Although student mobility and educational border crossings, particularly from non-Western economies to English-speaking countries, such as the United States, are not new, theoretical concepts that help illuminate global student mobilities rarely examine lived realities of university students in transnational spaces. We aim to explore the phenomenon of ‘spiritual homelessness’ experienced by international students in the United States and how their perceived sense of belonging and not belonging in their home or host places contribute to their reconstruction of identity in transnational spaces. Based on a 3-hour focus group discussion with international students from eight different countries (N = 11) studying at a large southern university in the United States, this study highlights the nexus between multiple, contradictory and simultaneous processes of belonging and identity through student-defined transnational higher education spaces. Findings demonstrate that international students are part of multiple and contradictory discourses, where there is a synergetic construction of transnational spaces as open and diverse, but also discriminatory and exclusionary as they negotiate where they belong or not belong. This study provides a critical scoping of student-defined spaces and foregrounds the typological theoretical construct of spiritual homelessness to provide new insights into global student mobilities and identity reconstruction in transnational spaces.

中文翻译：

---

美国留学生跨国空间精神无家可归现象

尽管学生流动和教育过境点，特别是从非西方经济体到美国等英语国家，并不是新事物，但有助于阐明全球学生流动性的理论概念却很少考察大学生在跨国空间中的生活现实。我们旨在探索在美国的国际学生所经历的“精神上的无家可归”现象，以及他们感知到的归属感和不属于自己的家乡或寄宿地的感觉如何有助于他们在跨国空间中重建身份。基于与来自八个不同国家的国际学生进行的 3 小时焦点小组讨论（N = 11) 在美国南部的一所大型大学学习，这项研究通过学生定义的跨国高等教育空间强调了归属和身份的多重、矛盾和同时的过程之间的联系。调查结果表明，国际学生是多重和矛盾话语的一部分，在这些话语中，跨国空间的协同构建是开放和多样化的，但在他们协商自己属于或不属于的地方时也存在歧视性和排他性。本研究对学生定义的空间进行了批判性界定，并突出了精神无家可归的类型学理论构建，为全球学生流动和跨国空间中的身份重建提供了新的见解。