Understanding Youth Educational Mobilities in Asia: A Comparison of Chinese ‘Foreign Talent’ Students in Singapore and Indian MBBS Students in China

ABSTRACT

While scholarship on international student mobility (ISM) has proliferated in recent times, understanding of educational mobilities within the Asian region remains limited, empirically and theoretically. This paper contributes to this nascent intra-Asian ISM perspective through offering a comparative overview of two contemporary empirical cases: Chinese students recruited as ‘foreign talent’ by Singapore and Indian students headed to China to study English-medium MBBS degrees. Using an analytical framework based on integrating key existing theoretical approaches in ISM scholarship, this paper compares the two cases in terms of the push–pull conditions/factors underlying them, as well as the physical, socioeconomic, and cultural im/mobility outcomes for the two groups of students. Although both groups may be regarded as belonging to Asia’s vast rising middle classes, the more academically and socially advantaged Chinese students in Singapore are found to enjoy more favourable outcomes than their less privileged Indian counterparts. Theoretically, this paper underscores the divergences between the two cases as manifestations of an increasingly class-differentiated landscape of international student/youth mobilities in Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• International education
• international student migration/mobility
• educational mobility
• social mobility
• youth
• Asia
• push–pull
• education migration

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the Special Issue editors and the Asia Research Institute at NUS for making the publication of this article possible. In particular, I would like to express my appreciation to Dr Shanthi Robertson for her inputs into this paper that has helped to strengthen it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Peidong Yang (DPhil, Oxford) is a Lecturer in Humanities and Social Studies Education at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore. His research interests are located at the intersections between education, migration/mobility, and media. Past and present research projects include Singapore’s ‘foreign talent’ policy in relation to Chinese students’ international mobility; immigration tensions and immigrant integration in Singapore; Indian medical students in China; and cultural analysis of (online) media memes in contemporary China. Peidong is the author of International Mobility and Educational Desire: Chinese Foreign Talent Students in Singapore (Palgrave, 2016) and more than a dozen international peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. At NIE Singapore, he teaches courses on identity, globalization, and sociology of education to student teachers.

Additional information

Funding

The writing of this work was made possible through the CLASS Postdoctoral Fellowship at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.