Impacts of Education-Driven Urban Migration on Youth Aspirations and Identity

在世界各地，年轻人，特别是农村、第一代、土著和种族化的少数群体的年轻人，都在城市寻求教育机会，以改善他们的生活。这种临时迁移及其在城市中遇到不同的人和不同的生活方式带来了无数意想不到的后果，特别是对那些边缘化群体。当他们离开家园前往大城市中心时，他们可能会经历更多的排斥，但也可能会找到新的自由，以及一种世界主义、民族主义甚至跨国认同的感觉。随着这些年轻人完成学业或辍学，返回家园或在其他地方寻找工作，他们的移民经历将改变这些边缘化群体成员与民族国家之间的关系。地理学家可以很好地调查偏远地区少数民族社区的年轻人如何经历城市移民和高等教育；他们如何适应文化差异，这种经历反过来又如何影响他们的生活、他们的家庭社区和他们对属于民族的理解。该项目将提供关于城市移民和高等教育如何影响少数民族青年的社会愿望和政治认同的关键问题的见解。通过对具有重要地缘政治意义的南亚地区高等教育驱动的移民的多地点研究，本研究将开发理论框架和方法，以理解a)移民对高等教育的社会和文化影响？对学生和家庭社区；B)城市大学背景下的日常生活如何塑造个人、集体和地域对少数民族身份的理解；c)高等教育在青年政治中扮演的核心角色。除了这些概念上的贡献外，该项目还将开发一种与少数民族青年合作的新方法，并在这一关键人群中建立研究能力。Sara Smith博士和她的研究团队将使用焦点小组、深度访谈、家庭调查和参与式媒体项目来实现这些目标。该项目将推进史密斯博士的地缘政治框架，该框架建立在政治地理学的进步基础上，将微观层面的日常生活经验与宏观层面的政治现象（如领土冲突和国家建设）联系起来。通过将这一框架应用于移民、青年和高等教育，该项目有望为理解少数民族与民族国家之间的关系提供一种新的途径。本研究将为高等教育全球地理学和青年政治地理学、遭遇地理学和世界主义地理学的研究做出贡献。

Around the world, young individuals, especially those who are rural, first generation, indigenous, and racialized minorities, seek educational opportunities in cities to improve their lives. This temporary migration and resulting encounters with different people and ways of life in the city has countless unintended consequences particularly for those from marginalized groups. As they leave their homes for major urban centers, they may experience increased exclusion but also may find new freedoms and a sense of cosmopolitan, national, and even transnational identity. As these youth complete their education or drop out, return to their homes or seek employment elsewhere, their migration experiences will alter relations between these members of marginalized groups and the nation-state. Geographers are well placed to investigate how young people from minority communities in remote regions experience urban migration and higher education; how they adapt to cultural difference and how this experience in turn affects their lives, their home communities and their understanding of belonging to the nation. This project will provide insight into crucial questions about how migration and higher education in the city informs the social aspirations and political identities of minority youth.Through a multi-sited study of higher education-driven migration in South Asia, a region of critical geopolitical importance, this research will develop theoretical frameworks and methodologies for understanding a) the social and cultural impacts of migration for higher education ? both for students and home communities; b) how daily life in an urban university context shapes the individual, collective, and territorial understandings of minority identity; and c) the central role that higher education plays in youth politics. In addition to these conceptual contributions, this project will d) develop a new methodological approach for working with minority youth and building research capacity among this crucial population. Dr. Sara Smith and her research team will use focus groups, in-depth interviews, a household survey, and a participatory media project to meet these objectives. The project will advance Dr. Smith's geopolitics framework, which builds on advances in political geography to relate micro-scale experiences of daily life to macro-scale political phenomenon such as territorial conflict and nation-building. By bringing this framework to bear on migration, youth, and higher education, this project is expected to provide a new way to understand the relationship between minorities and the nation-state. The research will contribute to global geographies of higher education and political geographies of youth, encounter and cosmopolitanism.