Exploring disjuncture: elite students’ use of cosmopolitanism

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses current debates around elites, education and cosmopolitanism. It studies disjuncture (and interaction) between cosmopolitan practices and aspirations on the basis of 24 interviews with international students at a British elite university. Specifically, the article discusses four cases of elite students’ use of cosmopolitanism by drawing on Ann Swidler’s concepts of ‘strategies of action’ and her distinction between ‘unsettled’ and ‘settled’ lives. The case studies demonstrate that individuals, who find themselves in an unsettled phase of their life, may mobilise cosmopolitanism either to set themselves new life goals or to closely examine their lives. In settled lives, cosmopolitanism may be integrated in established strategies of action but it may also be used to (rhetorically) defend a stable orientation. This typology of four different ways of using cosmopolitanism complements previous research by exploring in depth the various forms in which ambivalences of students’ engagements with cosmopolitanism may arise.