Unravelling Indonesian Student Mobility to China: Politics, Identities, and Trajectories

Abstract

This dissertation is the first to investigate the Indonesian student mobility to China as one of the emerging yet less examined student mobility corridors in the rising peripheries. The study employs in-depth and multi-angled analyses to specifically investigate the interplay of politics, identities and trajectories. It aims to make sense of international student mobility (ISM) as a mundane yet complex process inseparable from the socio-political changes. This study shows that Indonesian student mobility to China reflects and is shaped by the fluctuating political, economic and sociocultural relations between Indonesia and China. Yet, these student mobility flows are argued to connect the two countries and societies amidst their turbulent relations. After almost three decades of suspended relations that halted student mobility between the two countries, in the early 2000s Indonesian students began to study in China again. The present mobility started as a result of a series of political changes: the emergence of China following the introduction of its ‘opening up and reform policy’ in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the post-Asian crisis political reform in Indonesia in 1998, and the restoration of the legal rights and cultural expressions of Chinese-Indonesians (Indonesians of Chinese descent) after 1998. These intertwining factors created a new trajectory dominated by self-funded middle-class Chinese-Indonesian students. Since then, the number of Indonesian students in China has grown rapidly, making China the top destination for Indonesian mobile students and reflecting the development of other links between the two countries. The deepening relations between Indonesia and China, the increasing number of Indonesian students going to China and various expectations concerning their mobility have often eclipsed that tragic events and identity politics have occurred and affected this mobility trajectory. This study shows that the Indonesian student mobility to China is highly determined by the interplay of politics and identity. For the Chinese-Indonesians, their ethnic Chinese identity is a sensitive label that has continuously been redefined and politicised. At the individual level, identity politics also influences the mobility experiences of Chinese-Indonesian and Indonesian students by being a basis for social exclusion and inclusion in their everyday interactions in China. Identity politics also influences the continuous identity construction, negotiation and transformation of the Chinese-Indonesians students studying in China. Through interaction with the previously imagined place and people (i.e. China and the Chinese), the existing imaginary bond and cultural and spatial identities are negotiated and deconstructed/reconstructed. As such, Chinese-Indonesian student mobility to China contributes to the never-ending, incomplete and continuous process of the Chinese-Indonesians’ identity construction. Related to that process, this study also highlights that the transnational identity of Indonesian students in China can be acquired and indeed become a human capital. Equipped with this transnational identity, the students are expected to be the bridge that connects two places and societies, a challenging role amidst the turbulent relations and the prevailing identity politics.