Inside the International Student World
Challenges, Opportunities, and Imagined Communities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v10i1.1031Keywords:
challenges, identities, imagined communities, international student, opportunitiesAbstract
Substantial research emphasizes recruitment and retention of international students over their lived experiences. This qualitative study employed a sociocultural lens to explore five international graduate students’ lived experiences in the United States and their postgraduation plans. Findings suggest that international graduate students navigate a World that encompasses individual worlds that revolve around challenges, opportunities, and imagined communities. I draw on Gee’s (2014) notion of capitalizing a word normally written in lower case to make clear two differing connotations of the word “world.” I discuss implications for higher education host institutions and their offices of international education.
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