By: Ran Xiang (2015)

Ran Xiang is a second year MA student in Educational Studies at UBC. Before pursuing her current degree, she completed her first MA in Comparative Literature at University of Alberta and worked in an educational NGO in Beijing. Her research interests are in identity politics, migration and cultural studies.

_______________

According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, the number of students pursuing higher education abroad has been increasing since 2002. While the US and the UK remain the largest international student host countries, Canada has gained increasing popularity, ranking 7^th amongst the most popular destinations worldwide. Although their major duty is to study, the life of international students is much more than classroom learning. They may participate in various campus events, make friends, volunteer or work part-time jobs, and travel back to their home countries or to other countries during breaks. Most international students regard their study abroad experiences to be enlightening and definable periods of their lives.

The term international students merely indicates that students need to acquire legal documents to study in Canada, but there is great variety within the student body, ranging from age, nationality, language proficiency, program and prior learning/working experience. My research, however, aims to investigate Chinese international graduate students in Canada from the perspective of potential immigrants, thus examining them under the framework of transnationalism/cosmopolitanism, trying to unravel their social experiences and how it affects their identity construction and life trajectory afterwards.

International students possess similar qualities to immigrants in that they engage in transnational practices, such as returning home regularly to visit friends and family and maintaining a transnational social network that spans between two countries. Transnationalism is characterized by simultaneity—one possesses feelings attached both to destination and origin and one can be at more than one place—and the development of transnational ties (Chan, 2002). Additionally, as international students are exposed to different cultures and people, they may develop a more open-minded attitude towards difference. According to Vertovec and Cohen (2002), the essence of cosmopolitanism suggests something that “(a) transcends the seemingly exhausted nation-state model; (b) is able to mediate actions and ideals oriented both to the universal and the particular, the local and the global; (c) is culturally anti-essentialist; and (d) is capable of representing variously complex repertoires of allegiance, identity and interest” (p. 4). The cosmopolitanism I meant, based on their theorization, is a dispositional orientation or a competence, a mode of engaging with the world, somewhat similar to Hiebert’s idea of “everyday cosmopolitanism,” which perceives “cosmopolitanism as a way of living associated with an appreciation of, and interaction with, people from other cultural backgrounds” (2002, p. 212). The increasing number of Chinese graduate students in Canada and the fact that they are also one of the major sources of new immigrants to Canada make my research important in unveiling their experiences and their identity construction since it will provide not only empirical data, but also theoretical insights on the formation of transnational Chinese identity and more importantly potential Chinese-Canadian identity.

References

Chan, K.B. (2002). Both sides, now: Culture Contact, hybridization and    cosmopolitanism. In S. Vertovec & R. Cohen. (Eds). Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice. (pp. 191-208). New York: Oxford University Press.

Vertovec, S., & Cohen, R. (2002). Introduction: Conceiving cosmopolitanism. In Vertovec, S., & Cohen, R. (Eds). Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice. (pp. 1-24). New York: Oxford University Press.

________________________________________________________________________

作者：相然

相然目前是UBC教育系教育学硕士二年级学生。她在阿尔伯塔大学获得比较文学专业硕士后回到北京，在某教育非政府机构工作。她的研究兴趣是身份政治，迁徙和文化研究。

_______________

国际学生的身份建构

根据联合国教科文组织统计署的数字，在外国接受高等教育的学生自2002年起逐年增长。美国和英国是世界上两个最大的国际学生接待国，加拿大也很受国际学生青睐，列最受欢迎国家的第七位。虽然学生的主要任务是学习，但是国际学生的生活并不仅限于课堂。他们参加学校里活动，结交新朋友，做志愿者或者兼职，放假期间回家探望家人或者外出旅游。大多数国际学生认为他们在国外的学习经历是一生中具有决定性的一段经历。

国际学生这个名词仅表明学生需要申请签证和学习许可方能在加拿大学习，国际学生群体很多元，学生的年龄、国籍、语言能力，专业和生活工作经历都有很大差别。我的研究视中国国际研究生为潜在移民对象，使用跨国主义和大都市主义的理论框架对他们进行研究，目的是探索他们的社交经验和社交经验对身份认同和毕业后生活轨迹的影响。

国际学生与移民的相似之处在于他们的日常生活都有跨国的特点，比如回国访问亲友，在两国同时发展社交网络等。跨国主义是特点之一是同时性，即人们可以同时对输出国和接受国保持情感交流，可以在同时身处多处。另一个特点是人们之间的联系跨越多个国家（Chan，2002）。另外，由于国际学生与来自不同文化的同学交流，他们可能对文化差异的态度更包容。Vertovec和Cohen认为大都市主义主要指以下几点：a, 超越国家模型的边界；b,行为和理想指向全球的和当地的，通用的和特殊的；c,文化上反对核心主义；d,代表不同的身份，利益和忠诚。我对大都市主义的定义是一种性格或能力，一种与世界交流的方式，与Hiebert的“日常大都市主义”的定义相似。他的日常大都市主义是指对来自不同文化人们的交流和欣赏 （2002，p.212)。在加拿大学习的中国研究生逐渐增长，他们是潜在的移民对象。我的研究针对这些现象，探讨他们的社交经验和身份认同，不仅提供实践数据，并对中国跨国身份和潜在华裔加籍身份的理论探讨做出贡献。