From place disruption to attachment: another perspective for international student mobility

ABSTRACT

Places can hold the most significant experiences of peoples’ lives, and place attachment rests in these people-place meaningful connections. Traveling abroad for international students is a mobility where changes and mixed emotions entangle to one another. It represents distancing and loosening ties from a familiar place (home) and creating and connecting new ones with another place (host destination). This voluntary relocation is considered a disruption in place attachment and impacts the overall experience of the international student mobility. Nevertheless, the creation of attachment to a place derived from a place disruption remains scarce within international student mobility literature. This case study explores the production of place attachment in international students in the host destination through the conceptual lens of disruptions to attachment via changes in places. Thirty-three in-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with international students from different nationalities who have finished a Master’s degree in Tourism at the University of Girona, Spain. This investigation demonstrates the motives and process of place disruption in international student mobility and the power of a host destination to create new emotional bonds and connections, becoming another home for international students.

KEYWORDS:

• Place experiences
• student mobility
• travel
• place attachment
• place disruption
• home

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Universitat de Girona [grant number IFUDG2019].

Notes on contributors

Karla Quintero

Karla Quintero is a PhD candidate and researcher in training at the University of Girona. She is currently doing her PhD thesis on the influence of tourist destinations in the international student mobility context. Her research interests include educational tourism, mobilities and place.

Konstantina Zerva

Konstantina Zerva is a professor of Marketing and Market Investigation at the University of Girona. She received her PhD from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and her PhD thesis was related to the social exchanges regarding music consumption. Her current research interests include the analysis of niche tourism market segments like dark and volunteer tourism, immigration, social marketing and theories of social exchange.