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This text develops a theory of belonging critically building upon identity-researchwhile doing more justice to the dynamic nature of social constellations and to the multipositionality of social actors. The concept of 'belonging' is introduced as a combination of commonality, mutuality, and attachments. A vital opposition is made between the collective constellations of belonging and the individual navigations through multiple collective assemblages during the life course. It is argued that these navigations entail tackling manifold forms of boundary dynamics as collective belonging creates regimes that guard collectivities against the outsiders and also against the members' attempts to abandon 'their' collectivities. The analysis draws upon ethnicity research, immigration research and globalisation research, i.e. in fields where issues of belonging are as vital as they are challenged, and therefore, they are often politicized. Rather than taking a specific collective belonging for granted, e.g. ethnic, religious or national, this contribution addresses the situated nature of individual positionings, the possibility of combining different dimensions of belonging, and the necessity to belong together in contemporary societies.

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While most Asian students still opt for Western universities when envisioning international destinations, growing numbers turn to Asian countries and their universities. This new development has received increasing attention among practitioners and policy makers, while social science research only recently turned to Asia-to-Asia students’ international flows. This contribution offers, first, a literature review, reflecting on trends and the magnitude of inter-Asian students’ movements. These movements are seen as multiple and complex mobilities, not only in spatial but also in the social and ideational sense. Student strategies in making choices while moving to foreign Asian universities as well as their pathways within the social spaces of universities—paying attention to the multiscalar dimensions of movements and the assemblages they recreate—constitute the second part of the article. The third and main part discusses what we learn about the changing shape of Asia while following students’ pathways and aspirations. These movements shape Asia’s academic space that is embedded in the shifting dimensions of Asian economies, polities, social negotiations, cultures, and values.