Paper Short Abstract:

We analyze the practices of alertness and watchfulness among international university students, focusing on their inner states, bodies, families, communities, and urban spaces. Our analysis is grounded in PASSI, a research-action conducted at the University and the Polytechnic of Turin (Italy).

Paper Abstract:

Universities offer a chance for upward mobility to many international students. This “moving up” is often endorsed, both economically and socially, by family networks; international students are often encouraged to look for high ranked universities worldwide, in order to aspire to new socio-economic positionings. However, once students get to the destination country, they are often alone. Sometimes, social and institutional environments lack specific socio-cultural and political-economic support. Even student communities abroad are often ambivalent: while they can provide social support, they also manifest forms of competition, jealousy, and even social control. To navigate such complexities, students have to mobilize specific rationalities, moralities, discourses and practices, often between competing social norms. This activates several kinds of individual vigilance regarding affectivity, relationship, and morality. Watchfulness becomes a relevant tool to inhabit the social and the physical spaces of the study location.

Drawing on our ethnographic research with international students in Turin, we aim to explore these processes through the experiences of PASSI, a joint research-action project conducted at both the University and the Polytechnic of Turin (Italy). The project is designed to support international students through two main actions: an ethnopsychiatric counseling service and an ethnographic research activity. In this presentation, we analyze the practices of alertness and watchfulness among the international students, especially focusing on their inner states, bodily expressions, family ties, community dynamics, and urban spaces. Finally, we consider how these processes may produce forms of suffering, but also creative strategies that can reshape international students’ agency, subjectivities and geographies.