Geographies of Student Mobility

Abstract

There is a need, we argue here, for an overtly geographical perspective on international student mobility. At its most simple, such a perspective enables us to map contemporary patterns and flows of students from one region or country to another, highlighting, in the process, similarities and differences over space. In foregrounding the spatially differentiated nature of such flows, however, a geographical perspective can also indication the social, political and economic implications of this spatial differentiation — internationalization is a notoriously uneven process, representing a plural landscape of opportunity for some (individuals, institutions and countries), and disadvantage for others. The importance of a geographical perspective has been implicit throughout the book: this chapter, however, represents an explicit attempt to bring the geographies of student mobility to the forefront of discussion. It does so in three, interconnected ways.