Prompted by informal meetings, in-depth interviews, focus groups and ethnographical observations, between 2016 and 2017 I collected 50 autobiographies-autoethnographies (autoethnography being the description of self as seen within another culture) written by international students from all continents. The qualitative study was comparative, hence I collected and interpreted the biographical meanings attributed by a group of international Master’s degree students to their cultural experience abroad in Finland (North Europe) and Italy (South Europe).
The analysis of the qualitative data reveals how most of the subjects had no previous familiarisation with or exposure to clear-cut narratives about the destination country and city. It is instead possible to catch a glimpse of a vague cosmopolitan narrative. This story, constructed on a global scale by different actors and institutions, is partially disconnected from the society and culture of the countries of destination or provenance. The story upholds the validity of studying abroad for both instrumental and expressive reasons. It’s an undefined story without exemplary characters, so it’s up to the individual student to find heroes and villains along the way to construct his or her idea of who is a good citizen of the world.
Another result clearly stemming from the collected stories is how studying abroad constitutes a liminal and transitional space-time: an institutionalized rite of passage towards adulthood and global citizenship. We might say young people today in Europe are facing a triple transitional challenge on their way to adulthood: becoming adults, Europeans and citizens of a globalized world.
A third major result of the project comes from the analysis of narrative accounts in the departure section (family, friends, hometown, nation, high school, university). Here we can identify a sort of push-pull identity dynamic triggering the desire to travel, live and study somewhere else, away from home. In the attempt to portray students’ orientations towards their particular home-worlds and the wider cosmopolitan elsewhere, I sketched out a series of Self-Identity types connected to mobility experiences. For example, the “Fated”, where all the biographical premises are pushing-pulling towards the status of international student.
The fourth theme stemming from the analysis of international students’ narratives is the importance of food (especially for vegetarians and vegans) during their cultural experience abroad.
The results of the projects so far have been exploited and disseminated through: 11 presentations-lectures to international conferences and seminars; organization of two international conferences; submission of manuscripts to international journals; construction of the project’s public website; drafting and submission of a follow-up project.
