Abstract
This paper employs narrative research methods to provide new theoretical and empirical insights into the role of individual agency in student migration. The paper begins with a theoretical exploration of agency in international migration, broadly conceived, and applies this to student migration specifically. This exploration emphasizes the strengths of a life-course perspective in analyzing the role of individual agency in student-migration journeys, as this perspective is sensitive to temporality. Following this approach, the paper offers a novel theoretical framework for analyzing student-migration, drawing on Emirbayer & Mische’s (Emirbayer and Mische, American Journal of Sociology 103:962–1023, 1998) ‘chordal triad’ model of agency, and presents analysis of 18-months of narrative data collection with 26 international student-migrants in the UK and Japan. Interview data demonstrate how three agentive orientations—habit, imagination, and judgment—are each associated with specific tactics that individuals can use to navigate the challenging terrain of their student migration trajectories. Participants also exhibited changing agentive orientations over time. The results of this analysis indicate that the role of agency is dynamic within the education-migration nexus, changing in relation to: (1) the evolving relationship between individual student-migrants and their contexts, and (2) the simultaneous evolution of each individual’s life-course project. In summary, while student-migrants are influenced by context, they also exhibit the capacity to evolve and adapt agentively in the pursuit of their goals.
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Notes
Household, network, transnational, systems theories, are just a few important examples.
These contextual factors are recognized in multiple theories of agency, and have been described by different researchers as the ‘political opportunity structure’ (Baubock, 2006), the ‘ecological conditions and circumstances’ of agency (Biesta & Tedder, 2007; Biesta et al., 2015), the ‘situational logic of opportunity’ (Archer, 2007), the ‘space of possibles’ (Marginson, 2014), and the ‘situational contexts of action’ (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998).
This ‘chordal’ model and the musical metaphor at its heart are described in more detail below.
To be clear, this is not a phenomenon that is reflected in Emirbayer & Mische’s (1998) original paper, but is included here due to its prominence in the data.
Batch recruitment system; an annual system for hiring university graduates.
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This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council [Grant Nos: 1813146, ES/M010082/1]; JSPS [Grant No: PE17721R].
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Brotherhood, T. A narrative exploration of agency in the education-migration nexus. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 24, 633–645 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-023-09859-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-023-09859-9