Beings, Belongings and Places: A Qualitative Study on International Students‘ Networks

274 Pages·2020·3.187 MB·English

by  Alice Altissimo

Wissenschaft – Hochschule – Bildung
Alice Altissimo
Beings, Belongings
and Places
A Qualitative Study on International
Students‘ Networks
Wissenschaft – Hochschule – Bildung
Reihe herausgegeben von
Meike Sophia Baader, Hildesheim, Deutschland
Marion Kamphans, Hildesheim, Deutschland
Svea Korff, Hildesheim, Deutschland
Wolfgang Schröer, Hildesheim, Deutschland
National wie international sind Hochschulen und Wissenschaftssysteme in
Bewegung geraten. Grund genug mit einer Buchreihe den Zusammenhang von
Hochschulen als Wissenschafts- und Bildungsorganisationen mit Diskursen und
Politiken sowie mit dem Erleben von Subjekten und ihren Interaktionen aus
inter- und transdisziplinärer Perspektive kritisch in den Blick zu nehmen. Die
Buchreihe „Wissenschaft – Hochschule – Bildung“ der HerausgeberInnen Meike
Sophia Baader, Marion Kamphans, Svea Korff und Wolfgang Schröer vom For-
schungscluster „Hochschule und Bildung“ der Stiftung Universität Hildesheim
greift aktuelle Themen der empirischen Hochschul- und Bildungsforschung auf.
In der Reihe erscheinen Monografien und Sammelbände mit Beiträgen, die auf
unterschiedlichen theoretischen, empirischen und transdisziplinären Ansätzen
basieren. Manuskriptangebote werden von den HerausgeberInnen der Reihe
begutachtet und bei Annahme redaktionell betreut.
Weitere Bände in der Reihe http://www.springer.com/series/15771
Alice Altissimo
Beings, Belongings
and Places
A Qualitative Study on International
Students‘ Networks
Alice Altissimo
Universität Hildesheim
Hildesheim, Deutschland
Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie im Fachbereich 1,
Erziehungs- und Sozialwissenschaften an der Universität Hildesheim.
Vorgelegt von Alice Altissimo
Hildesheim, den 27.09.2018
Wissenschaft – Hochschule – Bildung
ISBN 978-3-658-31363-0 ISBN 978-3-658-31364-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31364-7
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Table of Contents
1 From internationalisation to mobilities ............................... 1

2 Internationalisation myths and transnational realities ........ 3
2.1 From international students… ............................................................. 6
2.2 … to transnational social networks ...................................................... 9

3 Research design and research question ............................. 13
3.1 Preparing the interviews ................................................................... 14
3.1.1 Network map and interview guide .................................................... 15
3. 1.2 Interview structure ............................................................................ 17

3.2 Re search questions ........................................................................... 21

4 Sampling, data collection & analysis ................................. 25
4.1 Sampling ........................................................................................... 25
4.2 Data analysis: methods & procedure ................................................. 27
4.2.1 Analysis of the maps .......................................................................... 27
4. 2.2 Analysis of the interviews .................................................................. 29
4.2.3 Subjectivity and positioning ............................................................... 32

5 A lonesome warrior and a helpful community: the cases .. 35
5.1 A lonesome warrior: Luis Alberto, a highly communicative loner ....... 35
5.1.1 Analysis of the map ............................................................................ 36
5. 1.2 Analysis of the narrative .................................................................... 44
5.1.3 Combination of the map and the narrative ....................................... 81
VI Table of Contents
5.2 “Always supported by someone”: Seung-min’s communities ............. 87
5.2.1 Knowing Germans to settle in ............................................................ 88
5. 2.2 In community we trust: supportive “brothers and sisters” ............... 91
5.2.3 Relationships beyond the community ............................................. 105
5.2.4 Jointly creating a caring community ................................................ 114
5.2.5 Evolving relationships & moving knowledge ................................... 120

5.3 “L iving a fragmented life”: Nevena’s struggle to settle down ........... 134
5.3.1 Having an international, fragmented life ......................................... 136
5. 3.2 (Not) shared, meta and transnational knowledge ........................... 139
5.3.3 Being isolated, being special ............................................................ 143
5.3.4 Incompatibility with the system ...................................................... 149
5.3.5 “People come and go sometimes”: friendships in international
bubbles ............................................................................................ 154

6 Main dimensions: beings, belongings and places ............ 163
6.1 “I’m a psychologist, in fact”: being an international student ............ 163
6.1.1 The (a)typical international student ................................................ 164
6. 1.2 Understanding, celebrating, surviving… International students’
practices ........................................................................................... 166
6.1.3 “International student” as a status .................................................. 170
6.1.4 Being lonely ...................................................................................... 176
6.1.5 Being a (best) friend ......................................................................... 185
6.1.6 Being a believer................................................................................ 188
6.1.7 Families are so important because we’re far away: being a family
member ........................................................................................... 190

6.2 “It was my group of people”: belongings ......................................... 195
6.2.1 We share the culture and the immigrant experience ...................... 196
6. 2.2 Belonging to a nation / nationality .................................................. 198
6.2.3 Higher education communities ........................................................ 199
6.2.4 Playing football and meeting people ............................................... 204
6.2.5 “The dance group has a huge social function” ................................ 206
6.2.6 The ever-supportive religious community ....................................... 208
6.2.7 Hanging out with a group of friends ................................................ 209
6.2.8 Consequences of belonging to a group ........................................... 212
Table of Contents VII

6.3 Place(s) ........................................................................................... 212
6.3.1 Here ................................................................................................. 213
6. 3.2 There ................................................................................................ 214
6.3.3 Neither here nor there: living in a bubble ....................................... 215
6.3.4 Cities ................................................................................................ 217
6.3.5 Places – connecting people .............................................................. 222

7 Relationships spanning beings, belongings and places .... 225
7.1 Flexible beings ................................................................................ 226
7.2 Belonging through foci .................................................................... 230
7.3 Spanning places .............................................................................. 235

8 Support in international students’ relationships ............. 241
8.1 “She's eternal”: flexible support “to go” .......................................... 241
8.2 “On the other side of the world”: far and fixed support ................... 244
8.3 “If I ever move to China”: fixed but flexible support ......................... 246
8.4 Being there: co-presence and changing support ............................... 248

9 Finally … from international students to transnational
study ............................................................................... 253

Bibliography ........................................................................... 257

Annex: Questions for interviews with network maps ............. 269
1 From internationalisation to mobilities
Internationalisation is a goal in most higher education institutions
(HEIs), which adopt various strategies to achieve it, one of which is
to attract increasingly large numbers of international students.
Practices are oriented mainly towards increasing the number of stu-
dent and staff exchanges and then integrating the students into
“business as usual” at the host university. However, this approach
underestimates and ignores the students’ actual innate potential.
Therefore, instead of focussing on the typical figure of the deficient
or exotic international student, this study concentrates on
international degree-seeking students’ important relationships and
how they are relevant in the students’ everyday lives. These are the
main questions in the qualitative interviews with international stu-
dents. I conducted the narrative interviews using egocentric net-
work maps. This methodology aims at keeping the focus on the stu-
dents’ relationships throughout the interviews and analyses. The
students’ accounts revolve around such entities as important
people, places, organisations, objects, ideas, plans and traditions,
among other things, as shown in the more detailed analysis of three
of the interviews.
By looking into their relationships with these entities, I then map
out how students describe their main beings (i.e. their understand-
ings of themselves, e.g. as students, family members, friends), be-
longings (i.e. how they perceive themselves as a part of an organi-
sation, a context or a group), places they do or do not feel con-
nected to and different kinds of support they experience. Important
relationships in the networks include those with their family,
friends and acquaintances, with their everyday activities such as
studying and working, with their free time activities, with places
where they spend time, with important dates and with ideas or

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2020
A. Altissimo, Beings, Belongings and Places, Wissenschaft – Hochschule – Bildung,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31364-7_1
2 From internationalisation to mobilities
beliefs which are relevant to them. These entities have proven to
be important for the students wherever they are geographically.
Their beings and belongings are intersected by connections to vari-
ous places, a phenomenon which is not yet included in the institu-
tional perspective on internationalisation.
The research project’s main finding is how students constantly act
in and form transnational networks. This leads to the proposition
that the support necessary to international students need not
always be provided through specific, targeted or one-on-one train-
ing and coaching. Instead, by taking the students’ highly
transnational lifeworlds into account and seeking ways to link their
networks to institutional contexts, HEIs can build their strategies for
internationalisation on a more promising and inclusive basis, simul-
taneously creating supportive environments for all students. Fur-
ther, by contextualising international students as transnationally
connected, this study shows how the host institutions are actually
far more transnational than they (the HEIs themselves) may
acknowledge.
To sum up, the aims of this study are to:
• offer a relational perspective on international students’
everyday lives,
• relate international students’ beings and belongings to the
contexts they act in,
• explore the interconnection between international stu-
dents’ networks and the support they experience in their
everyday lives,
• understand international students’ role in the contexts they
live in, including how they (co-)create and define
transnational spaces,
• grasp how internationality and transnationalism arises and
is produced in international students’ relationships.