Regional Pathways: Transnational Imaginaries, Infrastructures and Implications of Student Mobility within Asia

Abstract

This paper offers a critical analysis of the narratives of South Korean international students attending universities in the Asian region. It draws in particular on a transnational approach to understanding these mobilities that highlights the imaginaries that generate a desire to be mobile among students, the social and institutional infrastructures that enable mobility, and the implications of student mobility for students' future aspirations and identities. Through this approach, the paper offers a starting point for exploring what is an understudied dimension of international education – the increasing number of international students who are choosing to study in Asia rather than in traditional western destinations. The transnational approach taken in this paper also opens up analytical space for understanding student mobility as a social and geographic process that relies on the creative agency of students and their families, but also social networks of friends, alumni and teachers, and the work of institutional actors in piecing together the possibilities for mobility in the region. In this regard, the paper also draws attention to the imbrication of student flows in the emergence of an increasingly interconnected Asia, one that is articulated in the career pathways of graduating students, their identities and their sense of place in a regional future.

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