Multidimensional,complex and contingent: Exploring international PhD students’ social mobility

Introduction

The impetus for this research came from a mundane lunch conversation as we, three international PhD students – one from Bangladesh, one from Japan and the other from Nepal – started to reflect on our everyday struggles and loss of privilege in our host country, Aotearoa New Zealand. Wanting to pursue our PhDs and obtain better career prospects, we somehow did not anticipate our initial downward social mobility.

Ritu is from Bangladesh. Though she moved to New Zealand as an educational migrant, the key motivation for her mobility was ‘gendered’ (i.e. escaping the oppressive patriarchal structure of the home country and to become cosmopolitan) (see also Kim, 2010: 433). For Ritu, there was a pull of imagined geographies (see Desbiens, 2016) – New Zealand as a paradise of women’s rights and gender equality. She, however, was confronted with the harsh reality of post-migration downward social mobility. Before moving to New Zealand, she was under the impression that she would be able to secure some form of scholarship or assistantship on arrival. Despite being a high achieving student in her home country, she did not qualify for a scholarship in New Zealand due to the non-transferability of her academic credentials. Her degree and grades, valuable cultural capital in Bangladesh, were not recognized in New Zealand. The failure to secure a scholarship in New Zealand and the feeling of being undervalued significantly undermined her confidence. Ritu had to manage a declining socio-economic position as a casual, part-time worker with limited income. For Ritu to overcome these economic impediments, she took multiple, precarious jobs in and outside the university, relying on Bangladeshi community networks and opting to live with a couple in a sub-letting arrangement despite some of the disadvantages that posed for upward social mobility.

Shinya first moved to the United States (‘US’ hereafter) from Japan to pursue his bachelor’s degree. As he is a former college dropout with very few career prospects in Japan, he started his formal education again in the US. Despite arriving in the US with only limited English proficiency, Shinya completed his masters' degree and secured contract teaching and research jobs while gradually building a more comfortable life in the US. He then moved to New Zealand to carry out his PhD research on the social impact of the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes. This exciting opportunity, however, meant starting over the process of social mobility. Realizing that many goods and services were no longer affordable after moving to New Zealand, Shinya and his partner lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with poor insulation, struggling just to find minimum-wage employment. Even with a scholarship, the couple had a difficult time making ends meet. However, from the very beginning of his arrival in New Zealand, Shinya’s social connections and sense of belonging were facilitated by his lifestyle, especially that part which involved outdoor activities.

Jeevan was attracted to New Zealand to pursue his PhD primarily due to the reduced tuition fee policy for international PhD candidates and the international reputation of the university. He had a successful career in the development sector in Nepal before he moved to New Zealand with his family. He worked for various national and international non-government organizations in senior positions. Due to his enduring work experience as a development professional, he was optimistic about securing a permanent, part-time job in the same sector while pursuing his PhD in New Zealand. However, he soon realized, after a few unsuccessful interviews, that his knowledge, skills and experience from a developing country were not properly recognized in New Zealand. Jeevan felt vulnerable as he knew that he had effectively become unskilled labor in a foreign country. To sufficiently provide for his family, Jeevan resorted to different kinds of casual, on-call and precarious jobs such as selling food for vendors and door knocking to find survey participants.

Albeit having had different motivations to migrate and taken different journeys, all three of us left behind relatively comfortable lives in our home countries (or prior destination country) before arriving in New Zealand. This research, then, is an attempt to theorize our migration and related social mobility experiences. We probe into the multidimensionality, complexity and contingencies of our post-migration social mobility. Social mobility of international PhD students in their host country, is seen as temporary in nature (Leung, 2017; Luthra and Platt, 2016). It is often assumed that the struggle of highly skilled knowledge migrants like ourselves would recede once we secured a well-paid, full-time academic position (Leung, 2017). Despite the assumed ephemerality of hardship, there are a number of important reasons to further explore the migration and social mobility experiences of international PhD students.

International students, ¹ particularly PhD students, are important transnational agents of knowledge production (Madge et al., 2015: 688). However, regardless of their academic and social status, they often experience racial and other forms of discrimination and exploitation similar to other (im)migrants ² (Brown and Jones, 2013; Forbes-Mewett and Sawyer, 2016; Xu, 2020), which often have downstream implications for their wellbeing (Brown and Jones, 2013) and academic performance (Yoo and Castro, 2011). International students disproportionately experience increased mental health issues and other forms of adversity (Forbes-Mewett and Sawyer, 2016; Suo, 2019). During our own PhD journeys, we have witnessed that a disproportionate number of international PhD and master’s students failed to complete their study due to mental health issues which often were linked to the adversity of their migration experiences. Mental health is not our focus in this paper, yet it is worth stressing here that an exploration of international students’ migration and social mobility experience will help us gain an understanding of the hidden cost of globalized education and knowledge formation.

Furthermore, our research makes several theoretical and empirical contributions to migration and mobility scholarship. Our contribution extends to the complex and multidimensional nature of social mobility by critically analyzing our autoethnographic data through a Bourdieusian theoretical lens. While there is an abundance of empirical work explaining the downward social mobility and negative experiences of educational and highly skilled migrants (e.g. Bauder, 2012; Erel, 2010; Hussain, 2019; Leung, 2014, 2017), these studies have not paid close attention to their social agency and active negotiation of the loss or (accidental) gain of capital. This research seeks to redress this imbalance as migrants’ social agency and efforts to build social capital are often overlooked in conventional theoretical and empirical discourses.

Contextualizing international PhD students in migration and social mobility literature

There has been a considerable escalation in the volume of international students worldwide in recent decades (King and Raghuram, 2013). Countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom (‘UK’ hereafter) and the US have become lucrative destinations for international students (King and Raghuram, 2013; Leung, 2017). The literature on international student mobility is multifaceted; examining the temporality of international students’ migration (Robertson, 2014; Rutten and Verstappen, 2013), their encounters with racism (Brown and Jones, 2013), mental health concerns (Forbes-Mewett and Sawyer, 2016), gender inequalities (Leung, 2014) and social class mobility (Leung, 2017; Rutten and Verstappen, 2013).

International student mobility is a form of migration that is of increasing significance to destination countries such as New Zealand (Robertson, 2014). Migration studies often classify migrants and their movements into two broad categories to separately analyze the migrating experiences: highly skilled and subsequently privileged migrants labeled as ‘elite knowledge workers’ (Robertson, 2014: 1916); and ‘low-skilled migrant laborers’ (Bauder, 2012; Martiniello and Rea, 2014: 1081). International students are often perceived as a homogenous category of ‘global elite migrants’ (Bauder, 2012; Favell et al., 2007) who predominantly move from developing to developed countries. However, the movement of international students and knowledge workers may not necessarily always be unidirectional. There is an emergence of changing patterns of international student mobility (Brooks and Waters, 2011; Kondakci et al., 2018; Lipura and Collins, 2020). As Madge et al. (2015: 683) suggest, the trajectory of education-related migration has become more complex due to the increased globalization and transformation of the political economy. The focus of migration studies has moved beyond a simplistic conceptualization of linear trajectories and settlements of the highly skilled immigrants from their home countries to the new destination ones. The exploration and comprehension of a non-linear, temporal and staggered progression and experience of migration are critical and timely (Leung, 2017; Robertson, 2014). Our research sits within this new vein of migration scholarship as we argue that the social mobility that stems from migration is multidirectional.

Downward social mobility or ‘contradictory class mobility’ is a common experience for highly skilled migrants or global knowledge workers like international PhD students (see Hussain, 2019; Leung, 2014, 2017; Parreñas, 2001; Rutten and Verstappen, 2013). Particularly, the educational migrants coming from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds in their home societies often experienced downward social mobility during their study overseas before they could harvest upward social mobility (Leung, 2017: 2714). Leung (2017) made a significant contribution to migration and social mobility scholarship by stressing that binary conceptualization of social mobility – either upward or downward – is problematic. Hence, our aim is to build upon her work to provide a substantive theoretical discussion of the complexity and multiplicity of social mobility patterns among international PhD students.

The social mobility experienced by international PhD students is influenced by economic factors as well as those that are less-directly economic and include race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, language, and social networks (see, e.g. Bailey and Mulder, 2017; Bauder, 2012; Erel, 2010). A complex intersection (see Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1991 for intersectionality) among these factors is deemed to shape class position and mobility experience in unexpected ways such that international PhD students may have to simultaneously play the roles of ‘elite knowledge workers’ and ‘low-skilled migrant laborers’. We may be regarded as ‘scholars’ or ‘early-career academic’ in academia but treated as ‘second-class citizens’ who are expected to endure substandard working conditions and live with a general sense of precarity. Indeed, while pursuing our PhDs and working academic jobs, all three of us have also taken on low-wage, precarious jobs such as gardener, landscaper, renovator, cleaner, driver, retail and door-to-door survey interviewer for survival. However, instead of feeling an overwhelming sense of downward social mobility, we enjoyed performing these jobs because, through first-hand experience, we were better able to understand that our social positions can be different in an academic environment, outside of it, and from our pre-migration lives.

It is important, then, to conceptualize social mobility and class positioning from different dimensions: economic, cultural, social and cognitive (see Désilets, 2016; Hout, 2015; Martiniello and Rea, 2014). This is primarily because, as Bourdieu (1987) and Friedman (2014) argue, social class can be interpreted as referring to real, objectively constituted groups; a scientific construct for economic and sociological analysis; or subjectively constructed groups manifesting the sense of a person’s social position. In this research, we do not necessarily conceptualize social class from an objective economic or political position; rather, we analyze our own class identity from the subjective perspective of an individual agent’s lived experience.

In line with Leung’s (2017) work, we conceive the social mobility of international PhD students as an ongoing process through which class and other social positions and identities (e.g. gender, ethnicity and nationality) of the migrants and their families are constantly negotiated and reconfigured. Such a conceptualization allows us to specifically focus on two major aspects of migration and social mobility. First, our experience and perception of social mobility are subjective, dynamic and multidimensional. This mobility experience is not always dependent on economic factors such as wealth, income and occupations. Social and cultural factors such as race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, previous experience of migration, language and qualifications have significant roles to play in shaping this experience. Second, we assert that international PhD students are not merely victims of their migratory experience and the structural constraints of their host country. Instead, international PhD students are strategic improvisers (Swartz, 1997) who mitigate structural disadvantages in their host country.

Overview of immigration and (im)migrants’ belongingness in New Zealand

Alongside the history of colonization and settler society, immigrant recruitment has been the part of the nation-building project in New Zealand (Spoonley, 2015). Until the 1950s, immigrants were predominantly from countries such as Ireland and the UK due to ‘a range of restrictions based on a colonial model and racist ideologies’ (Dürr, 2011: 506). After the 1950s, immigration shifted from a ‘racial to an economic focused’ system (Spoonley, 2015). In the post-war period, the flow of European migration was destabilized by a flux of non-British, semi-skilled and unskilled labor mobility primarily from the Pacific Islands (Dürr, 2011; Simon-Kumar, 2015; Spoonley, 2015). Simon-Kumar (2015: 1172) explains that ‘[s]ince the mid-1980s, immigration policy in New Zealand has clearly worked towards neoliberal goals of attracting skilled labour and boosting economic productivity’.

New Zealand now has an annual permanent immigration target that equates to 1% of the national population . This change in immigration policy and a ‘pick and choose’ recruitment system has led to a surge in non-European immigration (Ip and Pang, 2006; Simon-Kumar, 2015). Furthermore, neoliberal policy reform led to an inflow of international students in the early 1990s (Collins, 2012). Consequently, in the last 25 years, international student mobilities have become the country’s fifth-largest export industry and the second-largest service expert sector after tourism (New Zealand Government, 2018: 10). In 2017, international education contributed an estimated $14.4 billion to the New Zealand economy (New Zealand Government, 2018: 10). Thus, educational migrants’ contribution to the national economy of New Zealand is critical (Infometrics and National Research Bureau, 2016); this has created more educational and migration opportunities (and institutional support system) for international students like us.

In the New Zealand context, non-white (im)migrants’ sense of belonging, social positions and identity construction are often mediated through the foundational framework, policy and dominant discourse of biculturalism (Butcher et al., 2006: 27; Dürr, 2011; Simon-Kumar, 2015). The commitment to biculturalism, as opposed to the framing of multiculturalism (as is the case in other settler countries like Australia and Canada), as a state ideology in New Zealand has created a sense of exclusion and inclusion particularly for the non-European/non-white (im)migrants (see Simon-Kumar, 2015). As Cassim et al. (2020: 186) noted, non-European migrants’ sense of belonging in New Zealand is a fluid, dynamic and a negotiated process. It is a particularly complex, flux, multilayered and often conflicting process for those living in superdiverse cities like Auckland ³ (Spoonley, 2015; see also Dürr, 2011; Liu, 2014). Indeed, a combination of factors such as recognitions, discourses and actions of racism and other forms of discrimination can influence (im)migrants’ sense of belonging and identity (Butcher, 2002; Butcher et al., 2017; Liu, 2014). Our research, in this regard, further strengthens and contributes to this discourse of multiplicity of belongingness. It illustrates that migrants’ trajectories of belonging and inclusion in New Zealand are far less sequential and tied to economic capital than previously recognized.

Collaborative autoethnography

Autoethnography (AE) is a qualitative research method where the researchers use autoethnographical data to gain an insightful and rigorous understanding of their socio-cultural experiences and issues (Ellis et al., 2011; Hernandez et al., 2015). AE is not merely a retelling of stories or personal narratives; rather, it involves carefully organized research design and systematically collected and analyzed data. ‘Collaborative autoethnography [CAE] (however oxymoronic) thus invites community to investigate shared stories and balances the individual narrative with the greater collective experiences’ (Blalock and Akehi, 2018: 94). Concerning this, Chang et al. (2012) note that ‘[u]nlike AE, collaborative autoethnographers combine their energy and data to create a richer pool of data from multiple sources’ (89).

CAE involves a diverse range of data collection methods. Researchers can collect personal memory data, interview each other, observe and analyze each other’s self-identities or collect archival data about each other (Chang et al., 2012; Roy and Uekusa, 2020). In this research, we used two variations of these data collection methods: individual and group data collection. After deciding on the subtopics, we individually started generating self-reflective and self-analyzed data, which ‘capture [our] present thoughts and perspectives as well as [our] past’ (Chang et al., 2012: 78). The second phase of data collection involved trio conversations and interactions. In this phase, we expanded, affirmed and questioned each other’s reflective writing, which include the recollection of memories and experiences. The individual self-reflective writing and the transcripts of our conversations were organized and analyzed by using standard coding techniques for qualitative data analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006).

We opted for a CAE because we considered our experiences provided a rich source of information and data to analyze the dynamic and multidimensional nature of social mobility. This method was suitable for investigating our relatively similar but diverse migration and social mobility experiences (Chang et al., 2012: 17; Lapadat, 2009: 967; see also Chang et al., 2016; Lapadat, 2017), which led to deconstruction and reconstruction of our social class and identity. Our autobiographical anecdotes were systematically analyzed and used in engagement with Bourdieu’s capital theory for a nuanced understanding of the complexity of international students’ social mobility.

Framing social mobility and class position from Bourdieusian perspectives

Bourdieu’s proposition considers all forms of capital beyond the economic and emphasizes their interplay and convertibility to/from each other. It particularly helps us to focus on the intricate and multidimensional nature of social mobility and class position by emphasizing the role of capital in their cross-national spatial and academic mobilities. Bourdieu’s capital theory in migration and mobility studies is not rare (see, e.g. Bauder, 2012; Creese and Wiebe, 2009; Erel, 2010; Thondhlana et al., 2016), and Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, cultural and social capital have been frequently used to explore the migration experience, employability and negotiation of highly skilled migrants.

Bourdieu (1987) argues that an individual’s social mobility and class position are largely influenced by the volume and composition of capital that they possess. Unlike the Marxists’ idea of capital, Bourdieu (1986: 243) refers to economic (financial resources) and non-/less-directly economic forms of capital, which include cultural (knowledge, language, skills, norms, attitudes, past experiences), social (resources based on social connections and groups memberships) and symbolic (rewards accruing from status, respectability and other types of capital once recognized as legitimate) (also Bourdieu, 1987: 4). Individuals, families and groups attempt to accumulate and obtain as much higher-quality capital as possible since this determines their social status in particular social/cultural space(s) and their ability to travel across different social spaces (Bourdieu, 1989: 17; Wacquant, 2007: 268).

The notion of capital conversion to/from other capital is instrumental in the analysis of highly skilled migrants’ social mobility (Kelly and Lusis, 2006: 836). It helps us to delve into the convertibility of the capital that migrants bring from their country of origin to the host country (Erel, 2010). Sayer (1999) further explains that capital ‘have exchange-value, though the rates of exchange between the various forms of capital are always contested through the struggles of social field’ (408). In a transnational context, capital has a fluid and dynamic evaluation, conversion and exchange value (Xu, 2018). Thus, the effectiveness of a particular form of capital is not universal: it is field- and habitus-dependent (Bourdieu, 1993: 73).

The field is a social space in which social agents compete for accumulation and distribution of capital, and each field often has its own laws, rules, norms, value systems and cultural institutions (Bourdieu, 1989: 17–18). Field is not separable from habitus, which is an internalized, taken-for-granted social structure, a set of dispositions which creates and reproduces the social field (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). The dialectics between field and habitus determine the value of capital. Johnson (1993) explains that ‘[t]he idea that there are different kinds of capital which are invested in different fields of activity in accordance with the specific of interests of the field’ (8) is determined by the social agents’ habitus.

Thus, a valuable form of capital in one field may not be useful in another due to field-specific norms, laws, rules and habitus (Bauder, 2012; Bourdieu, 1988; Lulle and Buzinska, 2017). Social agents’ possession of capital and social power may vary in different fields or domains. Indeed, as Ritu and Jeevan experienced first-hand, international PhD students’ overall downward social mobility can be partially due to the non-transferability of the credentials (as in their significant cultural and symbolic capital) that they obtained in their home countries. Their degrees and awards are not universal: a higher degree from developing countries is systematically less likely to be as valued as a local one in destination countries (Bauder, 2012).

Despite its obvious advantages, one of the major limitations of using Bourdieu’s theory is its near-exclusive focus on social class. Although Bourdieu emphasizes language, he did not explicitly emphasize the influence of gender, race and ethnicity on social stratification (Thondhlana et al., 2016). Nonetheless, his theory of capital has been reworked, so the concepts of race, ethnicity and gender could be linked to Bourdieu’s cultural, social and symbolic capital (see e.g. Hage, 2003; Huppatz, 2009; Huppatz and Goodwin, 2013). Research suggests that cultural capital is ethnicity bounded (Erel, 2010). Following this trend, we synthesize the concept of ‘ethnic capital’ (Borjas, 1992), which ‘is the inherent trust and advantages which stem from, and belong to, a certain ethnic/cultural group’ (Wang and Maani, 2014: 3). We contend that international PhD students’ ethnic capital can be transformed into an embodied form of cultural capital as well as symbolic capital in positive, neutral and negative ways, depending on the specific habitus and fields to which they belong. Thus, ethnic identity and representation (as in cultural and symbolic capital) can often be the determinant of our social status, prestige and reputation.

Bourdieu’s work is well regarded for his attempt to reconcile the dichotomy of structure versus agency (Béhague et al., 2008). His theoretical framework is effective for explaining the reproduction of social structure, power and position – in other words, how social structures constrain individual action. At the same time, it also insists upon the individual’s transformative agency, creativity and strategic performances (Béhague et al., 2008; Gomez, 2015). Thus, in this research, his framework helps us to strike a balance in explaining the structural constraints and adversity faced by international PhD students in the country of migration as well as their agency in adapting to, and growing into, the host societies.

Initial downward social mobility

From the countries of origin (or other destination country), we developed and brought a set of habitus and capital with us when we migrated to New Zealand. We realized that some of our capital such as cultural norms, qualifications and linguistic competence (as our cultural and linguistic capital) would not be valued in New Zealand. As Bourdieu (1989) and Moncrieffe (2006) argue, when social agents move across the social fields even within a country (e.g. education to employment, recreation to the household, one region to the other), they anticipate the possibility of experiencing a lack of interchangeability and convertibility of their capital; that is, people may experience downward social mobility, or, as we will argue later, sometimes they experience unexpected gain.

As discussed earlier, downward social mobility is often caused by the non-recognition and devaluation of pre-migration capital and the lack of locally valued resources (Bauder, 2012; Erel, 2010; Hussain, 2019). Skilled migrants require a profound adjustment to deal with such a loss of privilege in a new field (Leung, 2017; Ryan, 2011). Indeed, our own migration experiences generally resonate with the findings of preceding research. When they migrate to a developed country, temporary migrants of middle-class origin are known to be performing the labor that is not congruent with their social class in their country of origin (Batnitzky et al., 2008; Creese and Wiebe, 2009; Hussain, 2019). Identical to many of our peer international PhD students, we had to rely on the part-time and often precarious academic and non-academic jobs to earn our living which caused feelings of stress and ambivalence.

Recognizing the multidimensionality of social mobility: The role of non-economic capital

We argue that, in addition to economic factors (e.g. employment and income), our sense of class positioning and social mobility is formed and influenced largely by the intersection of multiple forms of capital. This is a major reason for why the social mobility experience is more multidimensional and multidirectional than involving a simple, downward trajectory. In this paper, we particularly consider the role of ethnic and linguistic capital (Borjas, 1992; Wang and Maani, 2014). As we all moved from a relatively culturally, ethnically and linguistically homogenous country (Bangladesh and Japan) or a multi-ethnic country (Nepal) in which we belong to a dominant ethnic group, we have lost our ethnic majority status in New Zealand (see also Bailey and Mulder, 2017; Kim, 2009). The racial/ethnic minoritization has played a considerable role in shaping our migration and social mobility experiences (see also Hernandez et al., 2015).

The discrepancy between an agent’s social power and possession of capital in different social fields is one of the leading causes of the multidimensional nature of social mobility (Bourdieu, 1986). When individuals feel empowered with possession or accumulation of valuable capital in their social domain, they may also, simultaneously, feel powerless in others. For instance, coming from a traditional, patriarchal society to the Western, less patriarchal, liberal society often gives female international students, like Ritu, a sense of empowerment and emancipation despite racial marginalization and structural constraints. She stated, ‘in many regards, I became my own boss as a woman now living in a liberal society. I could go anywhere unaccompanied if I wanted. I was making my own decisions without interferences from family’.

Migrating to a relatively less patriarchal society (New Zealand) as an international PhD student gave Ritu a sense of emancipation. The change of field and field-related value system (i.e. the value of gender equality and liberalism) made her feel more empowered as a woman. However, she also experienced a contradictory revelation and reconfiguration of her ethnic and gender identity and where she stands in the host society (see also Hernandez et al., 2015). Due to the intersection of race and gender, while she felt a sense of liberation and empowerment as a woman, she found herself vulnerable as a woman of color. For the first time in her life, Ritu was confronted with the most clichéd stereotypes of the so-called ‘brown woman’. People often tend to assume that she is married with multiple children and is abusing social services. Such racist and sexist stereotyping has a different validation of embodied cultural capital and creates an impediment to accessing skilled employment (Erel, 2010: 648). These stereotypes did not help her to possess or gain positive cultural and symbolic capital based on her gender and ethnic identity but redoubled a sense of marginalization. Despite coming from a highly educated family that was relatively liberal, she felt that her aspiration of a feminist identity in New Zealand had been denied.

A common theme that emerged from our retrospection and reflective analysis is that the dominant racial narratives and the Eurocentric racial hierarchy in present-day New Zealand shaped our mobility experience. In New Zealand, the complex rhetoric and aspiration of a multicultural society within the bicultural national framework and identity has created a complex system of racial categorization (Grbic, 2010; Rocha, 2012; Sibley and Ward, 2013). This classification not only determines access to resources, but it is also decisive in the levels of belonging, validation, tolerance and acceptance a particular ethnic group is likely to receive in New Zealand (Rocha, 2012). Different ethnic groups and their ethnic capital are diversely valued, perceived and recognized in this field. Our experiences strongly validate such a relationship between racial categorization and a sense of belonging.

In Ritu and Jeevan’s case, the systemic Western (mis)representation of their countries of origin as impoverished, disaster-prone and weak nation-states did not help them to gain positive ethnic capital in New Zealand (see Roy, 2018). Rather, the constant stigma about their ethnic and national identities made it extremely difficult to convert their ethnic capital into positive social, cultural and symbolic capital. However, Jeevan’s experience in this case is more layered and complex. Initially, he thought that people in New Zealand had a positive impression of Nepal due to the shared history of the 1953 Everest expedition. ⁴ Referring to the significance of the shared history and positive impression, Jeevan noted, ‘it helped socializing with people and initiating a friendly conversation, or, sometimes made me “feel good”. In the long run, I did not gain any significant leverage out of it’. He came to realize that narratives involving Everest obscured the fact that there are considerable ‘ignorance and invisibility’ issues in New Zealand regarding Nepal (or other developing countries) (see also Roy, 2018). Akin to many other migrants from Southern Asia, he has rather confronted some racial prejudice and hostility, which gave him a sense of social exclusion. Ritu and Jeevan soon realized that, while living in a superdiverse society which generally accepts migrants and values ethnic diversity (Spoonley, 2015), the pre-existing negative ethnic/racial stereotypes would make it difficult for them to develop and sustain positive social, cultural and symbolic capitals in this particular field. The ethnic capital (as in negative stereotypes) was systematically constructed and conferred upon us by the field since arriving in New Zealand.

Shinya, on the contrary, figured himself to be in a relatively better position in New Zealand. Unlike Ritu and Jeevan, he had gender and ethnic capital (being a Japanese male) which were more positively recognized and valued in this field. Notably, Japanese culture and identity are relatively well regarded in New Zealand while Japanese people are less stigmatized than other migrant groups (which might not necessarily be the case in the US and other countries). Stereotypes and cultural representations such as cars, cuisine, electronics, pop-culture, tattoos, technology and so on are positively presented in New Zealand, while other minority cultures are more stigmatized (see Adachi’s study (2017) about the Japanese Brazilian commune in Brazil). Shinya detailed how his ethnic capital has influenced his sense of class position and life opportunities:

When I compare[d] myself with the people in the same economic stratum, I felt less recognized and valued socially and nationally than Pākehā, Māori, and white migrants from Europe and North America. But being perceived as Japanese, I felt like I was better accepted than many other non-white migrants.

Furthermore, our class positioning is contingent, contextual and multidimensional due to the dissonance between our experiences in two different fields – in an academic environment and outside of academia. While we often encountered overt racism (e.g. racially motivated violence or name calling) or casual racism on the street and other social spaces (e.g. racist comments on social media or even on student evaluations), we were considerably shielded within the university due to our status as early-career academic and researcher (i.e. we have proper habitus and membership in this field). Indeed, we were treated with a certain respect due to our qualifications, skills and training even though there is a latent, gendered racial hierarchy within the academia.

The quality of linguistic capital is not an absolute determinant of an individual’s social position in economic strata (even though certain employment opportunities often depend on language competency), yet it has an interpersonal-level impact as it gives a sense of alienation and subordination. Although international students are supposed to possess a certain level of linguistic capital as language test (e.g. IELTS or TOEFL) scores are required for university entrance and even immigration application, linguistic alienation and feelings of inferiority can have a significant impact on international PhD students’ social and professional life. Speaking English as our non-native language gives us a constant feeling of inferiority and lower self-esteem, and we often internalize the linguistic oppression and even avoid interactions with native-speakers (Uekusa, 2009; Woodrow, 2006). As PhD students, we were expected to comply with the global hegemony of English: doing research, writing and teaching in English (Albatch, 2007). As Bourdieu (1991) would argue, to a great extent, our academic success was reliant on the quality of our linguistic capital. If we want to be successful in the field of academia, we need to comply with the hegemony of English and cope with such structural constraints.

At the everyday interpersonal level, our distinctive accent and choice of words were denounced which impaired our confidence as emergent academics in the university. We recalled receiving student remarks on our accents and fluency in the teaching evaluations. We were told how we lacked native proficiency and our accents were difficult to comprehend. These are not racist comments ⁵ as such, but represent a constant reminder of our outsider status. Despite our skills, knowledge and training, we developed low self-esteem when we compared ourselves with our native-English speaker colleagues from Ireland, South Africa, the UK and North America.

Negotiating social mobility and class positioning

Reflecting on our own experiences, we contend that international PhD students are not merely the passive victims of downward social mobility that arise from their migration process (see also Thondhlana et al., 2016). Rather, we argue that we actively negotiate the downward social mobility, socio-economic and cultural adversity and (un)employability. To navigate the loss of capital, we gained capital and developed habitus specific to the new field. We started learning what the valuable forms of capital specific to New Zealand are and thus tried to accumulate perceived locally valued and recognized capital (e.g. English proficiency, knowledge of Tikanga Māori, ⁶ social networking, balanced lifestyle). This process of negotiation not only involves converting the already possessed capital from the home countries, but it also entails developing and collecting a new package of capital available to us in the new fields. (However, the availability of capital and their quality are determined by the particular fields, so, as discussed in the previous section, some capital such as positive ethnic capital were not accessible to us.) The struggle for, and accumulation of, capital can be both – strategized and unintended. We negotiated with initial downward social mobility and shifted class position and identity by employing various strategies (both intended and unintended) including drawing upon pre-established social networks (i.e. ethnic diaspora) as well as localized capital from the significant other. In this section, we highlight three major ways in which we have dealt with social mobility and belonging in New Zealand.

Discussion and conclusion

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to shed light on our experience, we proposed that we move to a new social space or field of struggle when we migrate to receiving countries as international PhD students. Due to the different value system in each field, the package of habitus and capital that we brought from the countries of origin often becomes ineffective in the host country which leads to the loss of capital and initial downward social mobility (see also Lulle and Buzinska, 2017). However, a closer examination informs us that the nature of social mobility is far more non-linear, contingent, complex and multidimensional than previously portrayed. Beyond economic capital, non-economic (or less-directly economic) factors and resources such as race, ethnicity, nationality and language, often complicate our sense of class identity and belonging in a superdiverse society. We may feel empowered in one aspect of social space and simultaneously disenfranchised in the other.

To mitigate the structural constraints and adversities in New Zealand, we strategized to generate and collect field specific and locally valued capitals (e.g. making ourselves as ‘cultural fit’, downplaying ethnic practices, developing a ‘selective whiteness’, and social networking). Social mobility should therefore be characterized, not merely by significant manifestations of losses and gains of capital, but by a multiplicity of everyday consciously strategized and/or unanticipated moments (such as meeting a partner who is a local PhD student) that migrants can capitalize on. We then suggest that the dynamic and multidimensional nature of social mobility is contingent on migrants’ social agency and capability to negotiate, dispose and optimize the capital. Indeed, we strategized to comply with local norms and values, thereby collecting locally valued capitals, whatever is available to us in the field. Social agency, therefore, is central to the accounts depicted in our shared stories, and this is often overlooked in traditional theoretical and empirical views on migrants’ efforts to build social and other forms of capital. This complements the existing discourses on the social agency of international PhD students.

However, international PhD students (and migrants in general) should not be solely responsibilized to develop the agency and accumulate necessary capital to be successful in various fields in the host countries. This is because some capital, such as our ethnic capital (positive or negative), is not obtainable; instead, it is systematically conferred upon us on entering the new field (in New Zealand). Therefore, as Bourdieu’s proposition of dialectic relationship between field and habitus informs, redistribution of capital and empowerment of social actors need to be accompanied by structural transformations (e.g. anti-discrimination policies, promotion of multilingualism and multiculturalism). In the discussion of international PhD students’ (and other migrants’) empowerment, it is crucial to avoid any responsibilization of the marginalized and mystification of their social agency (Rose, 1999).

Following Bourdieu’s idea, this research poses an important question which should be further discussed and explored: How do we foster a field within academia that is receptive to the diversity of international PhD students’ cultural capital, especially ethnic and linguistic capital? Addressing this question will help us develop policy framework to foster fields (i.e. wider communities and society), which are more inclusive, multicultural and multilingual for larger migrant groups. As demonstrated in this research, we felt more protected in our academic environment because it is a field in which diversity and ‘foreign’ capital are more likely accepted and valued. Thus, we suggest that embracing and promoting multiculturalism and multilingualism at structural and individual levels may be the necessary step to create fields like our academic environment, which would be less hostile to the capital (e.g. language, culture, ideology, political view, religion, skills and credentials) that migrants bring from their countries of origin.

This research calls for a more nuanced and flexible approach to investigate not only international PhD students’ but also anyone’s migration-related social mobility and class identity. Social scientists tend to identify concrete patterns of social mobility (Crul, 2000: 240), but our experience shows that non-linearity and contingency are central to the social mobility of international PhD students. This study offers an important theoretical and methodological contributions: although it may not provide a concrete numerical formula into which we plug numbers to find the likelihood of social mobility direction and extent, using Bourdieu’s theoretical framework enables a holistic picture to be drawn. The complexity of our experiences of moving horizontally and vertically across different social fields produces unexpected outcomes. Furthermore, due to the case-centric nature of CAE and our exclusive focus on international PhD students, our findings are not generalizable. However, our methodological approaches may be applied for consideration by future studies. We encourage international PhD students (or other immigrant groups) to turn their collective self-narratives and experiences into rich, contextualized data and analysis (see Lapadat, 2017; Roy and Uekusa, 2020) to explore the multiplicity of migration and related social mobility.