Ideational obstructions to mobility justice in U.S. study abroad

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of first-generation, low-income, racially minoritized students from the United States who study abroad. I complicate hegemonic understandings of United States study abroad programming through analyses of participant mobility histories and identify the structural dynamics that constrain marginalized students before going overseas. In doing so, this article amplifies the voices of a population that remains largely absent from study abroad literature and forwards an understanding of how mobility regimes function in one educational realm. I draw from interviews with 18 alumni of a nationally led study abroad program to examine how participants make meaning of their study abroad experience and identify barriers to their participation. Study participants completed various short-term study abroad experiences between the years 2000 and 2019. In contrast to universalist and market-driven assumptions in study abroad literature, participant narratives display mobility imaginaries and possibilities of travel as the product of historically differentiated mobilities and inequalities.