Academic mobility as social mobility or the point of no return

Abstract

This chapter analyzes 22 interviews conducted to degree-seeking Mexican students currently enrolled in prestigious graduate programs in the United States. It looks to understand the relationship between student mobility and social mobility. It concludes that the geographical mobility of graduate students in another country consists of changing and expanding their space of reference, independently of the socioeconomic situation they start from. Following Philip Altbach’s research on the importance of studying abroad, particularly in the training of leaders who become elites in their countries (developing nations), the chapter analyzes how social mobility is more evident in the group with the least social and cultural capital, and while the gap between that group and other with the most social and cultural capital never quite disappears, the distance is shortened. In a country like Mexico with marked problems of social inequality, this issue is not a minor one.