Trajectories within international academic mobility: a renewed perspective on the dynamics and hierarchies of the global higher education field

Abstract

With an ever-growing number of students and academics in physical or virtual circulation around the world, issues related to academic mobility have taken centre stage in interpretations of the internationalisation of higher education. This mobility and its implications have been approached from multiple perspectives, from host and home countries’ internationalisation strategies to individual experiences or the formation of transnational knowledge networks. Using the international higher education study trajectories of research active Mexican academics as a case study, this paper focuses on the under researched relationship between trajectories of South-North mobility and the stratification of the global HE field. It reveals how shifting patterns of individual study trajectories as well as overlapping sequences of study migrations from home countries contribute in no small measure to consolidating or destabilising the position of host countries within the field of global higher education, and therefore to its stratification.