Between striated and smooth space: Exploring the topology of transnational student mobility

Abstract

In this paper, we raise a question regarding how transnational students develop their spaces as mobile, temporary, and at times stable and territorially fixed. We argue that approaching transnational student migration and its relations to place as a Deleuzian assemblage is a fruitful way of highlighting this issue, and we propose the axes of the expressive/material and territorialisation/de-territorialisation as analytical tools for understanding aspects of the temporal and spatial dimensions of transnational student mobility. Our theoretical discussion is informed by the migration experiences of transnational students studying at a Norwegian university. Our core argument is that transnational student mobility should be approached as a complex process in which links to places in the student's past, present and future dissolve the linear notion of causality and in which new notions of the relations between proximity and distance challenge ideas regarding the power relations embedded in a geometrical space.

Settling down in time and place? Changing intimacies in mobile young people's migration and life courses

“…Much of the focus in migration studies has been on traditional marriage migration of young women from the Global South, in which the adulthood transition from the natal family to marriage is entangled with cross‐border economic and gendered power asymmetries. For more privileged young people, closer attention to social networks and the ‘wider social and cultural affordances’ (Conradson & Latham, 2005, p. 289) of mobility beyond labour market attractions is important, and central to this are understandings of how intimate relationships shape migrants' mobility trajectories as well as narratives of their belonging and relationships to place (Lysgård & Rye, 2017; Gorman‐Murray, 2009; Walsh, 2018). As Mazzucato & Schans (2011) and Yeoh, Huang and Lam (2005) have argued, the concept of distance is becoming less relevant as a way to think about the efficacy of transnational care and support for migrants.…”

Smoothing, striating and territorializing: The assembling of ‘science in the making’

“…The Deleuzo-Guattarian conceptual imagery around smoothing, striating and territories has been mobilized in various contexts and across different disciplinary settings. This has, for instance, included research on virtual spaces (Aroles, 2018a; Nunes, 1999), digital learning spaces (Bayne, 2004), the investigation of space production (Munro and Jordan, 2013), the unfolding of mega sport events (McGillivray and Frew, 2015), the mobility of transnational students (Lysgård and Rye, 2017), as well as a broad range of studies within the field of geography (for instance, Bear, 2013; Bradshaw and Williams, 1999; Labussiere and Nadai, 2014).…”

Life satisfaction among inbound university students in northern Sweden

“…Studies of life satisfaction among internationally mobile students can add knowledge to procedural perspectives on mobility practices and move away from a static perception of international student mobility (Lysgård & Rye 2017). For the purpose of this article, international student mobility implies temporary movement (King et al 2010); the term is used with the interpretation that the students relocate to other places temporarily, implying at least an ambition to return to the place of departure.…”