International studies as global capital: a case study in how Chinese students utilize their sojourns for achieving global mobility

From “the Moon Is Rounder Abroad” to “Bravo, My Country”: How China Misperceives the World

“…When the realities abroad did not quite meet their high expectations, they “increasingly saw China as a paradise lost and the developed country they once imagined as paradise as a barren, unsatisfying trap” (p. 200), 5 even though they also developed appreciation for some freedoms they could enjoy abroad but not in China. Other qualitative studies of Chinese overseas students have similarly found that they usually had rose-colored expectations before they went abroad (Hansen 2015 ; Kajanus 2015 ; Gamst Page 2019 ). Journalists have found similar stories with Chinese immigrants to the US and Europe (Guo 2017 ; Rong 2017 ).…”

Scaling and the formation of borderland subjectivities: A study of identity construction among Chinese international students in the United States

“…In a similar vein, Tran and Vu (2018) suggested that international students were capable of exercising varied forms of "agency in mobility" that both shaped and were shaped by the possibilities and conditions associated with their crossborder movement. These forms of agency, as characterized by the students' changing and situated connectedness with their home and host societies, manifested themselves in the potential of the students to resourcefully construct their transnational "life-course in the interplay with influences from the past and orientations toward the future" (Tran & Vu, 2018, p. 175, see also Page, 2019). For international student-related research, the concepts of self-formation and agency in mobility embody a paradigm shift toward seeing the students "from numerous perspectives and thus seeing them as more complete human beings" (Page & Chahboun, 2019, p. 880).…”

Brokers of international student mobility: The roles and processes of education agents in China

“…Agents are identified as a cog in the machine of international higher education, which increasingly works as a mechanism of socioeconomic reproduction. matters of identity and inclusion (e.g., Page, 2019). Besides representing an educational, political, social and cultural phenomenon (Mulvey, 2020), global student mobility and international higher education also constitute a lucrative global higher education market for which nations and universities develop strategies to attract not only larger numbers of international students, but also the most promising ones (Jokila et al, 2019;Wu, 2019).…”