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

在世界各地，年轻人，特别是那些农村、第一代、土著和种族主义少数群体，在城市寻求教育机会，以改善他们的生活。这种临时移徙以及由此与城市中不同的人和生活方式相遇，产生了无数意想不到的后果，特别是对那些被边缘化群体的人。随着他们离开家园前往主要的城市中心，他们可能会经历更多的排斥，但也可能会找到新的自由，以及一种世界性、民族性甚至跨国认同感。随着这些青年完成学业或辍学、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来自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，以及这种经历反过来如何影响他们的生活、他们的家乡社区以及他们对国家归属的理解。这个项目将提供关于移民和高等教育如何影响少数族裔年轻人的社会抱负和政治认同的关键问题的洞察。通过对南亚这一具有关键地缘政治重要性的地区的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，以了解a)移民对高等教育的社会和文化影响？对学生和家庭社区都是如此；b)城市大学背景下的日常生活如何塑造个人、集体和地区对少数群体身份的理解；c)高等教育在青年政治中发挥的中心作用。除了这些概念上的贡献外，该项目还将(D)开发一种新的方法，与少数族裔青年合作，并在这一关键群体中建设研究能力。Sara Smith博士和她的研究团队将使用焦点小组、深度访谈、家庭调查和参与性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进展的基础上，将日常生活的微观经验与领土冲突和国家建设等宏观政治现象联系起来。通过将这一框架应用于移民、青年和高等教育，该项目有望提供一种新的方式来理解少数民族和民族国家之间的关系。这项研究将对高等教育的全球地理以及青年、相遇和世界主义的政治地理做出贡献。

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.