Temporary sojourns in the periphery : partners of international students in Lancaster, United Kingdom

• Main Author: Grindel, Elisabeth Claudia
• Published: Lancaster University 2012
• Subjects: 378
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.658581

This thesis reports the findings of a qualitative research project on partners of international students in Lancaster, United Kingdom, a place selected as an example of the many peripheral university cities affected by the growth in international student migration The experiences of these voluntary, temporary, mostly highly skilled migrants differ from accounts of other mobile people and have so fur been largely ignored in the literature. This is a lack that this thesis fills. Drawing on diverse bodies of migration literature as well as on semi-structured interviews, I explore these migrants' experiences concerning employment, home, social networking, and network support whilst they reside in Lancaster. I show that these 'immobilised mobile' people have to rely on the local restricted, labour market in their search for employment and that they invest a huge amount of emotional labour for the creation of a 'diasporic intimacy' which is important fur the formation of an 'intimate diasporic space' in the home. I further discuss their attempts to form meaningful social networks at the place of relocation and their work on maintaining relations abroad. I explore also how these migrants can feel in or out of place at the new setting.