Vietnamese doctoral students’ imaginative geographies of their destination countries

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on Vietnamese PhD students’ imaginative geographies of their destination countries. Using the data collected from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 Vietnamese PhD students, the study examines the participants’ preparation for their sojourn before their departure, as well as their first multi-sensory experiences of the study countries on the first days of arrival, which then revealed how their imaginative geographies had been constructed and how they perceived the contrast between their imaginative geographies and reality. The findings of the study suggest that when the students chose to study overseas, they had diverse imaginations of the destinations that had been constructed over long periods of time thanks to the influences of movies, newspapers, media, and experiences of those in their social networks. Furthermore, the paper also highlights the collective imagination about countries in the West and the imagination of the collective West among Vietnamese students.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral education
• international doctoral students
• imaginative geography
• country image
• Vietnam
• collective imagination

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Toni Bruce and Dr. Esther Fitzpatrick from The University of Auckland, New Zealand for their valuable comments on the first draft of this paper and their constant encouragement throughout the time this project was conducted. The author also thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their critical feedback which helped the author greatly enhance the quality of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).