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Challenging the comfort zone : self-discovery, everyday practices and international student mobility to the Global South

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Date
2017
Author
Prazeres, Laura
Keywords
International student mobility
Comfort
Sense of self
Everyday practices
Home
Emotions
Self-discovery
H Social Sciences
G Geography (General)
NDAS
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Abstract
This paper scrutinises the underlying motivations of short-term international students by unpacking the notion of ‘leaving the comfort zone’ for self-discovery and self-change. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Canadian exchange students volunteering and studying in the Global South, the paper contributes to scholarship on everyday and emotional geographies of international student mobility and wider debates in mobility by examining how emotions of comfort and discomfort as well as everyday practices are productive for self-discovery, belonging, home-making and distinction. It reveals how students align the boundaries of their comfort zone and an un/reflexive self along the international and imaginative borders of the Global North/South. Contrary to tourism and mobility studies, I argue that students view everyday life and their relative immobility while abroad as both a distinctive and reflexive exercise. I suggest that students want to extend the boundaries of their comfort zone and their sense of ‘home’ to the Global South.
Citation
Prazeres , L 2017 , ' Challenging the comfort zone : self-discovery, everyday practices and international student mobility to the Global South ' , Mobilities , vol. 12 , no. 6 , pp. 908-923 . https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2016.1225863
Publication
Mobilities
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2016.1225863
ISSN
1745-0101
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016 Informa UK limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2016.1225863
Description
This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) [#752-2012-0127].
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13308

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