In France, a quarter of pupils change schools during their elementary education. In this article, we analyse families' motives in changing schools. Using a rich longitudinal database, we distinguish different motives for mobility: strategic mobility (search for a better school), reactive mobility (due to school difficulties) and residential…

The concept of a typical pathway to becoming a student is a pervasive narrative within higher education, with moving away from home to live at university framed as the "traditional student experience". In response, recent literature has begun to trouble the thinking around student mobilities. Building on this work, this study draws upon…

In 2007, we argued that, when it comes to sociology of education, the lives and education of refugee children were invisible. Sociology of education was 'a wasteland' as far as studies of the social effects of migration were concerned. Here, we revisit this argument exploring whether education and migration has been developed into a viable…

Chinese student mobility has diversified with the rise of educational hubs in Asia. However, the literature primarily focuses on student mobility to Anglophone universities. This study conceptualises Chinese students studying in South Korea as participating in a positional competition, wherein the concepts of middling mobility and emerging…

This article reviews three books: (1) "Student Mobilities and International Education in Asia: Emotional Geographies of Knowledge Spaces" (R. Sidhu et al., 2019); (2) "Everyday Mobile Belonging: Theorizing Higher Education Student Mobilities" (K. Finn and M. Holton, 2019); and (3) "Refugees in Higher Education: Debate,…

The recent expansion of the overseas education market in China has led to the rise of "Background Promotion Projects" designed to strengthen the applications of elite university aspirants. Based on ethnographic findings of a particular Background Promotion Project, a Chinese high school entrepreneurship competition, this study analyses…

Transnational distinction is highly relevant in an age when western degree inflation intersects with harsh gender expectations for Chinese women student migrants, a significant group of players in the scene of UK higher education. Drawing on participant observation and interview data and building on existing theories of cultural capital, this…

This article explores the patterning of student im/mobility internally within the United Kingdom, using exceptionally detailed student records data on full-time undergraduate entrants from 2014. For this cohort of students, geographic mobility was clearly the preserve of the most socio-economically advantaged, and was less common for Pakistani and…

This research contributes to the booming literature on the mobility of international students in higher education. We analyse university-level factors that affect the sorting of Chinese international students across British universities. We produced a unique data-set merging university-level data from the 2014 UK Higher Education Statistics Agency…

Although short-term mobility programmes are increasingly promoted to university students as sources of competitive advantage, there is little research on academic learnings arising from these initiatives. A "field analysis" of outbound mobility is undertaken to identify convergences and disjunctures between institutional discourses,…

This paper unpacks the meanings and implications of the mobility of international students in vocational education--an under-researched group in the field of international education. This four-year study found that transnational mobility is regarded as a resourceful vehicle to help international students "become" the kind of person they…

This article examines the school choices of families who have recently experienced downward mobility during the economic crisis in Spain. Based on semi-structured interviews we analyse the educational strategies of the families in a Bourdieusian framework, focusing on how they cope with the loss of their perceived social status. Prior to the…

This article suggests that a process of de-academisation is discernible in the way the Erasmus year abroad is promoted, organised, supervised and evaluated. The article argues that rather than being a product of students' consumerist rationalities, this process is produced within the conditions of the managerialised and under-resourced university.…

This article explores the impact of educational mobilities on the ethnic identity construction of minority students in China. Adopting 'temporality' as an analytical tool, the article highlights the dynamic temporal multiplicity in ethnic identity construction by comparing longitudinal in-depth interviews of a Mongolian student and a Tibetan…

Drawing on a multi-sited global ethnography of elite schools, this article explores how these institutions work to produce subjects that will thrive in a globalized world. We examine how despite a similar commitment to global citizenship education and a cosmopolitan orientation across all schools, the intersections between the transnational and…