International students’ mobility and lives in transnational spaces: pragmatic or dedicated cosmopolitans?

ABSTRACT

Recently, an increasing number of students have been seeking international education to accumulate cosmopolitan cultural and social capital and realise upward social mobility. In addition to this pragmatic dimension, international education also enables international students to acquire dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, providing them opportunities to appreciate diverse cultures, values, and gain intercultural/translocal learning experiences. Guided by a theoretical discussion on pragmatic and dedicated cosmopolitanism, this study employed the case study method to explore how 19 international students who studied in Chinese universities navigated their transnational mobility, academic learning, and social lives, and how multiple discourses in their transnational spaces influenced their development of dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions. The findings revealed that international educational programme arrangements, social discourses regarding accruing capital and upward social mobility, and cultural and educational discourses in transnational spaces converged to influence students’ development of dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, affecting their emotions, practices, and choices. This study suggests that actors in international education provide students with more opportunities to connect with the host society and dialogical spaces. Not only international students, but all actors should engage in constant dialogue, and strive to acquire dedicated cosmopolitan dispositions, and promote a socially and culturally inclusive educational environment to support international students’ learning and well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• International students
• Chinese higher education
• pragmatic cosmopolitanism
• dedicated cosmopolitanism
• transnational spaces

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our appreciation to the reviewers and editors of this paper for their valuable and constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Bourdieu (1986) theorises three different forms of capital in the game of social mobility: economic capital, which is convertible into money; cultural capital, which “may be institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications”; and social capital, composed of social obligations (“connections”) (p. 243).

2 See above.

3 Faist (2000) explains that “transnational social spaces” are “combinations of ties and their contents, positions in networks and organisations that can be found in at least two geographically and internationally distinct places” (p. 197).

4 Bourdieu (1990, 1991) theorises that individuals construct social fields with structures and rules and that they are also governed by dispositions and structural discourses in these fields.

5 HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) or the Chinese Proficiency Test is an international standardised exam that assesses non-native Chinese speakers’ language proficiency. Those who pass the tests (Level 4) can converse in Chinese on various topics and communicate fluently with native Chinese speakers, understand Chinese newspapers and magazines (Levels 5 and 6), comprehend written and spoken information in Chinese, and express themselves in Chinese, both orally and in writing. (https://www.chinaeducenter.com/en/exams.php).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (江苏高校哲学社会科学研究一般项目,江苏省高等教育国际化分类发展路径研究) under Grant number 2021SJA1368.