Contact Zones in Internationalizing Asian Universities: Identities, Spatialities and Global Imaginations

Abstract

East Asia has seen an exponential growth in student mobility, of which the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of Tokyo (Todai) represent two contributing universities with globalizing ambitions. Conceptualizing the globalizing university as various `contact zones?, this study investigates how international students in NUS and Todai reflect and negotiate their identities as a result of encountering differences and similarities. Shedding light on campus micro-geographies in Asia, contact zones are analysed on three interlinked spatial fronts of routinized, causal and episodic encounters. Finally, I consider how students? unique biographies shape their global imaginations, as well as their experiences of events and programmes that seek to develop `cosmopolitanism?. Drawing primarily from 46 biographical interviews with international students, this study employs a comparative perspective whenever possible, and hopes to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the complex identities of international students and globalizing university spaces within East Asia.