews with Irish, Italian, and Romanian young-adult students and higher and lower skilled workers, carried out in late 2015 and early 2016, plus 27 reinterviews carried out in late 2016, post-Brexit. Results indicate participants' profound and generally negative reaction to Brexit and, as a consequence, a diversity of uncertainties and of plans over their future mobility: either to stay put using "tactics of belonging," or to return home earlier than planned, or to move on to another country. Finally, we find evidence that new hierarchies and boundaries are drawn between intra-European Union migrants as a result of Brexit. (Engbersen & Snel, 2013). We find these constitutive elements of liquid migration attractive for our study of contemporary youth migration within Europe, although some of our findings suggest that flexibility, openness to opportunities, and the search for security are more realistic characteristics of migrant motivations and behaviour than "intentional unpredictability."In the literature on youth life-course transitions, two concepts are important for our analysis in this paper. On the one hand, the "inclination to constant change" referred to in Bauman's quote above is advanced by Worth's (2009) notion of youth and young-adulthood as a continuous process of "becoming": we see this as more relevant and appropriate to our analysis than the traditional practice of agedefined life stages. On the other hand, the reality of sudden changes due to "fragility and vulnerability" (Bauman again) is nicely highlighted in the term "rupture" (Hörschelmann, 2011). Taken together, the notions of "rupture" and "becomings," combined with the framework of liquid migration, constitute a useful conceptual toolkit for understanding the social and spatial mobilities of young European Union (EU) citizens, both before and after the referendum of June 23, 2016, which saw 51.9% vote "leave" and 48.1% "remain."According to Bauman (2000, p. x), the key to the puzzle of liquid modernity is the premise that the "liquidity versus solidity conundrum"is not a dichotomy but that both conditions should be seen and treated as a couple "lock...