The enactment of agency in international academic
mobility: a case of Chinese female PhD students in Australia
Xing Xu1,2
Received: 14 February 2020 / Accepted: 23 September 2020 / Published online: 5 January 2021
© The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. 2021
Abstract
Despite widespread discourse subordinating the female PhD as a third gender in the Chinese media, little is known about how this cohort conceptualises themselves, especially in an international context. Based on a qualitative investigation into 10 Chinese female doctoral students in Australia, this study examines their enactment of agency in international academic mobility. Drawing on the notions of “agency in mobility” and in-betweenness, this article shows that Chinese female PhD students demonstrate three forms of agency. Their agency influences how they judge, uti- lise, produce and imagine relations, symbols and activities in the in-between space, which in turn gives shape to their enactment of agency. This study challenges the validity of the idea that the Chinese female PhD is a sexless third gender and illu- minates the dynamic reciprocity between agency and the in-betweenness in shaping their transformative doctoral student identity.
Keywords Female PhD · Identity · China · Agency in mobility · In-betweenness · Australian higher education
Introduction: is Chinese female PhD a sexless third gender?
Research abounds regarding additional structural and attitudinal barriers faced by female doctoral students in Western countries due to their domestic situation (e.g.
Brown and Watson 2010; Jackson 2008; White 2004). Other research has high- lighted gendered difficulties embedded in culturally mediated traditions. For exam- ple, Sandekian et al. (2015) found that when Saudi female graduates moved to a contrasting culture, namely, the US, they needed to address extra obstacles in order
* Xing Xu
xing.xu@uon.edu.au
1 School of International Relations, Sichuan International Studies University, 33 Zhuangzhi Rd, Shapingba, Chongqing 400031, People’s Republic of China
2 School of Education, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia
to socialise into a mixed-gender educational environment considered inappropriate back home.
In China, there has been a rampant folklore about the female PhD, paralleling the female PhD with male and female as a third gender. The pejorative discourse was substantially captured in Cao’s (2019) recent study, showing that the majority of this cohort was portrayed in Chinese media reports either as a suffering group excluded by public life or a deviant group that manifested unfavourable behaviours and char- acteristics. Although Sun (2017) criticised that the third gender discourse revealed a largely fantasised reality contrived by the media, gender-based barriers associated with female doctoral students in the Chinese context have been well documented.
For example, Gao and Yang’s (2019) study showed that female PhD students were significantly more prone to discrimination in relation to their gender, age and marital status. Whether a third gender discourse was media manipulation or a social epi- demic, the current literature on Chinese female PhDs is predominantly developed from an etic perspective. Little is known about how this cohort conceptualises them- selves from an emic perspective as they internalise the identity of “female PhD” via their mundane doctoral education practices. Offering a platform for Chinese female PhDs to voice their perceptions is a significant step towards disclosing more perti- nent nuances.
Australia was chosen as the research site because an increasing body of research emphasises that international mobility complicates and transforms one’s perception of identity (Bamberger 2019; Gu and Schweisfurth 2015; Marginson 2014). This study thus aimed to investigate the interaction between identity and international academic mobility, with a focus on unpacking two research questions: 1. To what extent is the concept of third gender represented in Chinese female PhDs’ border- crossing doctoral education experiences? 2. How do Chinese female PhDs navi- gate their identity construction as an in-betweener traversing different sociocultural spaces? Given the salience of agency in one’s approaches to identity construction and study in an international education context (Inouye and McAlpine 2017; Phan et al. 2019), agency was chosen as the theoretical lens through which this study addressed the above questions. Also, the concept of in-betweenness (Bhabha 1994;
Dai et al. 2018) was utilised, which was suitable for analysing how the participants mobilised agency to construct a transformed identity in physical and psychologi- cal transactions at and across the boundaries between their home and host cultural spaces. The next sections delineate the theoretical framework, the research design and findings, the contributions of this study and directions for future research.
Theoretical framework: agency in mobility and in‑betweenness
Agency refers to the acting capacity to control, regulate and transform the social relations in which an individual is enmeshed to pursue intentional goals (Inouye and McAlpine 2017; Sewell 1992). A recent notion of “agency in mobility” (Tran and Vu 2018) was suitable for this study as it served as an analytical tool to delve into border-crossers’ proactive navigation of identity construction in intercultural learn- ing. It encompasses agency for becoming, needs-response agency, agency as struggle
and resistance, and collective agency for contestation. Agency for becoming empha- sises international students’ proactive engagement to achieve the self-transformation within their envisaged life plan. Needs-response agency relates to adaptive actions responding to and satisfying structural conditions. Agency as struggle and resistance refers to their endeavours to address conflicts and difficulties through subversion and resistance. Collective agency for contestation is the communal capacity for mobilis- ing relationships to deal with problems. Within the context of the global mobility of students, “agency in mobility” afforded a framework for unpacking how interna- tional students engage, create and differentiate personal and structural resources to construct their study trajectory in the way that they intend.
For international students, enactment of “agency in mobility” occurs in a third space that is much more complex across divergent cultures, societies and educational systems (Dai 2020). They situate themselves in such a space where difference might not always be One or the Other but, something else besides, in-between (Bhabha 1994). They sojourn in-between a material place in which they physically study and live, as well as a ‘fuzzy space’ which propels their reflections on the two educational and cultural contexts (Dai et al. 2018). As in-betweeners in the third space, they immerse themselves in “something different, something new and unrecognisable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation” (Rutherford 1990, p. 211).
By virtue of that, they may cultivate a sense of cultural hybridity that keeps trans- forming their conceptualisation of identity. Concurrently, “agency in mobility” cir- cumscribes and is circumscribed by grand structures of the in-between space, which involves a more complex myriad of socio-cultural-educational relations, activities and symbols than that of the home context alone. On one hand, personal agency is subjected to how students judge, utilise, produce and imagine the in-between space;
on the other hand, agentic navigation of a study trajectory gives shape to the space that they situate themselves in. Previous research has proved insightful in employ- ing in-betweenness to explore international Chinese doctoral students’ cross-cultural adaptation (Xu et al. 2020) and to unravel the effects of complex forces that reshaped a Chinese student’s identity as he studied in Australia (Ai 2015). In this study, the concept of in-betweenness supplemented the notion of “agency in mobility” in scru- tinising the fluid interplay between Chinese female PhDs’ agentic practices and gov- erning structures of the third space on “disciplining or harnessing those activities”
(Collyer and King 2015, p.190).
The study
This study utilised a qualitative methodology of semi-structured interview that offers the flexibility to promote the participants’ fruitful reflection (Mill 2001). After the ethics application was approved by the University of Newcastle, the recruitment request was circulated via social networking media channels such as WeChat and QQ groups, targeting participants that were students of Chinese nationality sojourn- ing in Australia for their doctoral study, whose candidature would be in effect by the time of the interview. The invitation to participants also detailed the research procedures and requirements. As qualitative research is essentially opportunistic
(Holliday 2016) because accessibility and achievability are difficult to control, it was fortunate that the recruitment secured 24 participants across 11 universities in Aus- tralia. Ten out of the 24 participants were female, who were the focus of this study.
They were all in their late twenties or early thirties, unmarried, and fully sponsored by either the Chinese government or an Australian university for their PhD educa- tion. Although they came from provinces featuring different levels of socioeconomic development, they self-identified as born into a working class or middle-class fam- ily. They studied a wide range of disciplines, were varying years into their candida- tures, and originated from six universities across three states (see Table 1). Despite no generalisation being intended, these variations exposed the data analysis to more nuances and complexities. The students were anonymised by assigned pseudonyms based on the chronological order of their interviews and the university names were coded from U1 to U6 accordingly.
Depending on the participants’ availability and preference, either face-to-face (4 out of 10) or telephone (6 out of 10) interviews were conducted. Each interview lasted approximately 90 min. In this time, interviewees were encouraged to share their experiences regarding their preparedness prior to the overseas sojourn and their engagement in learning and social activities while studying in Australia. Further, as this study was a gender-based inquiry, they were also required to interpret their lived experiences from a female PhD student’s perspective. To prompt participants to flesh out their responses, questions were open ended, such as “How did you pre- pare yourself to do a doctoral degree in Australia?”, “Can you share with me some positive and negative experiences which happened during your candidature?”, “How do you cope with challenges and difficulties?”, “What does the overseas study expe- rience mean to you?” and “How do you perceive your identity as a female PhD?”.
According to Bogdan and Taylor’s (1975) suggestion, interviews should be con- ducted at the participants’ level of language to communicate in an effective man- ner. Given the researcher and the participants are Mandarin native speakers, all interviews were conducted in Mandarin, which as both a medium of information exchange and a conduit of shared meaning-making facilitated empathic engagement
Table 1 Demographic information of the participants
Name Academic discipline Length of PhD enrolment at
the time of interview (year) University number State
Gemma Medicine 2 U1 New South Wales
Lydia Arts 1 U2 West Australia
Penny Medicine 2 U3 Queensland
Susan Arts 2 U4 New South Wales
Priscilla Medicine 1 U5 Queensland
Wendy Arts 4 U1 New South Wales
Lora Engineering 4 U1 New South Wales
Yvonne Business 2 U1 New South Wales
Jessica Arts 2 U5 Queensland
Zoe Science 4 U6 New South Wales
on both personal and cultural levels. All responses were recorded, transcribed and translated verbatim. To boost credibility, before analysis started, texts were returned to some participants to verify if accounts were accurate, impartial and complete. All texts were then transported into NVivo 12 for thematic analysis. After rounds of reading, data were segmented into basic meaning units, from which emerged a set of topical codes (Richards 2009) based on the research questions. Themes were then generated, reviewed and defined with a cross-codes examination. The analysis was inductive and deductive, emerging from within the data and informed also by theo- retical underpinnings and epistemological positions taken by the researcher. Discus- sions with participants and consequent ongoing revisions continued throughout to reach a consensus before the analysis was finalised. This ensured trustworthiness, as the researcher’s bias was reduced with a dialogical analysis of intersubjectivity (Benjamin et al. 2017). The findings are detailed in the next section.
Findings
Based on the data analysis, the participants’ “agency in mobility” manifested in three forms: agency as struggle and resistance, needs-response agency, and agency for becoming. Different senses of agency were closely intertwined with their naviga- tion of different structures in the in-between space, which gave shape to their trans- formative identity as an international female doctoral student.
Agency as struggle and resistance
The first form of agency emerging from the data presented itself as the participants’
struggle and resistance against unfair and uncomfortable practices, discourses and concepts towards female PhDs salient in their home milieu. These subversive efforts manifested before the students’ doctoral journey.
The students exercised their agency prior to departure in defiance of the biased positionality of women, which was tantamount to a structural obstacle permeating cultural conventions. Some participants pursued doctoral education against family wishes or community tradition, which underpinned their agency for emancipation (Hopwood 2010). The following excerpts are manifestations of how Chinese female PhD students broke away from gender-based discrimination against high achievers of educational performance:
My dad is very conservative. He thought a girl should not pursue too much education. Before I decided to do a PhD, I already held a permanent job posi- tion. He believed that’s the peak of my life that I could possibly achieve. So he thought there is no need for me to take any risk and endure any hardship … He also thought as a girl ages, she should give priority to family rather than promote her career… But I worked even harder (to apply for a PhD) because of his opposition … Also, the more unsupportive he was, the more I knew that I had no one to depend on. I had to get the scholarship to do my PhD. (Zoe).
When I told my relatives that I was applying for a PhD, they mocked my aspiration to be a “female PhD”. Because I was single at that time, they suggested me not further my study as “female PhDs” were considered to outmatch many men. Better to settle down with a job and husband, they said. And if I did not follow this suggestion, I might face difficulties later.
But I had my own ideal and future plan that I wanted to stick to. I did not care about their comments. (Priscilla).
My mum was opposed (to doing a PhD overseas). She thought for a girl, it’s best to find a stable job close to her family. But my dad had higher expectations of me because I have always been a good student since young.
He thought I can pursue an education up to the point that my capability allows. I have been influenced more by him. (Jessica).
As shown above, the participants positioned themselves as agents who were capable of navigating a life course in the manner that best suited their life’s blue- print. The construction of the core of their life’s blueprint began by delegitimising the gendered limitations imposed on them by the dominant masculinised ideology.
The above statements affirmed some of the structural constraints embedded in this ideology. In Zoe’s case, the ideology was that a woman’s place is in the home and
“a girl should not pursue too much education” because “as a girl ages, she should give priority to family rather than promote her career”. In Priscilla’s situation, she was encouraged not to obtain the title of “female PhD” as it would “outmatch many men” and exacerbate her already problematic status as a single woman. Jessica con- fronted the constraints embedded in the belief that “for a girl, it’s best to find a stable job close to her family” and any ambition that goes against that was not advised.
These gender-based restrictions represented one dimension of cultural production and maintenance in their home context that rendered the misconception of wom- en’s limitation regarding roles, capabilities and ambitions socially recognisable and legitimate.
Despite these gendered hindrances and unfavourable conditions, these partici- pants did not succumb in vulnerable situations. Rather, they engaged themselves in subverting the unfair discourse imposed on them that problematises and stigma- tises the female PhD. Their agency in this regard manifested as struggle, evinced by ignoring the discordant voices and relying on inward strength to pursue a goal despite others’ negative opinions. For example, Priscilla chose to disregard others’
objections and prioritised her “own ideal and future plan” and Zoe resorted to earn- ing a scholarship after her father’s refusal to give her financial support. They chal- lenged the validity of othering and constructing her as a problem (Mählck 2018) by articulating their contestation over ascribed gendered constraints. These endeav- ours corroborated Hopwood (2010), who suggested that the act of struggle was an expression and the site of agency was apparent in the actors’ resilience, resourceful- ness and capacity to change direction or break away.
Needs‑response agency
While agency as struggle and resistance manifested prior to the participants’
commencement of doctoral study, needs-response agency was noticeable during their doctoral trajectory. It was exercised through their determination and action to satisfy specific demands in response to the structural context in Australia.
For example, regarding her agency to build up her researching skills, Penny referred to her initiative to capitalise on the research resources offered on campus:
I attended an induction meeting the first week after my enrolment. I got to know relevant resources offered by my university, especially those custom- ised services for international students such as one-on-one writing consulta- tion. I think they are very helpful and I have used all of them. Before I came here, I had accumulated some researching skills but not enough. I want to improve myself by taking part in different workshops. (Penny).
Relocating to a different education setting and system which features a “com- mon absence of curriculum” (Aitchison and Lee 2006, p. 266) and poses a major obstacle of writing in English, students needed to transform their actions to achieve their proposed goals (Dai 2020). In this excerpt, Penny’s intentional acts of using the “one-on-one writing consultation” and “different workshops”
indicated her initiative to tackle the structural constraints that international doc- toral students often confront. Positioning herself as a novice researcher who has
“accumulated some researching skills but not enough”, she made agentic efforts to take advantage of university resources to facilitate her learning. This manifests the interplay of agency and space. Admittedly, a new learning space in a cul- turally different nexus presents more structural constraints than those that inter- national students confront at home; nevertheless, international students are more than products of the governing structures of the space. They can mobilise agency to negotiate, reshape and produce the contours of that space. In Penny’s case, her voluntary engagements in academic activities and events assisted in giving mean- ing to and internalising her identity as a novice researcher via these mundane performances.
Additionally, needs-response agency was salient in seeking resolutions to other issues, such as mental health issues that were developed during the doctoral jour- ney. Yvonne shared the following views:
An overseas doctoral journey is very special. It is simple, monotonous, and stressful … Don’t hold anything back, go complaining when you feel need to, go looking for a solution whenever you come across a problem. Be proactive. There are many services on campus. Chinese students think it’s shameful to accept mental health counselling. But I think just like we all catch a cold, mental issues are equally common. So, take the initiative to seek help. All problems can be resolved. (Yvonne).
Yvonne’s explanation pointed to agentic efforts to meet emotional needs other than research specific needs. Situated in the betweenness, Yvonne was
constrained by both home and host structures. As an Asian student, she was prone to be restricted by a widely recognised cultural mentality at home that associates professional help-seeking to address mental issues with stigmatisation (Forbes- Mewett 2019). As well, navigating an alien host space made the trajectory more stressful given there were more psychological and operational obstacles. How- ever, instead of succumbing to these structural limitations, she resorted to con- textual resources in the new space, suggesting “be proactive”, utilised “many services on campus”, and looked for solutions. As Yvonne actively negotiated different cultural mentalities and practices, she also built up her identity as an agent who initiated the construction of positive realities by being heard, seen and helped.
Agency for becoming
Finally, the data analysis gave weight to agency for becoming, which related to the act of imagining, projecting and engaging in self-transformation embedded in one’s capacity to design and construct one’s own life plan (Tran and Vu 2018). First, agency for becoming was revealed in the participants’ self-initiated act of pursuing academic excellence and living up to the honour associated with “Dr.”, as exempli- fied by the following views:
I have high expectations of my academic achievements. Because I already met the requirements for the conferment of a doctoral degree in XX University in China (as a postgraduate) before I came to Australia to do a PhD, I thought I would aspire to double my achievements. If the university requires three publi- cations, I would try to get six. (Priscilla).
I don’t feel there is any difference between me and local students. But the title of “Dr.” makes me humbler. I feel like I need to make more effort to deserve this title and accept this title with more confidence. (Susan).
I don’t think a female PhD is in any way different from a male PhD… Actu- ally, I think the most important reason for the demonisation of female PhDs is attributed to Internet trolls…(Lora).
Priscilla gave a vivid example of how past achievements underpinned her ambi- tion to aim for “double achievements”. Her agency for producing more publications than required showcased her self-positioning as an excellence seeker, which was based on her exceptional capacity, evinced by her previous record and future goal to be an outstanding academic. Her agency for becoming was thus manifested in her aspiration to become a high performer as part of her ongoing plan for her life’s tra- jectory. In Susan’s case, she felt humbled by the title of “Dr.”. Her self-driven deci- sion to “make more effort” to “deserve this title and accept this title with more con- fidence” demonstrated her agentic efforts to carve out a projected identity associated with a sense of pride as a PhD. These cases corroborate Tran and Vu (2018) who
contended that agency for becoming involved one’s active engagement in actualising a future plan as an integrative part of their life course.
Noticeably, Susan, together with Lora who declared that “I don’t think a female PhD is in any way different from a male PhD”, explicitly challenged a notion of otherness despite her being an international PhD, as well as negated the difference between female and male PhDs. This seemed to oppose previous literature which has contended that international doctoral students are additionally impeded due to their international status (Cotterall 2015) and that female doctoral students suffer from gender inequalities (Crabb and Ekberg 2014) in the Australian academic con- text. Two reasons might explain the disagreement. One is that international doctoral students are a heterogeneous group which constitutes sub-groups featuring diverse levels of sociocultural adaptability and academic capability. For the participants, they manifested high levels of autonomy and had established themselves as capa- ble agents. It is thus possible that they had found the international education jour- ney less daunting than other less capable sub-groups. Next, the participants were advantaged as their marital status did not entail family obligations such as parenting, which is widely accepted as enhancing women PhD students’ vulnerability (Mählck 2018). However, these single cases do not indicate that the general situation of inter- national doctoral students in Australia is becoming more optimistic, nor that the sexism that characterises the gendered academia is destabilised. That being said, at least, this study offers some empirical credence from an emic perspective to chal- lenge the legitimacy of the stigmatising discourse around international and female PhDs.
Second, agency for becoming was evident in the participants’ efforts in utilising, negotiating and constructing physical and symbolic relations, resources and capital within a third space, which gave shape to a transformative formation of their identity not only as a PhD student but also as a person in general. Speaking of the transform- ative nature of the doctoral journey, Wendy commented:
Regarding attitudes towards life, I have been influenced by Australians. I think life is about pursuing happiness … about leading a relatively laid-back life … and not limited too much by the outside … I now know proper ways of parent- ing. I will focus on drawing things out rather than push kids to do things they don’t like (if I have kids in the future). (Wendy).
Wendy mentioned a change of “attitudes towards life” in a wide range of aspects as a result of her immersive experience of observation, participation, reflection and creation in the new space. Situated in a heterogeneous sociocultural space where a different ideology was enacted, her transformed conceptualisation regarding the pursuit of happiness, a laid-back lifestyle, and inward formulation reconstructed her belief systems. Particularly, she averred her changing conceptualisation of her future parenting style. This again consolidated Tran and Vu (2018), who maintained that agency for becoming is intimately linked to the future positioning that may precede one’s actual engagement in certain acts.
Likewise, Zoe’s words encapsulated how governing structures of the third space gave new meaning-making and chances of producing her transformed identity. Her self-identified attributes of being more individualistic, pluralistic and self-affirmative
were shared by many participants who agreed they had internalised cultural and social norms in China that advocated the otherwise:
When I was in China, I agreed that if someone tops a career, that would be one’s success of life and one would be happy. But I have changed a lot these years abroad … I think it’s more important whether I like it or not … So what- ever I do now and in the future depends on my personal preference. I don’t care if it’s approved by the majority, or it matches what the mainstream defines as successful. I think it’s a purification of my ideology. I used to pay much attention to others’ opinions of me … But since I come to Australia, I gradu- ally feel how others think of me has nothing to do with what I am. I think it’s a huge achievement when a person values self-affirmation regardless of others’
affirmation or not. It’s a huge change and has affected my life a lot. (Zoe).
The lived reality of in-betweenness necessitated reflection on and negotiation of home and host spaces that were ideologically and culturally constructed in different ways. As evinced by Zoe, the new milieu offered her an additional reference system to modify and expand the old repertoire of values, beliefs and norms internalised as part of socialisation in the home context. Her agency of becoming presented itself as a holistic transformation because it was rooted in the metacognition of her being and becoming. Accumulated via daily cultural practices over “these years abroad”, as captured in her expression of “purification of my ideology”, her sense of confidence and autonomy to pursue a life course subjected to her own control regardless of the mainstream judgment has given her new orientations to the world and created mean- ingful forms of engaging with the world (Singh et al. 2007).
Discussion and conclusion
This study illuminates Chinese female PhD students’ emic perceptions of the inter- play between their international academic mobility and their identity construction.
Specifically, it centred around untangling how “agency in mobility” was enacted by them in the in-between space and how their navigation of identity in international doctoral education experiences reflected (or not) the third gender discourse. Some insights can be gleaned from addressing the above two questions.
By and large, this study reveals that the participants’ representation of their iden- tity takes issue with their home cultural discourse, which stigmatises this cohort as a sexless third gender, objects to a deficit discourse that problematises interna- tional students as others, and challenges a broader gender discourse among societies which tends to highlight female doctoral students’ structural constraints (e.g. Haynes et al. 2012; Juniper et al. 2012) instead of their personal agency. With positive self- positioning, the participants employed three forms of “agency in mobility”, namely, agency as struggle and resistance, needs-response agency, and agency for becoming, to construct a transformative identity that was materialised through agentic endeav- ours and myriad structures within the in-between space.
Findings of this study echo Castelló et al. (2020) whose recent research iden- tified that researcher identity is socially constructed and dynamic, the changes of which through time are explained by key terms such as the self and agency. Com- pared with previous research which failed to focus specifically on doctoral students’
agency enactment despite having identified their formation of identity in relation to diverse prototypical doctoral engagements, for example, departmental interactions (Fotovatian 2012), academic writing (Xu and Hu 2019) and other scholarly activities within research community (Coffman et al. 2016), this study contributes to the exist- ent scholarship by explicating forms of agency from a new theoretical lens and shed- ding a more nuanced light foregrounding gender in the empirical inquiry. Building upon previous studies which supported the interplay between personal agency and structural constructs in negotiating international doctoral students’ sense of identity (e.g. Xu et al. 2020; Ye 2018), this study makes further theoretical contribution by incorporating “agency in mobility” and the in-betweenness in addressing this issue.
This research gives weight to the conceptualisation that “agency in mobility” can serve as productive forces whereby international students potentially transform their present and future beings (Tran and Vu 2018), as they enact “agency in mobility”
in the in-between space where meanings are permanently read and created anew (Bhabha 1994). It showcases that the analysis of international students’ identity can and should be enriched by articulating the dynamics between their agentic practices and the grand structures of the in-between context in which they are producing and being produced.
This study illuminates two dualities in the findings. The first duality points to the fact that the participants’ enactment of agency must accommodate structural factors in both home space and host spaces. On one hand, the participants’ agency as strug- gle and resistance was noticeably manifested prior to their mobility, in subverting the restrictive discourse held by their parents and relatives regarding the female PhD in their home context. On the other hand, their needs-response agency and agency for becoming were noteworthy during their stay in the host context. They presented themselves as proactive agents who capitalised on resources to meet professional, culture learning and emotional needs in the alien context. As well, they invested their efforts in the international education trajectory to transform their identity which features flexibility, inclusivity and liberality.
The second duality relates to the reciprocity between agency and the in-between space in shaping the students’ identity. Whereas enactment of agency is entangled with the students’ assessment, imagination and manipulation of the in-between space, their agentic outcomes keep transforming the grand structure of that space, a consequence of which influences their agency. On one hand, a third space intro- duces new structural demands on the students’ acts as it involves social relations and symbolic meanings that differ from those in the home context, which may incur a sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction and a tension of contestation (Bhabha 1994). As well, it promises “new activities, new worlds, and new ways of being” (Holland et al. 2001, p. 5). Nevertheless, the generative potentiality of these elements is realised only to the extent that international students exert agency to achieve their goals. In this study, coping strategies to enhance researching skills and address various issues such as mental problems were salient among these demands
or needs. Facing these, Chinese female PhDs established themselves as in-between- ers who were “in between” being a follower and an explorer in their cross-cultural learning process (Dai 2020). They mobilised different forms of agency to negotiate, modify and produce their doctoral trajectory towards a positive process of becoming and being. On the other hand, the in-between space is humanly constructed, manipu- lated and produced by the agentic students. Permeating the past–present–future life course, their enactment of the three forms of agency not only challenged the struc- tural constraints imposed on international and female PhDs in both home and host spaces, but also instilled positive energies into the spaces that served to facilitate their own transformation in terms of parenting style, attitudes and outlook on life.
The findings support Tran and Vu’s (2018) conceptualisation that “agency in mobil- ity” importantly reshapes and produces spaces to contribute to intercultural learning.
As one of the first studies investigating the agency of international Chinese female PhDs, this study makes theoretical and empirical contributions documented above. It however has several limitations which hopefully can be addressed in future research. One of them is that it can hardly imply any generalisability or representa- tivity of the cohort of international Chinese female PhDs given its small size. Also, the participants feature a great extent of homogeneity in terms of their socioeco- nomic level and marital status, which may hinder diverse findings from emerging. In order to tackle this, future research may consider investigating a bigger sample size with more heterogeneity. Further, this study only concentrated on an exploration of students’ interpretations at the time point when their sojourn was underway. Future studies may gain further insights by looking into their narrative after repatriating to China upon graduation. Does Chinese female PhDs’ enactment of agency change as they re-enter the home space? What impact does the international mobility have on their meaning-making and practices of agency upon repatriation? These are ques- tions left to be examined.
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Xing Xu is a lecturer at Sichuan International Studies University, China, and a PhD candidate at the Uni- versity of Newcastle, Australia. Her areas of interest are international higher education, cross-cultural adaptation, identity construction and qualitative inquiry.
