The rare collectors’ item: Cosmopolitan capital development among US students in Cuba

• In Event: Exploring the dynamics and outcomes of exchanges and internationalization

Proposal

Few U.S. students have had opportunities to participate in study abroad in Cuba, making it one of the least traditional locations in study abroad. According to Open Doors data, 1058 U.S. students studied abroad in Cuba in 2019/2020, an increase from 298 students a decade earlier in 2009/2010 (IIE, 2023). Considering the total number of U.S. students studying abroad in 2019/2020 across all destinations is 162,633, the number of student travelers to Cuba is significantly small. These low numbers of U.S. students studying abroad to Cuba are not too surprising given the U.S.-Cuba political relationship.

By looking at the U.S. student’s motivations to engage in international travel to Cuba, we take up Ogden’s (2008) call that “understanding the nature of today’s student is essential if we are to recognize what prevents them from and what motivates them to want to step off the veranda” (p. 36). To that end, this paper focuses on a study of graduate students’ perceptions of the role of international opportunities in their academic and professional careers. Specifically, we examine themes of cosmopolitan capital as students engaged in a field study course to Cuba and negotiated their American identities.

Embedded in a semester-long course in spring 2023, we observed nearly forty graduate students during a nine day international professional and academic exchange in Havana, Cuba. The course was designed to focus on research, and encouraged students to design research projects related to their fields of study. Students were primed to think about how this experience could impact their future professional opportunities. . In designing our study, we were interested in how students’ unique identities and forms of embodied cultural capital (Bourdieu,1986), including cosmopolitan capital (Weenink, 2008), linguistic capital (Yosso, 2006), and encounters with American identity (Dolby, 2004, 2007; Zemach-Bersin, 2007), could influence their engagement within this international program. Using qualitative case study design (Stake, 2005), we explored graduate students’ motivations for global experiences within their coursework, and their perceptions of their experiences in Cuba. The experience in Cuba is part of the Busquedas Investigativas educational exchange program to Havana, Cuba. Forty MA and doctoral students, along with faculty, participate annually in this program. The program is embedded in a semester-long course held at two universities (one public, one private) in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Each of the three authors were participants in the course and program. The course involved four pre-departure meetings, a nine-day in person field study course in Havana in March 2023, and two post-travel debrief sessions.

The study was approved by the institutional ethics review board. Guided by convenience sampling, we invited all graduate students in the program to participate in the study. A total of 11 students consented to participate. All participants in the study were graduate students, of whom a majority identified as white and female. Data were collected before, during and after the experience in Cuba, and consisted of pre-travel surveys, pre- and post-travel one-on-one interviews, focus groups and multiple written and oral reflections.

The difficulty around traveling to Cuba for US Americans made this site a coveted destination for our participants, who expressed a desire to set themselves apart from peers with similar levels of cosmopolitan capital. We came to term this Cosmopolitan +, a moniker to denote that the eliteness of having cosmopolitan capital may not be as unique as previously established in the literature (Calhoun, 2002; Delanty, 2009; Lindell & Danielsson, 2017; Rizvi, 2005; Weenink, 2007). We also saw this with how participants wielded their linguistic capital. Four of the eight study participants spoke of having to rely on classmates for understanding, while another two discussed feeling fortunate that their language skills afforded them the ability to “get more” out of their interactions. This led to a dynamic in which those who were able to communicate in both languages became de facto interpreters and even leaders amongst their peers.

Truth-seeking in Cuba developed into a complicated task as students grappled with their American lens and how it colored their perceptions as researchers.Literature suggests that this is a common experience for students participating in international programs; McCabe (2005) and Prins & Webster (2010) discuss the ways in which an individual’s relationship with their national identity can impact their pursuit of authenticity. Study participants craved opportunities to speak to anyone who might contradict the prevailing narrative of Cuban officials, and thus demonstrate the existence of an objective “truth” they were sure existed, but could not quite uncover. We observed that students were relentless in pursuing this insider information as both a way to set themselves apart from the “common” understanding of US-Cuba relations, as well as to intellectualize any feelings of guilt associated with wielding their embodied capital.

Based on our preliminary findings we note that students view Cuba as a coveted destination for international coursework as it represents a “collectors item” experience that the average well-traveled American student does not have access to. We observe that linguistic capital further sets some students apart from their peers in two ways; both as a tool to exhibit additional capital, and/or a way to navigate the complexities of the Cuban context. Finally we explore how students leverage their various forms of capital in their pursuit of truth-seeking and in the intellectual justification of their participation in an international experience set in Cuba amidst complicated US-Cuban dynamics.

Authors

• Emily Marchese, The George Washington University

• Amanda Renee Baker, The George Washington University

• Laura C. Engel, The George Washington University