Mobile student experience: The place of tourism

This paper reviews the conceptualisation of mobile student experience within tourism studies, sojourner adjustment studies, critical acculturation research, and mobilities research. Despite some useful contributions on “educational tourism”, the study of mobile student experience has largely been left to sojourner adjustment studies. However, recent critiques create opportunities for a reconceptualisation of mobile student experience, drawing upon tourism studies engaging with power relations, performativity, and practice. The paper proposes the “Place Practice” model of mobile student experience, synthesising these contributions and developing a more holistic and contextual conceptualisation of mobile student experience. This highlights the unfulfilled potential for tourism researchers to contribute to understanding student mobility, and other contemporary hybrid mobilities that do not conform to conventional disciplines and social domains. •Critically reviews our current understanding of the experience of mobile students.•Highlights the contribution of research on tourism performativity and practice.•Proposes the “Place Practice” model, synthesising research from different fields.•Provides a more holistic and relational perspective on mobile student experience.•Discusses the tourism research implications of contemporary hybrid mobilities.