In Australia, increasing international secondary students (ISS) enrolments, particularly from Asia, is a priority for all school jurisdictions. However, the diversity of ISS problematizes theories of transnational education fields. ISS include fee-paying, unaccompanied minors living in a host-family or school boarding; fee-paying accompanied minors living with a parent, relative or family friends; and those who have access to free public education because a parent is enrolled in an Australian university as a research student. Some ISS return home after finishing school; others do further study in Australia. Many of the latter group are ‘migrants-in-waiting’, either looking to gain skilled immigrant status through tertiary study or when a parent who has completed a research degree is accepted for residency. These characteristics and conditions effect how transnational educational fields might be understood. This paper describes the methodology of one approach. Using a multi-method longitudinal, biographical design, we are seeking to unravel the dialogical relationship between the cultural and social that is lacking in transnational research on young people (Gardner 2012). Drawing on theories of connectedness and elective belonging (Bryceson & Vuorela 2002; Savage et al 2000), we are examining the cultural practices, including technologies and youth cultures, that connect/disconnect ISS to trans/local people and places, and how these experiences constitute students in different social fields, and shape the logic for their values, choices, behaviours and aspirations over time, in ways that (potentially) rework theoretical understandings of transnational educational fields.

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