Home Away from Home: International Students and their Identity-Based Social Networks in Australia

Abstract

This paper explores the role of identity in helping international students form social networks at an Australian institution and how these networks contribute to creating a sense of home away. The findings suggest that international students form distinct social networks that are not necessarily solely made up of fellow students from their home countries. Rather, international students form a mixture of social networks that are based on the complex individual identities of each student centred on a variety of common factors, such as: course of study, place of work, neighbourhood, culture, religion and personal interests (hobbies). Hence many students are part of social groups that consist of international students from their specific region and beyond, as well as local (Anglo and non-Anglo) students. These locally based social networks complement existing home-based networks which are maintained virtually through social media to create a home away from home.

Identity Continuity Protects Academic Performance, Retention, and Life Satisfaction among International Students

“…The findings of this study are consistent with previous research, suggesting that groups and associated social identities have an important role to play in protecting international students from the negative outcomes associated with leaving their home country to pursue educational goals in a foreign country (Gomes et al, 2014; Gu et al, 2010; Khawaja & Dempsey, 2008). Specifically, we found evidence that having multiple group memberships before moving overseas increased the likelihood that students would have maintained some of these group memberships five months later (Hypothesis 1a).…”

“…Speaking to this point, one case study found that international students were confronted with academic challenges, social isolation, and challenges of cultural adjustment on a daily basis (Wu, Garza, & Guzman, 2015). All of these experiences can prove to be overwhelming (Gomes, Berry, Alzougool, & Chang, 2014). Moreover, such difficulties reflect not only language and cultural barriers which make integration difficult, but also the fact that international students can experience rejection from members of the host culture (Brislin, 1990; Pedersen, 1991).…”

Friendship networks and encounters in student-migrants’ negotiations of translocal subjectivity

“…It is clear from much of the literature that geographical mobility has a transformative effect on selfhood, as ‘experiences of mobile subjects become a process of self-researching, self-reflection, transition and transformation’ (Christou, 2011: 253). This is particularly the case for young, middle-class and relatively well-educated mobile subjects such as international students, with international education often cited as a form of mobility that constitutes the development of new senses of the self, particularly ‘hybrid’ (Koehne, 2005) ‘cosmopolitan’ (Rizvi, 2005) and ‘multiple’ (Gomes et al, 2014) orientations. Space is often crucial, not merely as a backdrop to these transformations in selfhood, but as constitutive of them, as ‘spatial discourses of belonging trace the relations between places, identities and bodies’ (Christou, 2011: 250).…”

“…In Melbourne, for example, student-migrants encounter and forge friendships with other international students and student-migrants from their own ethnic and national backgrounds as well as from around the world, and with ‘local’ Australian residents from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Alongside these local networks, they also sustain transnational friendship networks, which can be globally scattered (Gomes et al, 2014). Studies of international students, friendship networks and urban practices, however, often focus on the early stages of their arrival (see, for example, Lobo, 2013; Sawir et al, 2008).…”

“…They seldom follow students’ narratives as they move on from university and on to migration pathways, where their friendship networks develop in new ways. While some studies recognise the importance of transnational friendship networks (see, for example, Gargano, 2009; Gomes et al, 2014) few focus in depth on how emplaced encounters and interactions with friends within the multiple local spaces that make up transnational social fields may have bearing on negotiations of translocal subjectivity.…”