'Marginal' Student Mobilities: Cruel Promise, Everyday Mobile Belonging and Emotional Geographies

Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

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5

Student Mobility; Higher Education; Refugees; Foreign Countries; Commuting Students; Foreign Students; College Students; Psychological Patterns

Asia; United Kingdom; Australia; United Kingdom (England)

10.1080/01425692.2020.1766813

0142-5692

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, Discourse and Practice" (J. Stevenson and S. Baker, 2018). At the time of writing this review, many universities around the world are facing unprecedented challenges brought forth by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Almost over night, universities have had to move teaching and assessment online, while closing many of their buildings on campus. These sudden changes have serious implications for students, who find themselves having to adapt to new ways of learning and interaction amid growing anxiety and uncertainty. Student mobilities, no matter daily commutes to and from universities, or transnational movements from one country to another, have been curtailed, unduly reinforced or coerced, in the face of such novel circumstances. It is, therefore, high time to consider student mobilities with renewed theoretical and empirical lenses. This collection of three books is a welcomed addition to literature on student mobilities as they focus on the 'marginal' forms of student mobilities. Here, 'marginal' refers to the marginalised positions of the students or institutions involved, or the under-explored modes of mobility carried out by students. Specifically, Stevenson and Baker (2018) zoom in to the multiple barriers that refugee students encounter daily in the UK and Australia, Finn and Holton (2019) examine the commuting experiences of 'living at home' students in England, while Sidhu, Chong, and Yeoh (2019) chart the emotional landscapes of international students choosing to study in universities situated in the relative periphery of knowledge production, i.e. East Asia. Together these three books offer much needed empirical details and theoretical tools that add to the existing, predominant focus on the 'large-scale international and intercultural movements' (Finn and Holton 2019, p. 1) of students from positions of relative privilege to study in centres of knowledge production (i.e. in the West) (Brooks and Waters 2011).

ERIC

2020

EJ1265771