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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the cosmopolitan imaginaries within the context of Vietnam’s internationalisation of higher education. The study examines lecturers' perceptions at public universities and their visions of global citizenship within the framework of international integration.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the cosmopolitan imaginaries within the context of Vietnam’s internationalisation of higher education. The study examines lecturers' perceptions at public universities and their visions of global citizenship within the framework of international integration. Following Delanty’s (2006, 2009) approach, cosmopolitan imagination is investigated to understand global openness rather than the Western model of cosmopolitan universalism. Additionally, I am interested in neoliberal imaginaries that continue to frame cosmopolitanism in economic terms (Rizvi, 2009). It shows that internationalisation in Vietnam has become commercialised, with international programmes or degrees imported from English-speaking countries, often considered an important step towards integrating students into global citizenship communities. The research reveals the dominance of a cosmopolitan vision aligned with the state-led, formal discourse on human capital for global competitiveness and efficiency, intensified by its vision of modernisation and industrialisation. There are also tensions associated with this vision, which are disproportionately internalised by individuals, exacerbating existing disparities based on gender, economic status, education, and urban/rural backgrounds.

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Paper short abstract

Digital nomadism reveals how digital disruption reconfigures power, mobility, and inequality in North-South relations. This paper uses a critical migration studies lens to decentre nomadism and explore its impacts on host communities, development futures, and mobility justice.

Paper long abstract

Amid profound global uncertainty and accelerating digital disruption, digital nomadism has emerged as a celebrated symbol of borderless work and innovation. Yet this mobility also exposes deep tensions in how development, inequality, and agency are imagined. This paper reframes digital nomadism as a privileged form of North-South migration, arguing that its rise demands a rethinking of development itself in relation to shifting power relations and contested futures. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, Italy, and the UAE, the paper employs a critical migration studies lens to decentre dominant narratives of freedom and digital entrepreneurship. The analysis traces digital nomadism across macro, meso, and micro scales: (1) macro-colonial legacies and neoliberal development agendas that render the Global South a site for consumption, experimentation, and flexible work; (2) meso-mobility regimes, digital infrastructures, and racialized border practices that selectively enable elite mobility while deepening exclusion for others; (3) micro-the lived experiences of host communities confronting rent inflation, labour precarity, cultural displacement, and emergent forms of protest, such as Mexico City’s recent anti-nomad mobilisations. By foregrounding these interconnected dynamics, the paper argues that digital nomadism illuminates the limits of dominant development paradigms that valorise digital innovation while obscuring structural inequality. It shows how communities challenge these dynamics through acts of resistance, solidarity economies, and demands for more just urban and mobility futures. In doing so, the paper contributes to reimagining development beyond conventional binaries and toward more equitable, accountable, and decolonial visions of collective wellbeing.

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Paper short abstract

This paper critiques how remittances from Filipino nurses in Finland subsidize global care extraction. We reveal a paradox: these funds alleviate Philippine state pressures while locking migrants into deskilled roles, perpetuating inequality through a constrained cosmopolitan mobility.

Paper long abstract

The Philippines, constructed as a global “empire of care,” systematically educates nurses for export, a practice rooted in postcolonial debt and economic strategy. Finland, facing elder care deficits, has actively recruited from this reserve since 2009. This paper shares findings from a project tracing the transnational political economy of this migration corridor. It critically investigates bilateral remittance flows, treating them not as neutral monetary transfers but as core social relations within extractive economies.

The paper argues that remittances subsidize and perpetuate systemic inequalities in the corridor. While they alleviate pressure on the Philippine state to generate domestic jobs or raise health sector wages, they simultaneously lock migrant nurses into deskilled positions in Finland to meet familial financial obligations. This dynamic exemplifies a constrained cosmopolitan imaginary, where global mobility is necessitated by, and perpetuates, asymmetric development.

Adopting a multi-scalar “follow-the-money” methodology, the analysis connects micro-level migrant remittance practices (via a survey of n=200 nurses) with meso-level household interviews (n=20) in the Philippines, examining fund usage and transformed family dynamics. This is contextualized within a macro-level political economy analysis of Philippine dependency. Framed by critical postcolonial and heterodox economics, the paper positions remittances as integral to the architecture of global care extraction. It ultimately explores how the cosmopolitan imagination of migrant nurses is shaped by and negotiates this extractive political economy, moving beyond Western-centric models to reveal a landscape of constrained world openness.