Abstract:A recurrent narrative in the recent literature on international student mobility is that overseas study is motivated by a desire for onward international mobility or oriented towards specific goals such as an international career. However, the way in which transnational mobility after graduation is perceived and experienced by international students is largely unexplored. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 55 current and graduated international students from three UK universities, this paper employs Bourdieu'… Show more
“…A significant portion of extant research has emphasised that international student mobility, in Australia and other destination countries, is an overwhelmingly ‘middle-class’ activity (e.g. Waters and Brooks, 2021 ; Lee, 2022 ). In other words, student-migrants are often understood through what Robertson ( 2015 , p. 941) describes as ‘consumption-based metaphors of privileged mobility’.…”
Section: Precarity Among International Students In Australiamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This is reflected in the fact that a significant portion of the empirical research on internationally mobile students has been concerned with the ways in which this form of mobility is employed as a means of middle-class social reproduction (e.g. Waters and Brooks, 2021 ; Lee, 2022 ; Mulvey, 2021 ). As a result, research in this area, especially that focused on major destinations in the Global North, has only rarely acknowledged the full diversity of socio-economic backgrounds within this group.…”
Empirical research on international student migrants has sometimes homogenised this group, framing it as predominantly made up of privileged members of the global middle-class. This has led to calls to acknowledge and address the precarity faced by international students in their respective host countries more comprehensively. This study aims to explore how levels of financial precarity vary among international students in Australia, and how this in turn contributes to varying levels of precariousness in the personal spheres of students’ lives. In doing so, we centre and refine the concept of precarity for use in studies of internationally mobile students, arguing for its use as a ‘relational nexus’, bridging financial precarity and broader lived experiences. Drawing on a large-scale survey and semi-structured interviews with 48 students, we emphasise the linkages between financial precarity and precariousness as a socio-ontological experience, explored through the examples of time poverty, physical and mental wellbeing, and relationships.
“…A significant portion of extant research has emphasised that international student mobility, in Australia and other destination countries, is an overwhelmingly ‘middle-class’ activity (e.g. Waters and Brooks, 2021 ; Lee, 2022 ). In other words, student-migrants are often understood through what Robertson ( 2015 , p. 941) describes as ‘consumption-based metaphors of privileged mobility’.…”
Section: Precarity Among International Students In Australiamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This is reflected in the fact that a significant portion of the empirical research on internationally mobile students has been concerned with the ways in which this form of mobility is employed as a means of middle-class social reproduction (e.g. Waters and Brooks, 2021 ; Lee, 2022 ; Mulvey, 2021 ). As a result, research in this area, especially that focused on major destinations in the Global North, has only rarely acknowledged the full diversity of socio-economic backgrounds within this group.…”
Empirical research on international student migrants has sometimes homogenised this group, framing it as predominantly made up of privileged members of the global middle-class. This has led to calls to acknowledge and address the precarity faced by international students in their respective host countries more comprehensively. This study aims to explore how levels of financial precarity vary among international students in Australia, and how this in turn contributes to varying levels of precariousness in the personal spheres of students’ lives. In doing so, we centre and refine the concept of precarity for use in studies of internationally mobile students, arguing for its use as a ‘relational nexus’, bridging financial precarity and broader lived experiences. Drawing on a large-scale survey and semi-structured interviews with 48 students, we emphasise the linkages between financial precarity and precariousness as a socio-ontological experience, explored through the examples of time poverty, physical and mental wellbeing, and relationships.
“…Maxcene appears to imagine that the world is her oyster, as she associated learning Chinese with the possibilities of onward post-study mobility or orienting toward more specific goals such as navigating the global space as a translator (Lee, 2021). As a working-class girl, she has been "incited to produce herself as upwardly mobile through investment in education" (Allen, 2016, p. 811), and her aspirations highlight a more nourishing and cosmopolitan life form in contrast to the hope of taking up menial jobs manifested in traditional working-class girlhood (Skeggs, 2011;Walkerdine, 2011).…”
Section: Students' Experience Of Everyday Cfl Literacy Practicesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Maxcene, for instance, articulated the intricate relationship between CFL and career decisions within the neoliberal imperatives: There is a person here, he learned Chinese when he was younger, and now, he, it's… he does his career as a translator, and he goes around the world with people, and he's a translator and it gives him more career choices. (Maxcene, Y5, Fijian, SFG, 2018/05/30) Maxcene appears to imagine that the world is her oyster, as she associated learning Chinese with the possibilities of onward post‐study mobility or orienting toward more specific goals such as navigating the global space as a translator (Lee, 2021). As a working‐class girl, she has been “incited to produce herself as upwardly mobile through investment in education” (Allen, 2016, p. 811), and her aspirations highlight a more nourishing and cosmopolitan life form in contrast to the hope of taking up menial jobs manifested in traditional working‐class girlhood (Skeggs, 2011; Walkerdine, 2011).…”
Section: Students’ Experience Of Everyday Cfl Literacy Practicesmentioning
A nuanced description of “what” (the curriculum) and “how” (the pedagogy) to teach in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) education remains unexplored in existing scholarship. This paper addresses this paucity by undertaking a practitioner inquiry to explore the intersection of Eastern pedagogy and Western students in an Australian CFL classroom, with the aim of improving classroom practice and enhancing low socio‐economic status (SES) students’ learning experiences. Ten language lessons were segmented into phases and analyzed within the parameter of classification and framing theorized by Bernstein. An analysis of research journals and students’ focus groups shows culturally responsive pedagogy integrating constructivist and traditional Chinese approaches to teaching has the potential of inducting underprivileged students into knowledge about curriculum and language, providing them with linguistic capital and high aspirations for the future. Pedagogically, this article offers insights for CFL teachers to mediate Chinese and Western teaching beliefs and education schemas; practically, the findings glimpse the ways in which CFL education can be discursively constructed as a cultural agenda that (re)shapes the educational experiences of underprivileged students and mobilizes them into critical hopes that can be acted upon. This paper has important implications for foreign language theory building and for responding to the “back to basics” curriculum approach in schools serving disadvantaged communities.
“…This argument echoes recent scholarly accounts of transnational students' life events and transitions. For example, Xu (2021) finds that when mobile youth talk about their life events, they usually connect their interpretations to their previous experiences and expectations before the mobilities, the meanings attached to the mobilities, and their aspirations associated with future mobilities and life plans (also see Lee, 2021).…”
Section: Mobilities and Transitions To Adulthoodmentioning
This article explores transnational Chinese students' education migration to the United Kingdom through a lifecourse perspective. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 43 transnational Chinese graduates from U.K. universities, I found that participants regarded their transnational education migration as a stepping‐stone to adulthood. Influenced by the mobilities paradigm, this paper elaborates on the transitions to adulthood experienced by transnational Chinese students. The findings illustrate how transnational education mobilities transform social networks, in which transnational Chinese students rehearse their role as an adult in everyday social interactions, and how the intersection of Confucian collectivism and students' class background influences their experiences and understandings of transitions to adulthood. Therefore, this paper advances existing scholarship on transnational Chinese students by proposing a lifecourse perspective and exemplifies the complexities of mobile youth's lifecourse transitions by emphasising the cultural and social construction of transnational Chinese students' adulthood.
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