Challenging the comfort zone: self-discovery, everyday practices and international student mobility to the Global South

Abstract

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.

Unpacking distinction within mobility: Social prestige and international students

“…Residing in the same place allows participants to legitimise claims of integrating into local everyday life in a way that implies greater accumulation of cultural capital over other (Canadian) travellers. I therefore suggest, as I have done elsewhere, that students articulate distinction in temporal and spatial terms through their relative im mobility while abroad (Prazeres, , in press).…”

“…Travel to parts of the world regarded as more “authentic” and considered less visited by other (Western) tourists differentiates travellers from the frowned upon tourism masses and plays a “significant role in defining social distinction” (Munt, , p. 102). The Global South is perceived and framed by travellers and international students as a distinctive place that can signal difference and achievement (Desforges, ; Munt, ; Prazeres, , in press), but little is understood of how fellow sojourners in that part of the world vie among themselves for higher claims of distinction and, thus, social and personal prestige. This paper takes some empirical and conceptual steps to address this ongoing pursuit.…”

“…Although self‐discovery and “leaving the comfort zone” were cited as the main reasons for studying or interning in the global South (Prazeres, ), the underlying motivation that emerged from participants' narrative was that of distinction‐making.…”

“…International students—particularly those interning—are similar to expatriates in that they are abroad for work, but they distinguish themselves from expatriates through a reluctance to remain within the “expat bubble”— even though some interns did remain mostly with other interns and expats (for examples in the literature on expatriates resisting the “bubble,” see Benson, ). As I have argued elsewhere, participants want to be an active member and part of the local community in order to be considered a local insider (Prazeres, , in press). Whether they achieve this is another point of discussion, but they flaunt this “insiderness” to demonstrate social and cultural capital accumulation and establish membership criterion in the group as a way to distinguish themselves from other travellers, expatriates, and especially tourists (even if participants studying abroad often remained in circles of other international students).…”

“…Second, universities also refer to exchange programmes as mobility schemes. Third, internationally mobile students do not view themselves nor want others to view them as travellers or tourists (Prazeres, ). Rather, as the paper will show, they share commonalities but will seek to distinguish themselves from tourists and travellers and, therefore, resist and eschew these labels.…”