Friendship networks and encounters in student-migrants’ negotiations of translocal subjectivity.

This paper explores the complex intersections between place, friendship networks and encounters, and the development and negotiation of ‘translocal subjectivities’ for student-migrants living in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on qualitative research with student-migrants of various nationalities, the paper explores how student-migrants narrate encounters with friends and the formation of different friendship networks in relation to place at two significant stages of their migration journey: during initial arrival and ‘settling in’ in Melbourne, and during return visits to their hometowns and cities. This analysis uses the concept of ‘translocal subjectivities’ (Conradson and Mckay (2007), Translocal subjectivities: Mobility, connection, emotion. Mobilities 2: 167-174 to highlight how encounters with friends shape senses of self that are both multiply located and transformed through transnational mobility; and how specific urban localities, materialities and social practices are involved in the negotiation of the ‘translocal’ self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]