Expanding Horizons: A Sociological Approach to Career Decision-Making in the Field of International Student Mobility

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 14. Higher Education: Selective Institutions

Abstract

While globalisation and the growing competition at the crowded and increasingly ‘credentialised’ graduate labour market contributed to the growing popularity of ‘degree mobility’ (i.e. studying abroad for the whole length of a degree), the newly emerging field of international student mobility has not yet been researched systematically (King et al. 2010). The current scholarship, dominated by push-and-pull factors and the drivers and barriers of mobility-type of analysis, has received growing criticism over the widespread ‘demand-side’ theorisations that largely disregard the ‘cultural, social and economic contexts’ within which individual educational decisions are generally played out (Findlay 2011: 164–5). By presenting career as a constant interaction between the field and personal dispositions the paper reaches out to Hodkinson’s careership theory (Hodkinson 2008) as well as Bourdieu’s field theory (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), in an attempt to reconcile the structural and individual dimensions of career decision-making within the field of international student mobility. Since doctoral education is professed to be the pinnacle of one’s educational career, pursuing doctoral studies abroad, at a world-class university, may be viewed as the ultimate educational achievement in one’s lifetime. The empirical analysis of in-depth interviews carried out with doctoral students at an ancient, elite, college-based British university not only contribute to a better understanding of career decision-making across diverse regional, national and international settings but also extends Hodkinson’s theory.

Author

• Adel Pasztor, Newcastle University