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CHAIRPERSON

Dr Michiel Baas, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

This paper uses a so-far little known and little studied case of international student mobility (ISM)–sizable numbers of working/lower-middle class Indian students pursuing medical degrees (MBBS) in China–as an opportunity to problematize and go beyond existing scholarship on ISM. In recent years, China has become the top destination for Indian students seeking MBBS education abroad, but many of the students attracted to China are both academically underprepared and financially hamstrung, and their educational outcome often seems to be in question. So far, much of extant research on ISM has been framed in a Bourdieusian analytics of capital(s) and social class. This perspective tends to portray educational mobility as a highly calculative and strategic endeavor, which reflects as well as reinforces a broader ‘rationalistic’ migration research paradigm. Various observations and findings from this case of India-to-China MBBS mobility seem poorly explained by such a paradigm, particularly concerning issues of class, cultural capital, and ‘rationalistic’ or ‘strategic’ decision-making. Using ethnography based on fieldworks conducted in both India and China, this paper moves away from the prevailing paradigm by focusing on what I call the ‘micro logics/rationalities’ of compromise, complicity and contingency, which characterize the ways in which parties to this international medical education project negotiate with each other as well as with things-not-quite-working, breakdowns/failures, or crises in the project. Doing so, the paper also offers a rare ethnographic close-up on the educational intermediaries facilitating international student mobility.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Yang Peidong is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Division of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford, based on a dissertation that examined Singapore government’s “foreign talent” policy in relation to education, focusing specifically on the experiences of students from China who were recruited under the “foreign talent” scholarship schemes. Apart from education and migration, Peidong’s other main area of research interest is on contemporary China, particularly in the areas of internet/media and cultural studies. He has published more than a dozen internationally peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. A monograph based on his doctorate, entitled International Mobility and Educational Desire: Chinese Foreign Talent Students in Singapore, will be published by Palgrave in 2016.

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