Global horizons and regional mobility: Russian student mobility to northern norway and northern sweden

Abstract

This chapter investigates Russian student mobility to Northern Norway and Northern Sweden. Drawing on interviews with 35 students (23 females and 12 males) at five different universities in the high north, and a survey with 210 students at NarFu (the Northern Arctic Federal University), this chapter explores different dimensions of how these students experience and navigate in the educational landscape of the Barents region. One very important dimension is how the students regard the English language as a symbolic container that represents, resemble and correlate with desires, requirements, career plans, and ideas of future employability. Another important dimension is the gender politics of Russian student mobility. Over 70% of the incoming Russian students in Norway and Sweden are females. Important reasons for many of these female students to leave their country for longer or shorter periods of time, are articulated in terms of gender conservatism and sexism in Russia as well as Norway and Sweden. In sum, these students live in a translocal space, and which involve expectations, cultural stereotypes and personal encounters in sending as well as receiving ends, that form the “grass-root” aspects of academic mobility.