International students’ cultural engagement through constructing distance or proximity

Abstract

International students’ contact and engagement with various cultures has received increased scholarly attention. This scholarship tends to either celebrate students’ cosmopolitanism or highlight their difficulties ‘adapting’ in their receiving countries. In this paper, we examine students’ own perceptions of and engagement with their sending and receiving countries’ cultures through the dialectic of distance and proximity, gleaned from mobilities studies. Based on 20 in-depth online interviews with Vietnamese nationals studying in Vancouver and Paris, our analysis highlights how these students construct or deconstruct notions of distance and proximity between Vietnam and their receiving countries (i.e. France and Canada), as well as between themselves and each of these countries. First, we examine how, before their departure, students cultivate a sense of cultural proximity to their geographically distant countries of destination, through studying and consuming media in French or English. Second, we address students’ rapport with French and Canadian societies as well as their sense of proximity to or distance from Vietnamese culture while studying in France and Canada. We examine how these (de-)constructions of distance can be related to students’ cosmopolitanism. We argue that notions of distance and proximity help foster a nuanced understanding of international students’ mobilities and cosmopolitanism.