Marketing university students as mobile multilingual workers: the emergence of neoliberal lifestylers

Abstract

Under the conditions of the globalized new economy, European universities have become profit-making institutions. They envision students as mobile workers-tobe whose employability chances depend on self-enterprising and on selfresponsibilization for foreign-language command, and they now compete in the global educational marketplace by targeting them with an increased offer of internationalized English-mediated 'multilingual' degrees. This paper explores attitudes towards these marketed/marketable studenthood identities by 30 Catalan/Spanish-speaking students enrolled in four Multilingual Studies degrees in Barcelona. The data include students' audio-recorded life-narrative interviews and online 'life-after-graduation' stories collected during a two-year ethnography (2011)(2012)(2013). The results show that students engage in institutional neoliberal regimes which train them in the academic/professional, linguistic and personhood profiles required in global employment niches. They inhabit unique 'multilingualized' identities, with English as their professional/socialization lingua franca, and they self-attribute open-minded 2 'civic-citizenship' values, with an 'innate' capacity to engage with Otherness. They also invest in 'cosmopolitan' trajectories which blend ways of being, working and enjoying leisure in the transnational arena. This reveals how students position themselves in the precarious job marketplace, in autobiographic e accounts of experience, which contributes to understanding youth identity projections as elite entrepreneurial lifestylers pointing to newer practices of socioeconomic competition, distinction and stratification at university.

Employment of foreign students after graduation in Hungary in the context of entrepreneurship and sustainability

“…The premise of internationalization undoubtedly assumes that geographical mobility (such as the form of student study abroad programs) promotes the favorable success of higher education (HE) and increases the likelihood of career development (Sabaté-Dalmau, 2020). In addition, the traditional driving point for the demand for education, especially higher education (HE), is the realization of the expectation that it can improve the economic and social status of graduates (Mazzarol & Soutar, 2002).…”

“…Furthermore, it needs to be emphasized that interuniversity mobility programs (such as the Erasmus Project) encourage more students to study abroad and have a causal and positive impact on becoming entrepreneurs (Pinto, 2020). This is because mastering a foreign language has a special impact on university students, who are positioned by the market as migrant workers with entrepreneurial spirit (Sabaté-Dalmau, 2020). At the same time, the overseas study program contributes to the sustainable development of education, that is, educational institutions make great efforts to adjust the management model, human capital and technology, as well as curriculum to meet the needs of mobile students (Bañegil-Palacios & Sánchez-Hernández, 2018).…”

Linguistic Notes on the Globalization of Spanish Sport in Asia

“…The case of Spain reached a stage of development between 1992 and 2008, evolving from exports to increasing presence on international markets through actions, logistics and distribution plans aimed at economic goals and political and social expansion, with adjustments between different societies and cultures thanks to commercial and technological exchange (Bensassi et al, 2015). Cultural and linguistic studies of Spanish in the internationalization and globalization of its sport in Asia have not reflected the role of language in this task in socializing high competition and elite sport (Sabaté-Dalmau, 2020).…”