This book offers an in-depth look at the experiences of international students as they pursued undergraduate degrees in the US. Drawing on recurring interviews with the students and other qualitative data collected over four years, the book investigates how the students’ academic development intersected with other life factors, including their status as international students, their linguistic backgrounds, the challenges of functioning in a new sociocultural environment, and the circumstances of living in the US on a student visa. In sum, the book presents an understanding of the students as agentive young adults who exerted great effort to make US higher education align with their own desires for spatial, ideological, and socioeconomic mobility.

Jason Schneider is Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse at DePaul University, USA.