Criticality as a form of fluid habitus: exploring the lived experiences of international PhD students studying in the UK

In both participants’ and my own research journals and in interviews and informal conversations with twelve international PhD students studying in the UK from abroad, there is strong evidence that they and I were engaged in a mutual exploration of our lived experiences of constructing criticality. Throughout this thesis, I refer to the combatting of essentialist grand narratives about international students through my preferred non-essentialist paradigm that appreciates the background resources relating to criticality that these students bring with them and can contribute to the internationalisation process. Adopting this paradigm enables me to begin to learn what often remains invisible in essentialist studies. I begin to learn that criticality is constructed and experienced dialogically in continuous development. This indicates the importance of dialogue in students’ relationships with others, such as supervisors and fellow PhD students – both of which are shown to be among the strongest influences on the construction of their criticality. I also begin to learn that there is a link between criticality and living. This link is evidenced in the data as indicated by the following participants’ statements: ‘being independent becomes a life style’, ‘stick to it until you do it’, ‘being critical is a journey I still learn’, ‘I care about them’, ‘I always want to know’. This link must mean that criticality is not necessarily only associated with academic study or with being at a university in Britain. Another point I begin to understand is that travelling per se to anywhere and from anywhere might contribute to nurturing students’ existing sense of criticality because it is a way of entering into thoughts and feelings other than their own and therefore broadening their perspectives. This is the research opportunity that needs more exploration, and it is what I, therefore, intend to demonstrate in my thesis by focusing on the international PhD students’ experiences of constructing their criticality.