This paper deals with doctoral candidates in STEM fields from Asia residing in Germany.

In the Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens defines globalization as “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” (1990: 64).

Globalization is lately part of German universities as the number of students from abroad and especially from non-EU countries has increased. For instance, since 2006, the number of Indian students in Germany has almost quadrupled, so that with 60,000 students, China and India now occupy the top two places in the ranking of foreign students in Germany (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, 2020). According to DAAD (2019) 10,6% of the international students (Bildungsausländer) are enrolled in PhD programmes in Germany, i.e. around 40 000. Moreover, most of them study in a field of STEM. This paper focusses on STEM, a field with relatively little information on both students’ and expectations when applying for doctoral positions in Germany and their academic choices.

In general, international mobility is associated with positive benefits for both the sending and receiving country (Jöns 2007) and for individuals (Teichler, 2017).

This paper will address issues of international mobility from a life course perspective and its impact on doctoral students’ community, family and career choices.

Central questions are:

• How do international PhD candidates perceive their transition into the German academic environment  and what are their motives to enroll at a German university?
• What are PhD candidates’ life projects, their professional choices and trajectories in education and training?

Biographical- narrative interviews with international doctoral students from China and India will be the core of this study. The methodological choices will be evaluated from the point of view of research in lifelong learning and life courses the context of higher education. First by understanding and reconstructing the biographical experiences of international PhD candidates we can implicitly better understand their expectations, orientation and impact their choices have on community, family and host academic environments.

This presentation will take a look at PhDs expectations and motivation as seem from their subjective experience within the German academic envirnoment.

References Elder, G.H. (1994). Time, human agency and social-change. Perspective on the life course. Social Psychology Quarterly. 57. 4-15 Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press; Stanford: Stanford University Press Iredale, R. (2001). The migration of professionals: theories and typologies. International Migration 39(5):24.