Abstract
ABSTRACTThis paper draws attention to the increasingly central yet understudied role of social media in facilitating student mobility from India. More specifically, it explores the emergence of online mutual-help communities of aspirant student migrants on Facebook and WhatsApp, which are aimed at helping members navigate the process of going abroad for study. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork focused on postgraduate-level student migration from India to Germany, the paper explores how these communities are meeting aspirant student migrants’ information and support needs in novel ways. Not only are they a key space in which information on study in Germany is discussed, dissected, and interpreted, they have also resulted in the production of a whole new body of information, tools, and resources on how to navigate the process of going to Germany for a Master’s degree. The paper argues that these communities can be seen as democratising access to study abroad, to some extent, by dramatically expanding applicants’ social networks and the social capital to which they have access.
Highlights
This paper draws attention to the increasingly central yet understudied role of social media in facilitating student mobility from India
Less attention has been paid to the perspectives and experiences of aspirant student migrants, i.e. prospective international students, and the manner in which they strategise and negotiate the process of going abroad to study
This paper presents a case study of how aspirant student migrants – previously unknown to each other and living in different parts of India – were able to meet each other’s information and support needs in novel ways
Summary
At the time of my fieldwork, there were several large Facebook groups (the largest had 50,000 members), most of which had been created by Indians currently studying in Germany or Indian graduates of German universities, to support future applicants. Many of my interlocutors – who were studying in Germany at the time I met them – told me that they had left the WhatsApp groups of which they had been a part soon after settling down in Germany because there was too much activity, and people asked ‘silly questions’ again and again ( they readily recognised that these very questions had felt important when they were applicants themselves).
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