ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concept of mobility and argues for its importance as an oft-forgotten element when considering educational internationalism. Mobility at first glance seems to fit perfectly within the well-traveled narrative of Western freedom opposing Eastern repression, and Northern knowledge being used to guide Southern development. However, such approaches often miss the challenges and contradictions to long-standing state-based Cold War frameworks represented by internationalist causes and desires. Educational internationalism can be used to deconstruct given understandings of agency and subjectivity, revealing hidden topographies of cultural, social, and political experience. Mobility – representing something more than mere movement – is an ideal additional concept through which to unlock and explore those experiences and the emotions, prejudices, and hierarchies they contain. This chapter uses examples of Trans-Pacific mobility during the Cold War, enabled through various forms of US cultural diplomacy, to demonstrate how mobility, modernity, and cosmopolitanism were closely intertwined. Together they form a frame for re-examining the lived realities of those individuals who aspired to the benefits and the vision of regional progress that US cultural diplomacy projected.
