International Students in Transnational Spaces : Chinese Youth’s Aspirations, Learning and Becoming

Xi Wu examines how national and transnational forces and discursive logic mediate international secondary school students’ educational routes and life trajectories.

Drawing upon an ethnographic research program involving Chinese students in a Canadian international secondary school, Wu employs Ong’s notion of transnational cultural logics to examine students’ lives and how they flexibly and not-so-flexibly engaged in their learning and self-making in their transnational spaces. The book provides a comprehensive understanding of international students as agentic and socially regulated subjects in their transnational routes. These insights contribute to advancing curriculum and program improvements. Furthermore, Wu applies theoretical notions of "transnationalism" and "global and transnational cultural logics" to the examination of specific phenomenon and analyzes how cultural logics stemming from families, nations, and societies govern subjectivities in their actions and aspirations.

This insightful book will be of interest to a wide range of education stakeholders, as well as scholars and researchers in comparative and international education.