Transnational Youth Mobilities and Identity Formation

Transnational youth mobility refers to the diverse ways in which young people move across borders—whether through migration, study abroad, family visits or short-term exchanges—and the profound influence these experiences have on how they see themselves and their place in the world. Far from being a one-off event, mobility is now understood as a process that shapes educational pathways, social networks and cultural allegiances over time. Scholars have demonstrated that patterns of movement can foster resilience, reshape status hierarchies and produce hybrid identities that draw on multiple national and cultural frameworks. Research highlights how mobility‐based analytical categories can reveal differences and commonalities among youth irrespective of origin, how transnational schooling environments become sites for identity negotiation, and how relocations back to ancestral homelands generate new senses of belonging. The global significance of these findings resonates in policy debates on integration, education and social cohesion, offering practical insights for educators, youth workers and migration practitioners seeking to support young people in multi-local contexts.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Transnational Youth Mobilities and Identity Formation publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in transnational youth mobilities and identity formation across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Transnational mobility: The spectrum of movements by young people across national borders, encompassing permanent migration, temporary exchanges and cyclical trips, understood as an ongoing process rather than a single event.

Identity formation: The evolving development of a young person’s sense of self, comprising cultural, social and personal dimensions influenced by experiences and environments.

Mobility-based categories: Analytical constructs that classify youth according to patterns and trajectories of movement instead of traditional markers such as ethnicity or generation.

Hybrid identity: A composite sense of self that integrates cultural elements, values and practices drawn from two or more national or social contexts.

References

1. Diversifying analytical categories for studying youth with and without migration background: an example of mobility-based categories. Comparative Migration Studies (2024).
2. Starting from Lagos: International schooling and the diverse transnational status‐making projects of ‘Middling’ and ‘Elite’ Nigerians. Global Networks (2024).
3. Interaction of ancestry and agency: Challenges, constraints and options for second‐generation Albanian youth relocating from Greece. Population Space and Place (2023).