Students' Journeys Abroad Toward Higher Education from Post-conflict Country of Tajikistan

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday V)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Programming development concerns in education abroad

Proposal

Previous studies on international students’ mobility pay little regard to local/contextual factors, initiatives, and movements of students between rural/urban, school-to-school and local regional programs and the transition from one system to another. This study tracks motivating factors for Tajikistani students’ domestic and international mobility, particularly focusing on students who studied for more than a year in Japan through a qualitative study. The phenomenon of domestic and international mobility has remained under-explored in terms of local or contextual factors such as transitions between systems and movements of students from rural to urban, school to school and domestic to international areas. Analysis of the data indicates two mobility motivators; involuntary and voluntary in the process of domestic and international educational mobility. Involuntary mobility is mostly influenced by civil war, or by other political or economic situations and contexts (rural to rural, urban to rural or urban to urban) whereas voluntary mobility is influenced by conditions in the area they live in (lack of qualified teachers and new local-international opportunities) after the collapse of the Soviet Union and having a connection to the global world through international programs, institutions, and NGO’s. Yet, the civil war and collapse of the Soviet Union as mobility motivators were somewhat overlooked in the education mobility process. Little is known about the political situations, geographical context, conditions, and structures that enable or impede domestic and international educational mobility in the context of Central Asia and particularly in Tajikistan from a micro-level perspective. This study demonstrates that, unlike other places, Tajikistani people faced two big disruptions; the paralysis of the Soviet Union system and impact of the civil war. The education system changed (and almost became paralyzed) not only because of the civil war but also because of the transition from one system to other. Analysis of the mobility of Tajikistani students in Japan demonstrates that it is important to understand contextual mobility motivators that are linked to the process of internationalization and mobility of education. The study on micro-level realities with a focus on educational mobility in the context of Tajikistan requires greater attention to understand conditions that lead to domestic and international educational mobility. Analysis of the data indicates that mobility in this region is mostly influenced by civil war, or by other political or economic situations and contexts (rural-rural or urban-rural). The voices of 35 students who are internationally mobile in Japan clearly portray how one situation causes the other: civil war, new system, and globalization. At the same time, it demonstrates the continuity, change, and contestation of the cultural understanding of education in the post-conflict region of Tajikistan.

Author

• Nazira N/A Sodatsayrova, Humanities and Social Sciences