Student vigilance and mobility: Exploring alertness and social spaces among international students in Italy

Abstract

A university education offers a chance for upward mobility to many international students. This “moving up” is often encouraged by family networks both for economic and social reasons. International students are encouraged to look for high-ranking universities worldwide to seek improved socio-economic positionings. Once students get to their destination country, however, they may experience feelings of isolation. This paper examines how international students navigate their new environments—often characterised by limited socio-cultural and political-economic support and by the ambivalent nature of the relationships with both the communities of origin and their fellow students abroad. These groups may provide social assistance but can also be sources of social control, competition, or rivalry. To navigate such complexities, students must draw upon various rationalities, moralities, discourses, and practices, as they move between competing social norms. In this context, watchfulness may become an important attitude for inhabiting the social and the physical spaces of the study location, fostering various forms of individual vigilance in matters of affectivity, relationships, and moral conduct. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with international students in Turin, Italy, this study looks at practices of vigilance, alertness and watchfulness, focusing on students’ inner states, bodily expressions, family ties, community dynamics, and urban contexts. It contributes to the interdisciplinary debates by showing how these practices can ultimately lead to forms of suffering, while also fostering creative strategies that help reshape students’ agency, subjectivities, and geographies.