Accumulating cosmopolitan and ethnic identity capital through international student mobility

ABSTRACT

International student mobility (ISM), particularly degree-mobility, has been primarily portrayed as the rational pursuit of economic advantage in an increasingly competitive and stratified global hierarchy of nations, academic institutions and qualifications. This focus on what has been portrayed as the pursuit of ‘cosmopolitan capital’, has led to other types of capital being ignored, despite evidence that cosmopolitan capital is inadequate to explain ISM in some contexts. This study looks at ethnic identity capital as a stimulus for ISM in a group of French-Jewish students in Israel and demonstrates how it combined with cosmopolitan capital helps to explain the motivation for ISM in some culturally and ethnically distinct groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• cosmopolitan capital
• cosmopolitanism
• ethnic identity capital
• ethnicity
• international student mobility
• Israel

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the following people for their helpful comments: Prof. Paul Morris, Dr Miri Yemini, Dr Terri Kim, Sue Grey, Nicole Vasiliou and the two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent (or who is the spouse of such a person) has the right to Israeli citizenship.