Encounters in the Transnational: Care, Responsibility, and \u27Doing Family\u27

Poster Presentation This paper engages with the theme of transnational care and responsibility by examining the different ways an international student migrant undertakes ‘doing family’ with their ‘traditional family at home, their siblings and with their friends in ‘host’ country. ‘Doing family’ like ‘doing gender’ involves a construction that is reproduced through repeated performances. The process and performance of doing family is cast against the idea of the ‘naturally’ existing set of relations. The discussion draws on 14 months of fieldwork in Toronto, Canada and New Delhi, India. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 65 respondents: 22 Indian international students studying at universities and colleges in Toronto, 23 family members/parents and 20 return international students in New Delhi. I mounted an online survey to facilitate data collection on the socio-economic background and educational profiles of the past and present students and their families. This paper draws on the interviews and ethnographic research in Toronto and New Delhi. The findings reveal that ‘doing family’ in the transnational context involves the interaction of different groups and individuals – some who would be defined as family in traditional models (parents, siblings) and others who would not (friends). It is a reciprocal process to which all members have to contribute and also receive from the relationship through activities of ‘caring’, ‘supporting’, and feeling responsible for anothers mental and physical well-being. Technology plays an important role in enabling migrants to be able to perform of the activities from afar with the same ease as they did when they were closer to their parents/siblings ‘at home’

Gendering international student mobility: an Indian case study

This thesis explores the dialectical relationship between gender and international student mobility (ISM). The focus is on the experiences of Indian students across three space-time locations: before the students left India; while abroad in Toronto; and their return to New Delhi. The value of this research is two-fold. Firstly, my research helps to fill the lacuna in ISM research that examines the phenomenon through a gender optic. Secondly, there is increasing interest in Canada and other countries – evident in the media and government policy – in international students from India. The study is located at the nexus of gender and mobility scholarship; it adopts Gendered Geographies of Power as a foundational framework. The research employed a multi-sited, mixed-methods approach to data collection. The data collection in the field sites of Toronto, Canada and New Delhi, India consisted of in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant observations. An online survey was mounted for the duration of the fieldwork to gather data on the broader population of Indian students abroad. The results of this survey provide context for the discussion in three empirical chapters. The first of the three empirical chapters explores the impact of gender relations in shaping motivations to study abroad. The second chapter examines how relations of power in and across multiple spaces (re)shape the students‟ performances of gender identities in everyday life in Toronto. The final empirical chapter examines the students‟ experience of return mobility as they attempt to adapt to a different (but familiar) gender context again. My research contributes to the growing body of scholarship on ISM as well as that on gender and migration. By employing a gendered perspective, the indepth interviews as well as ethnographic research reveals the shifting subjectivities of the migrants as they simultaneously negotiate multiple ethnic and kinship interactions in their everyday lived experiences. Secondly, the online survey presents the gendered class configurations of the socio-economic background of the Indian international students. Lastly, the „return‟ experiences of the students are differentiated by gender: more women than men found it harder to (re)negotiate their gender-expected performances in New Delhi. Furthermore, the „return mobility‟ of men appears to be more permanent than the return mobility of women

Gendering international student migration: a comparison of UK and Indian students’ motivations and experiences of studying abroad

This paper breaks new ground in its comparative analysis of two international student migration (ISM) streams, one from the Global South to the Global North (India to developed Anglophone countries), and the other within the Global North (UK to North America, Europe and Australia). These two ISM movements reflect different positionalities within the global system of international student movements, and hence necessitate a critical perspective on the assumptions behind such a comparison, which questions the dominance of ‘knowledge’ about ISM that derives from ‘the West’ as a theoretical template. Two methods are employed to collect data: an online questionnaire survey of UK and Indian students who are, or have recently been, studying abroad; and in-depth interviews to UK and Indian international students. Motivations for studying abroad are remarkably similar in the questionnaire results; more subtle differences emerge from the interviews

Bridging the Literature on Education Migration

This research synthesis examines key themes and findings on international students and education migrants in Canada. Our review focuses on research related to the first wave of international student mobility (ISM), and we define the literature broadly to include studies on international students, foreign students, visa students, study abroad students, sojourning students, unaccompanied minors for educational purposes, and education migrants at all educational levels and legal statuses. ISM to Canada can be divided into roughly two periods, pre‐1990 and post‐1990. Studies are drawn from across the social sciences with a focus on literature from the perspectives of sociology, geography, economics, education, psychology, and demography, to bring into focus the various structural, social, and cultural contexts that shape international student mobility. We also draw from reports published by public, private and third sector agencies. The aim of the synthesis is to highlight the main findings in this body of work, uncover gaps in research, and discuss policy implications particular to the Canadian context

The Entangled Infrastructures of International Student Migration: Lessons from Covid-19

The impact of Covid-19 on international student mobility has been noted by policy makers and the media ever since the global lockdowns started in early 2020. However, most of the concerns focus on what the drop in student mobility means for the finances of the countries and educational institutions to which students would have moved; there has been little exploration of the students’ own experiences of Covid-19. This chapter explores the entangled education, migration, and finance infrastructures that shape international student migration and how they failed the students during the pandemic. It draws on questionnaires and interviews conducted with international student migrants from a range of countries and who are registered to study in the UK to point to how migration policies, consular services, educational institutions, and travel industry all affected students. It points to how these components are entangled, and that their failure during the pandemic led to particular forms of immobility and mobility, leaving many students stuck in uncertain and precarious situations. The chapter ends by suggesting that reading the pandemic as an acute unprecedented event is important but inadequate. It is also a window into the everyday failures that the entangled infrastructures of international student mobility posed before Covid-19, how these came to be and who benefited from these infrastructures

Working Within the Aspiring Center: Professional Status and Mobilities Among Migrant Faculty in Singapore

This paper investigates the migration of Asia-born academics from traditional centers in the West to Singapore, a rapidly developing education hub in Southeast Asia. We argue that such movement can be seen as a form of quasi-return, where migrant faculty look for places where they can be “close enough” to aging parents and family, while working in an institution that is “good enough” to continue research work. This position leads to conflicting notions of social mobility, when defined in terms of professional prestige and status. While interviewees perceived their move to Singapore as a form of upward mobility when compared to colleagues within their home countries, they simultaneously worried about their downward mobility compared to peers who had remained in the West. Such perceptions shape their decision to leave Singapore in the future, reinforcing current university hierarchies, where institutions in the USA and Europe continue to dominate notions of academic prestige

Gendering international student migration: an Indian case-study

Despite the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into migration research, very few attempts have been made to gender international student migration. This paper poses three questions about Indian students who study abroad. Are there gender differences in their motivations? How do they negotiate their gendered everyday lives when abroad? Is the return to India shaped by gender relations? An online survey of Indian study-abroad students (n = 157), and in-depth interviews with Indian students in Toronto (n = 22), returned students in New Delhi (n = 21), and with parents of students abroad (n = 22) help to provide answers. Conceptually, the paper draws on a ‘gendered geographies of power’ framework and on student migration as an embodied process subject to ‘matrices of (un)intelligibility’. We find minimal gender-related differences in motivations to study abroad, except that male students are drawn from a wider social background. However, whilst abroad, both male and female Indian students face challenges in performing their gendered identities. The Indian patrifocal family puts greater pressure on males to return; females face greater challenges upon return

Gendered Highly Skilled Migration in the Knowledge Sector

Highly skilled women form a large part of skilled migrant flows within, from and to Asia, although they have little place in the imaginaries of Asian gendered migration. This chapter focuses on the mutually constitutive relationship between gender and skilled migration. It first reviews the key feminist contributions to theorising skilled migration. Second, it outlines how gender, skills and migration play out in skilled migration regimes. Lastly, it sets out a future research agenda for gendered skilled migration research that is sensitive to the geographies in which gender analysis of skilled migrants is conducted, and the need to extend research beyond a heteronormative and patriarchal matrix