Globalism, regionalism and nationalism: the dynamics of student mobility in higher education across the Taiwan Strait

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to broaden the conceptual approaches to understanding the complexity of student mobility in higher education (HE) across the Taiwan Strait, thereby exemplifying a contradictory mix of collaboration and competition that involves interplay among the various forces associated with global, regional and national settings. To achieve this goal, the paper provides an abstraction of ‘trichotomisation’, which explains the significance of the concepts of globalism, regionalism and nationalism in understanding cross-Strait student mobility, and thus shows its threefold nature. Specifically, it considers the intensification of cross-Strait student mobility in HE and the counter-reaction as a manifestation of globalism, a form of regionalism, and an expression of nationalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Student mobility
• cross-Taiwan Strait relations
• globalism
• regionalism
• nationalism

Acknowledgements

We thank David Phillips for very helpful comments on a draft of this paper. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for sharp and constructive criticism of the version originally submitted to the journal. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The contents of these agreements comprise the start of direct ‘three links’ (i.e. direct trade, transportation, and postal service), the opening of mainland tourism to Taiwan, and cross-Strait cooperation in the fields of food safety, finance, crime crack down, product inspection, fishing crew affairs, intellectual property rights protection, medicine and health (G. Lin, 2016, p. 323).

2 The 1992 consensus refers to the outcome of a meeting between the semi-official representatives of mainland China and Taiwan in 1992. The term describes the ‘one China, different interpretations’ concept.

Additional information

Funding

Work on the paper was supported by grants from the Education University of Hong Kong (Project No. RG43/15-16R) and the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (which is a branch of University Grants Committee of Hong Kong) (Project No. 18606017).