| Recent figures on the number of foreign students coming to the United States for higher education indicate that their numbers are rising. This has led many scholars to argue that higher education in the United States is becoming increasingly international with foreign students embodying this internationalism. Given this trend, my project explores the political socialization of youths who leave their home countries to come to the United States for higher studies, and seeks to understand how their experiences and learnings influence the ways in which they relate to politics in their home country.;This project is based on fieldwork conducted primarily in two different sites---New York City and the Washington DC Metropolitan Area---between December 2005 and January 2007, and a pilot study carried in the summer of 2005 in the San Francisco Bay Area. It provides an understanding of how the experiences of Nepali youths in the United States, the transnational ties they have established with their home country, and the different agents of socialization, both in the home and host countries, affect their political worldviews, identities and beliefs.;Findings from my research indicate that political learning among youths in a foreign country is a multifaceted process determined by many factors, including the degree to which individuals have been integrated into the culture of the host society; the family background of individuals; their relationships with academic institutions; their involvement in formal and informal immigrant networks in the receiving country; and the nature of their continuing relationships back home. Second, in terms of direct political engagement, the propensity of youths to participate in transnational political activism is structured by individuals' political inclinations and orientations; their past experiences with political mobilization; their links with immigrant networks, both formal and informal; and individual calculations of risks and benefits associated with participation. |
