Anne-Cécile Delaisse & Gaoheng Zhang
WPS 2023/1
Abstract
International students’ engagement with different cultures has received increased scholarly attention. The literature tends to either celebrate students’ cosmopolitanism and transnationalism or highlight their difficulties “adapting” in their receiving countries. In the former case, cultural differences tend to be considered irrelevant, whereas in the latter case, cultural differences are taken for granted and foregrounded as central to students’ experiences. In this paper, we examine students’ own perceptions and engagement with their sending and receiving countries’ cultures through the notion of distance, which is gleaned from mobilities studies. We draw from 20 online, in-depth interviews with Vietnamese international students based in Vancouver and Paris. Our analysis highlights how students construct or deconstruct notions of distance between Vietnam and their receiving countries, and also between themselves and each of these countries (i.e., their sending and receiving countries). First, we examine how students cultivate a sense of cultural proximity to their (geographically distant) countries of destination, through their predeparture engagement with these countries’ language or media. Second, we address students’ rapport with French and Canadian societies while residing in those countries, highlighting how ethno-racial diversity in the receiving contexts shapes students’ perceptions of distance at various levels as well as their strategies to address these perceived distances. Finally, we discuss students’ sense of proximity to or distance from Vietnamese culture while studying in France and Canada and how these constructions can be related to a specific form of cosmopolitanism. We argue that the notion of distance helps foster a nuanced and critical understanding of international students’ mobilities, transculturality, and cosmopolitanism.
KEYWORDS: International education, cosmopolitanism, mobilities, transculturality, transnationalism