Seeing-Ourselves-in-the-World: Developing Global Citizenship Through International Mobility and Campus Community

Taking a model of global citizenship that is primarily a matter of seeing the self-in-the-world as one dwelling among others, this article focuses on experiences of students with individual “significant others” and among international student communities, drawing on a 3-year study into U.K. undergraduate students participating in international mobility activities. Participants reveal how lived experience of Otherness in such intersubjective encounters enables moves to identify Self with others and to personalize hitherto distant places and practices. Even in the context of international mobility, encountering difference does not depend on the crossing of national cultures but on recognizing Otherness in all we may engage with and in ourselves. Most of the encounters in this study take place outside of the host culture or the “designed” features of the international mobility activities, suggesting opportunities for multicultural/international campuses to develop spaces for similarly rich learning for the nonmobile majority.