Redefining Internationalization: Reverse Student Mobility in South Korea

Abstract

This chapter argues that internationalization can be conceptualized as the competitive strategies that a higher education institution takes in order to retain domestic students who would otherwise study abroad—what I call “reverse student mobility”—that redefines how we understand internationalization as predominantly concerned with a search for foreign students. Through close examination of a university in South Korea, I show how a campus setting intended for foreign students actually functions as a way to attract and accommodate domestic students who would otherwise study abroad by exploiting their anxieties over the accumulation of global capital. The implications of “reverse student mobility” are explored both within a South Korean domestic context and a larger Asian regional context.