‘To go abroad is to return better’: experiences and identities of Tibetan international students after their return ‘homeland’

• In Event: International Doctoral Students and Return Home

Proposal

Internationalizations of higher education institutions (HEIs) have become a global phenomenon in recent decades, which constitute international students as a growing mobile population worldwide. Yet, research on the experiences of returnees and the ways in which their studies abroad impact their identities and lives are under-researched. Additionally, China has the largest international student population on U.S. university campuses (IIE, 2020), and China is a multi-ethnic country with 56 ethnic groups and over 100 million ethnic minorities. Among these are Tibetans, numbering some seven million people across Tibet Plateau. However, ethnic minorities such as Tibetans are rarely represented in global international student mobility literature nor in higher education in general. In this study, I employ concepts from theories of transnationalism and discourses on Tibetan identity as a framework for the analysis of the experiences of Tibetan international student returnees. The empirical basis for the article is a 19-month, mixed-method study of 65 Tibetan students who returned to their homeland for work after completing their degrees in the U.S. universities over the last 20 years. Findings suggest that their journeys of studying in the U.S. universities are dynamic and embedded with transnational experience, in which, phayul, a Tibetan word for homeland, plays significant roles. The Tibetan returnees demonstrate indications of diaspora consciousness, upon their return to ‘homeland’. Their mobilities across various spaces reinforce, on one hand, a complex cosmopolitan identity, on the other hand, they demonstrate their ‘Tibetanness’ through cultural reproduction and professional work.

Author

• Shamo Thar, University of Massachusetts-Amherst