Dysfunctional Mobilities: International Education and the Chaos of Movement

This chapter examines the potentially dysfunctional nature of educational mobilities and their impacts on individuals, family members, and wider society. It addresses recent literature on mobility for education in an updated piece and considers the range of work that points to the different ways in which mobilities for education could be considered dysfunctional and/or chaotic. The chapter considers, first, how educational mobilities have been conceptualized in the academic literature – as variously “functional” and “strategic.” It then discusses the idea of “dysfunctional mobilities” by focusing on an emergent body of work that has been quietly uncovering the “downsides” of migration for education. More specifically, the chapter argues that, far from representing a positive strategy, the consequences of mobility can, in some cases, be chaotic and damaging (especially for individuals). It concludes by arguing for the value in conceptualizing young people’s mobilities in a variety of ways.