Higher education as self-formation:The case of cross-border students

Abstract

In research in cross-cultural psychology, cross border international education is largely understood as a process of `adjustment´ to host country norms and institutions. The student is seen as in deficit in relation to these requirements. Home country identity becomes a barrier to be broken down. This paper instead defines international education as a process of self-formation in which student subjects manage their lives reflexively, fashioning their own changing identities, albeit within social conditions and relations largely not made by them. International students form their selves and their trajectories between home country identity, host country identity and a larger set of cosmopolitan options.