Global Citizenship and the Purpose of Study Away: Mexico (LRW)

Three years ago, when I studied abroad in Austria for one year, I remember feeling belittled and upset when I was asked "how was your trip?" upon my return to the United States. This paltry question couldn't possibly address the challenges and cultural experiences of an entire year of my life in a foreign country, and worse, it seemed to imply that my year abroad was a vacation, like a week in the Bahamas or a short trip to Disneyland. 

The airport in Queretaro during my travels this week

I felt as if I changed tremendously, but no one seemed to notice. I was now a "global citizen," with foreign cultural experiences and new language skills, but I was still an American citizen, living in Pennsylvania, with an American family and an American upbringing. On the outside, and in a legal and cultural sense as well, nothing had changed. And even though I had felt like an Austrian citizen towards the end of my exchange, I never had the rights or duties that national citizenship entails- to vote, or participate in the government in a substantial way. In fact, I couldn't even legally reside in Europe longer than a tourist without my student visa. As Michael Byers explains "if such a thing as global citizenship exists, it clearly doesn't amount to the rights of national citizenship, transposed to a planetary level." 

I started my second study abroad experience this semester in Mexico with a slightly different perspective than before. I looked at the program description, filled with photos of pleased students posing next to pyramids and other impressionable landmarks, promising adventure, travel, and an opportunity to engage in another culture, with a slightly more critical eye.What would I actually gain from an experience abroad there? Would I truly be able to participate in the culture there "just like a local?"

In her article "American Students Abroad Can't Be 'Global Citizens'" Zemach-Bersin explains that "as Americans, our national citizenship, passports, skin color, and currency exchange... all make it impossible to 'act like locals.' Everywhere I went [in India], I was viewed and treated as exactly what I am: a white, advantaged American." Here is the unspoken truth of what every study abroad experience entails: living in Mexico, I am not learning what it's like to be a Mexican. I am learning what it is like to live in Mexico as a foreigner.

My host brother and I are basically twins

Many aspects of my experience, which help shape my perception of Mexican culture in general, are intrinsic to my perspective as an outsider. My host brother certainly doesn't have to deal with catcalls on the street, or being up-charged by taxi drivers who think he does not know the local fares. For him, the connections between family members, or the social class disparities in Mexico, are just as natural as the American political system and an insensible love of peanut butter are to me.

So what is the purpose of study away if you can never truly participate in that culture? Why live in a foreign country if there is no such thing as "global citizenship?" Many students embrace these doubts as truth. They venture abroad as if they had just "bought a product, and expect to consume their experience." They return home with their suitcases stuffed with souvenirs, spouting stories of language mishaps and other funny cultural circumstances. They had the time of their lives, and they have the pictures to prove it.

The view of the Sierra Gorda from Bernal

I am not suggesting that the study away experience isn't valuable. In fact, I cannot recommend it highly enough. But the core of the issue is this: why do you study away? Maybe it's because you will gain invaluable language skills, or you will learn how to adapt in unfamiliar settings, or you will discover new knowledge about yourself that you would never find out in your own culture. All of these are good reasons. But they all involve what you will gain from it: Ultimately, the experience is really about yourself, and not the foreign culture in which you will live.

If you want to make that experience valuable, if you truly want to become a global citizen, you have to utilize it in the way that Byers describes. To become a global citizen, to allow "two communities to come together within an individual... we need not give up our special affiliations and identities... but we do need to work to make all human beings part of our dialogue and concern." A huge part of studying away is learning how to relate to others with beliefs and values much different than our own. This means not just mourning with Brussels and Paris, but also Turkey. This means being informed about other political and economic systems than our own, and not just being "dependent on the fickle attention of the 'global' media [instead of] on any genuine, sustained core of common concern."

A pretty picture of the sunset over the ocean in Nuevo Vallarta

If you treat study away like you are simply a tourist in another country, it really is just a trip. When you return home, and friends and family ask how it was, you can show them the pretty pictures, and share your stories of language mishaps and all the strange cultural differences. But you can also take Byer's up on his challenge to "take back" what being a global citizen means, and use it to "empower individual human beings to participate in decisions concerning their lives, including the political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental conditions in which they live... through engagement in the various communities of which the individual is a part at the local, national, and global level. [Global citizenship] includes the right to challenge authority and existing power structures- to think, argue, and act- with the intent of changing the world." This is the goal of my study abroad experience, what's yours?