Temporary Sojourns in the Periphery.

This thesis reports the findings of a qualitative research project on partners of international students in Lancaster, United Kingdom, a place selected as an example of the many peripheral university cities affected by the growth in international student migration. The experiences of these voluntary, temporary, mostly highly skilled migrants differ from accounts of other mobile people and have so far been largely ignored in the literature. This is a lack that this thesis fills. Drawing on diverse bodies of migration literature as well as on semi-structured interviews, I explore these migrants' experiences concerning employment, home, social networking and network support whilst they reside in Lancaster. I show that these 'immobilised mobile' people have to rely on the local, restricted, labour market in their search for employment and that they invest a huge amount of emotional labour for the creation of a 'diasporic intimacy' which is important for the formation of an 'intimate diasporic space' in the home. I further discuss their attempts to form meaningful social networks at the place of relocation and their work on maintaining relations abroad. I explore also how these migrants can feel in or out of place at the new setting.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ph.D.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Lancaster University

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Grindel, Elisabeth Claudia