Educated non-elites' pathways to cosmopolitanism

The case of private degree students in Singapore

Bibliographic Data

ID3977256
AuthorsYi''En Cheng (0000-0002-8897-0372, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume19
Issue2
Pages151-170
Publication date2018-02-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2016.1266026
OpenAlexW2559821943
LanguageEN
Citations received29
References cited62

In this article, I explore a range of actually existing cosmopolitanisms performed by young people studying at a private higher educational institute in Singapore. Based on fieldwork over a period of eleven months conducted with these educated but non-elite youths between 2013 and 2014, I discuss how private degree students (a vernacular term) draw on various resources across different sites and domains of their everyday life to construct themselves, as well as their campus experiences, as 'cosmopolitan'. Adopting an understanding of cosmopolitanism as a social practice, I argue that these young people perform three criss-crossing pathways to become cosmopolitan that unsettle dominant conceptions of cosmopolitanism as an elite cultural capital, disposition, and subjecthood within extant scholarship on international/transnational education. In particular, I explore these pathways through the framing themes of 'rooted cosmopolitanism', 'cosmopolitan learning', and 'unanticipated cosmopolitan'. In doing so, the article adds texture and complexity to existing discussion about young people's subjective views as well as practices of cosmopolitan citizenship in and through international/transnational higher education

Citizenship · Cosmopolitanism · Cultural capital · Elite · Everyday life · Framing (construction · Higher education · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Vernacular · Gender Studies · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Law · Socioeconomic Development in Asia

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