This article examines international student mobility (ISM) as a process of "aspiration on the go" for African students in China--a burgeoning yet under-researched international student flow. Drawing on 15 months of fieldwork at a Chinese university, we present ethnographic case studies of African students that unveil their varied…

This article investigates how the desire for Western credentials and transnational mobility reconcile with strong nationalist sentiments among Chinese students and how Chinese students' overseas educational experiences are largely structured by the People's Republic of China (PRC). Through a 12-month transnational ethnography study of 15 Chinese…

The global landscape of higher education is an uneven field where players like nation-states are placed in hierarchical and centre-periphery relations. This paper focuses on the global field of international student mobility (ISM) and investigates China's place in the field using an analytical framework consisting of three key categories of…

This article delineates my place attachment and sense of home in my Epsom campus, University of Auckland, in Aotearoa New Zealand, where I studied for my PhD in two periods of time: during the first year of my PhD programme, when my sense of home was established; and when I returned to Vietnam for my six-month research trip and was stranded due to…

It is often assumed that the simple presence of international students and ubiquitous use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) are the main agents of internationalisation of higher education (HE), whereby English equals international education and inbound student mobility equals increased internationalisation. While there are perceived…

Erasmus+, the European Union's mobility program has been researched extensively (e.g., De Wit, 2020), yet mobility program coordinators at higher education institutions responsible for student, faculty, and staff exchanges remain under-researched. This comparative study showcases a Romanian-U.S. Erasmus + partnership established between…

Informed by Bourdieu's conceptualisation of habitus and its relation with social class, this study explores the construction and negotiation of middle-class identity among a group of urban overseas returnees in China. Using ethnographic interviews and online observational data, the study found that participants built a compliant identity…

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the United States met the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and increased social unrest caused by George Floyd's death head on to provide quality instruction and to support students in and out of the classroom. For many of these institutions, global and intercultural efforts…

The recent expansion of the overseas education market in China has led to the rise of "Background Promotion Projects" designed to strengthen the applications of elite university aspirants. Based on ethnographic findings of a particular Background Promotion Project, a Chinese high school entrepreneurship competition, this study analyses…

Through an ethnographic exploration of policy documents, this paper aims to expose how outcome-oriented education standards gained international hegemonic status in the Bologna Process. Taking inspiration in the concept of hegemony and by connecting the invisible power of hegemony to soft governance, the paper shows how the outcome-based modular…

This article examines the relationship between European language policy and funded language learning projects in the field of LSP. We look at why and how the objectives were expressed, how the overall directions have evolved over the past decade, and how the LSP landscape has been redefined through research and implementation. Our discursive and…

While there is a growing presence of trans-Pacific migrant students in the US, relatively little attention has been given to the diversity among them in terms of their everyday experiences and future educational trajectories shaped by different patterns of transnational mobilities and practices. This paper addresses the distinctive educational…

An initiative termed "Global 30 Project for Establishing Core Universities for Internationalization" (hereafter G30) in Japan aims for the recruitment of an additional 300,000 international students by 2020 to study in Japan in English, and also aims to send many more Japanese university students overseas than are now studying outside…