The student as an enterprising self: Neoliberalism, English and early study abroad

ABSTRACT

In the process of neoliberal globalization, the number of pre-college-aged educational migrants from English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) countries, often referred to as an early study abroad (ESA) student, has dramatically increased over recent decades in many English-speaking countries. Much of previous research on these educational migrants has primarily focused on parents’ perspectives and involvement, and ignoring the engagement of and investment made by ESA students themselves. By analyzing transcripts of qualitative interviews with fifteen former early study-abroad students from Korea, this paper investigates how these ESA students narrate their experiences of early study abroad and how they understand their roles and experiences in the process. Findings of this paper show that ESA students’ ways of thinking and approaches to their educational trajectory and language learning strongly resonate with a practice of neoliberal responsibilization, by which each student is made responsible for her own choices and their consequences.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• early study abroad
• educational migrant
• neoliberal responsibili­zation
• transnational educational migration
• neoliberal burden

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was provided by the author(s).

Notes

1 Seungho lived in a shared house located in a dangerous neighborhood in Boston. He describes the neighborhood as “a typical place from gangster movies associated with high crimes”. During the interview, he described his experience of getting mugged by other local teenagers when walking to a supermarket, within a five-minute walk from his shared house.