192 / 658
190
Saturday, November 12
0 9 : 0 0 – 1 0 : 3 0
practices (Couldry, 2004), by Portuguese Muslim women of Indian and Mozambican origins, who lived in colonial Mozambique up until 1975, having
migrated to Portugal from that date onwards. It addresses the significance of the remembered radio broadcasts and print media back in colonial Mozam‑
bique in the constant negotiation and construction of a gendered imperial Portuguese-ness and in the perceptions of the Portuguese Empire among these
postcolonial subjects. Such a reflection aims as well to contribute to the discussion of the (dis)continuities between the colonial and the postcolonial within
the framework of the Lusophone postcoloniality, while also putting in evidence the way through which past mediations of the Empire overseas have shaped
past, present and future (post)colonial identities.
PP 577
Gender on the Move: International Female Students, Identity and Mediated Practices of Mobility
A. Khlusova
1
1
King's College London, Culture- Media and Creative Industries, London, United Kingdom
Female international students outnumber male in the migration population of the UK (UK HESA, 2015). Existing literature on student mobility is replete
of national trends and statistics (Field, 2014), yet it still misses to highlight the gendered dimensions of international student mobility. The apparent
knowledge gap also dismisses gender-related processes, including gender identity formation, self-presentation and performance, adjustments resulting
from corporal mobility and integrated communicative practices. Actually, the available theoretical frameworks stubbornly ignore the significance of me‑
diated practices of mobility in relation to the experiences of international students who build their gender identity in the crossroads of the cultural shock.
Consequently, this academic neglect opens a relevant research strand that grows in the intersection of three well-consolidated fields of literature: gendered
geographies and spaces (Mahler and Pessar, 1994; 2001, McDowell, 1999), media and transnational migration (Georgiou, 2006; Kim, 2011; Madianou,
2011) and international student mobility (Findlay, 2010, 2011; Gargano, 2008). This is where this paper is embedded. Hence, the objective is to bring these
lines of scholarship previously held apart into a conversation to create new understandings of international women’s reconstructions of gendered selves
in the context of mediation and across multiple student-inhabited transnational spaces. In this emerging frame, ICTs are approached as restructuring
interconnections between experiences and practices of transnational mobility, gender, identity reimagining and remembering. As such, this paper explores
the complex ways in which the multiple on-going virtual transnational communications shape and mediate the perfomative practices of gender, memory
and ultimately the construction of selfhood that occur in the context of international student migration. Based on a set of qualitative open interviews,
employed in parallel to multi-modal strategies such as reflective reports of the communicative engagements of the participants, this work introduces
the first empirically grounded insights on the trajectories of the international students across their media practice. These findings are analysed according to
the narrative enquiry methodology, whereby the narratives of the participants are treated as the biographical articulation of social forces, cultural practices
and personal memories. The paper deals as well with a double critical discussion involving both the methodological strategy adopted and the theoretical
opportunities of this approach. Before the end, the text introduces the forthcoming developments of this extensive research program.