The aim of this project is to understand student migration in the urban settings of Lisbon and other Portuguese cities (Porto, Coimbra, Évora e Covilhã). Literature shows how international students' lifestyles, consumption patterns and modes of socializing, prompt processes of urban change in many cities. This project regards these impacts in a double direction: on the one hand the impacts caused by the presence of students over the city (studentification, transformations on urban production and consumption, reproduction of local imaginaries) and on the other hand the impact of urban experiences over students' subjectivities (transition to adulthood, construction of transnational biographies, individual and collective affirmation). In order to achieve the objectives qualitative methodologies will be displayed, focusing specially in an ethnographic approach on students' social lives, but also using quantitative instruments such as a survey to be launched in the 5 cities to student populations.

In the last decade (especially in the last 5 years) Lisbon has been transformed into a cultural and economic center oriented to provide knowledge, leisure and services with the aim of attracting young national and international students, among other visitors looking for leisure (such as tourists and lifestyle migrants). In this sense, the transformation of Lisbon has stimulated not only sociospatial transformations (urban renewal, mass tourism, gentrification) but also the arrival and consolidation of new young lifestyles and global models of urban consumption. This process is also spreading to other Portuguese cities these days. This project aims to analyze the complex mutual relationships established between student migrants and sociospatial transformations in these cities in terms of their mutual impacts: the students stimulate the local economy and prompt urban changes, but at the same time these urban experiences build their biographies with long lasting memories. In this sense, international students are young people living processes towards adulthood in a foreign country, which entails a subjective experience full of emotions and senses that will influence their migrant behavior and decisions for the next years. This research recognize student migrants as social agents that participate simultaneously in the knowledge economy (as students), in the leisure economy (as youth) and in the travel economy (as migrants), exemplifying central actors to understand the production and consumption in an era of urban, mobile and knowledge capitalism. This project also aims at exploring the relationships between student travelling and tourism, between student migration and all kinds of mobility related to leisure, in consumption culture and imaginaries. The main methodological instrument will be an ethnographic fieldwork among different groups of students to understand the individual and collective diversity of their profiles. Summarizing, the goal of the project is to emphasize the mutual relationships between the students and the city, enacted by the lifestyles they produce and the urban experiences they consume.

The objectives will be undertake with a multi-disciplinary methodological frame based on four theoretical visions:

1) The sociological lens (population, institutions and governments) reflect the field’s critical approach to analysing the discourses and functioning of the institutions involved in student lives. Additionally, the fragmented and diverse population of international students are studied through quantitative methods, specifically a survey designed according to the project framework.

2) The ethnographic lens (practices, places and communities) constitutes the methodological core of the project, providing an inductive, case-centred, qualitative methodology for exploring student social worlds through fieldwork, participant observation and comparative methods. The observation and collecting of data among different communities of students provide the corpus of the project. 

3) The anthropological lens (meanings, discourses and identities) provides the theoretical and analytical imagination characteristic of anthropology and the numerous methodologies devoted to analysing and contextualizing human discourses and narratives: in-depth interviews, informal conversations and focus groups. Additionally, interviews are approached as a form of interaction more than a raw source of collected data.

4) The geographical lens (mobility, transnationalism, globalization) enables the project to understand students along with other mobile populations, exploring transnational mobility flows, foreign communities and migration logics from home to host country. In the WPs, GIS software will be deployed to map and spatialize international student housing patterns and consumption practices.

These are the expected results, divided in four blocs representing different approaches and the  knowledge acquired on international students in Portuguese cities:

1) Framing student diversity, mobility and backgrounds: International students constitute a large and diversified population in the selected cities, thus making a preliminary understanding of their social composition necessary. This objective involves analysing the importance of the country of origin, their socioeconomic backgrounds and the language spoken within the scope of integrating international students into the host city and beginning with a preliminary examination of: 1) Post-colonial students arriving from former colonial territories; 2) Intra-European students arriving from the EHEA; and 3) New students coming from developing, emerging countries. The role of the country of origin is to be examined in terms of whether students receive different treatments in the host country, both in the HEIs (higher tuition fees, visa problems) and in the society at large (stereotypes and discrimination). The organization of friendship groups based on the same country of origin or on the same native language is a particular target while also exploring their connections with any migratory networks existing in the host city. 

2) Exploring student practices, experiences and lifestyles: International students are the target of several public and private organisational initiatives that wish to take advantage of their presence in the arrival contexts. However, students are not passive clients of the policies and advertising campaigns taking place around them but rather active agents in building their own social worlds when abroad. This objective aims to explore the significant variety in youth lifestyles and student cultures emerging in cities across and beyond the attempts of the various institutions and organizations involved in commercializing and capitalizing on their presence in urban contexts. Moreover, in this objective other actors are analysed in connection with international student social worlds, processes of distinction and subjectivities: the role of HEIs as educational and primal sociability contexts or the night-life businesses and student organizations that work to attract the attentions of student consumption habits.

3) Assessing the urban impact, transformations and studentification: The presence of international students provides opportunities both for powerful economic actors and for house owners and low-capital investors to earn money from the stay of these foreign students. This contributes to the transformation of large urban areas, which reflects the phenomenon studied in the studentification literature. In order to assess the impact of students in hosting cities, our methodologies here focus on this objective at the neighbourhood level, analysing the various actors involved in the provision of accommodation but also the connections and interactions  established between international students, local students and non-student residents. The goal is to enlarge the understanding of “studentification” with a comprehensive characterisation of urban areas, the dynamics of contacts between social actors and other ongoing processes of urban change. Moreover, particular emblematic student spaces and typologies of housing will be collected and georeferenced. 

4) Foreseeing the future of international students: talent, workplaces and circulation: Beyond the discourse of talent attraction and the incorporation of foreign post-graduates into national networks of scientific innovation and creativity, the reality is that international students encounter deeply diversified trajectories after their stay abroad. This objective aims to understand the personal motivations, emotional contexts, biographical projects and real conditions of the job market that lead some international students to remain and others to return to their countries -or other mobility paths- after living in the host city. Moreover, those international students who remain will be located in several contexts: continuing their studies and professional formation, working in precarious and temporary jobs, consuming cultural and leisure commodities or eventually returning home. Analysis of their mobility trajectories will connect their transnational biographies with the developments of knowledge-based urban economies.

The main contribution of this new project to society will be to identify patterns of social, economic and spatial change in Portuguese urban environments caused by the interplay between student migrants and visited territories, which is aligned with the main scientific orientation of many of the projects developed at CIES-IUL. In this sense, the study of mobile social groups such as student migrants, and their impact over the sustainability, development and inequalities of territories is central for my project. I consider that urban contexts are territories where students’ knowledge and relationships are transformed into scientific development, creativity and start-ups, but also into feminist organizations, food cooperatives and other grassroots social movements and non-profit organizations facing up inequalities. I believe that this project aligns with one of the main challenges posed by contemporary societies: how to understand and deal with urban changes prompted by the transformation of cities in centers for consumption and leisure, specially for the young middle-classes.

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With the objective to increase the research activity directed towards the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the possibility of associating scientific projects with the Sustainable Development Goals is now available in Ciência_Iscte. These are the Sustainable Development Goals identified for this project. For more detailed information on the Sustainable Development Goals, click here.