Tourism Recreation Research ISSN: 0250-8281 (Print) 2320-0308 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtrr20 Cosmopolitan education, travel and mobilities to Washington, DC Felix Schubert & Kevin Hannam To cite this article: Felix Schubert & Kevin Hannam (2017) Cosmopolitan education, travel and mobilities to Washington, DC, Tourism Recreation Research, 42:2, 188-198, DOI: 10.1080/02508281.2017.1298702 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2017.1298702 Published online: 17 Mar 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 36 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rtrr20 Download by: [The UC San Diego Library] Date: 23 April 2017, At: 08:35 TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH, 2017 VOL. 42, NO. 2, 188–198 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2017.1298702 Cosmopolitan education, travel and mobilities to Washington, DC Felix Schubert a a and Kevin Hannam b Business School, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK; bResearch Affiliate, University of Johannesburg, South Africa ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This paper examines the cosmopolitan mobilities of young elites that take part in study-internship programmes in Washington, DC, US. In the case of Washington, DC, a large study-internship industry has been developed and this is an important example of how cities can become instrumental in organising specialised elite mobilities. These study-internship programmes (normally called Washington Semester Programmes (WSP)) give both US and international students the chance to study and intern in Washington, DC. Similar programmes exist in many global cities; however, Washington, DC has arguably become a central hub for those who wish to pursue careers in the fields of development politics or in the NGO sphere. The paper illustrates how ideas and stories of mobile careers and the importance of ‘being mobile’ on the job market catalyse student mobility into Washington, DC. Significantly, student mobilities to Washington, DC combine education with aspects of tourism and lifestyle mobilities. Moreover, these programmes allude to ideas of global citizenship through increasing participant’s human capital by enhancing their cosmopolitanism through this educational experience. Likewise, the participants in these programmes buy into those ideas of cosmopolitanism and the added value to their mobility capital through experiencing the political landscapes of Washington, DC. Received 20 November 2016 Accepted 21 February 2017 Introduction With the election of President Donald Trump, Washington, DC has become the focus of current media attention. Washington, DC is well established as one of the most important centres of power in the Western Hemisphere and mostly owes this reputation to its role as the capital of the US as well as being the residency of US presidents. For many tourists that is about the extent of the city’s image. According to the US Census Bureau, the Washington, DC metropolitan area has an estimated 6 million inhabitants and a student population of over 450,000 (Erickson, 2012). It is the most educated and regarded as the most affluent metropolitan area in the US (Marchio & Berube, 2015). According to Trujilo and Parilla (2016), 48% of the population had tertiary education degrees. In 2014, tourism to Washington, DC set an all-time record with over 20 million visitors, partly due to a 16% increase in international visitors over the previous year (Reuters, 2015). Around 90% of the city’s visitors, however, still come from within the US (Erickson, 2012). Since the 1990s, Washington, DC has experienced ongoing gentrification and ethnic and racial transformation (Jackson, 2015; Knox, 1991; Maher, 2015). Moreover, for many US residents, Washington, DC and everything within the beltway (physically embodied by CONTACT Kevin Hannam k.hannam@napier.ac.uk © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group KEYWORDS Education; cosmopolitanism; elites; mobilities; development; politics the Interstate 495 that encircles Washington, including parts of Maryland and Virginia) stands for an elitist sphere of influence: ‘Inside the Beltway’ is an expression we Americans hear all the time, yet routinely I’m asked what it means. Geographically, it’s everything within the capital beltway, a sixty-six-mile loop of deadly asphalt that, when not at its customary standstill, carries speeding motorists around Washington. But more often it refers to a mindset, or a malady. A person inside the Beltway can be devoid of common sense, on the take, out of touch with reality––out of touch with America. (McCaslin, 2004, p. 77) It is significant that, in this comment, the beltway symbolises a spatial limitation and also a mindset that the author describes as being perhaps out of touch with the everyday reality of many US residents as well as visitors including students and tourists. In a subsequent interview, McCaslin described how you ‘get caught up in Washington and all the politics, all the shenanigans, and it’s like a syndrome’ (C-SPAN, 2004). In the American election of 2016, Donald Trump was able to gain the support of many American citizens by a rhetoric that included many attacks against the elites and political establishment. As populism is on the rise, there have been growing resentments against elites and especially with regard to Washington and the US. Business School, Edinburgh Napier University, Craiglockhart Campus, Edinburgh EH14 1DJ, UK TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH There are the terms ‘beltway politics’ and ‘inside the beltway’ which both stand for the ruling elites in Washington, DC. Nonetheless, ‘getting into Washington’, being able to live in Washington, and having a successful career in Washington seems to be something that has been, and still is, attractive for many young people from all over the world. Standish argues that the growing demand for global education and education in global citizenship is rooted in ‘a sense that the world has changed: that we are no longer living in homogenous communities bounded by national borders, but rather than we inhabit a global society that has placed new demands upon individuals’ (2012, p. 1). Moreover, he explains that the following values are increasingly taught and demanded: New global realities are highlighted including the global market place, multicultural communities, and postnational politics. This global world is characterized by change and uncertainty, brought about by social and economic forces beyond the control of the nation state, and so knowledge and skills very quickly become outdated. In this fluid environment, knowledge of the past, the subject-based academic curriculum, is presented as less important than the skills for acquiring knowledge and working with others. Therefore, we are told, students need a different kind of education. (Standish, 2012, p. 2) The Washington Semester Programmes (WSPs) discussed below are an exemplar of such specialised educational study-internship programmes that emphasises these skills and values. This paper thus examines the cosmopolitan mobilities of young elites that take part in study-internship programmes in Washington, DC. Unlike North-South Volunteering literature, there is little literature on studyinternship mobilities to and within the global North and this paper aims to analyse these privileged mobilities. We argue that students come to Washington to take part in these WSPs not for the subject-based education but in order to develop elite contacts and showcase their global citizenship. In the case of Washington, DC, a significant study-internship industry has been developed and this is an important example of how cities can become instrumental in organising specialised elite educational and tourism mobilities. Educational mobilities, tourism and cosmopolitanism From a mobilities perspective, tourism is seen as integral to wider processes of economic and political development processes and even constitutive of everyday life (Hannam & Knox, 2010). It is not just that tourism is a 189 form of mobility like other forms of mobility such as commuting or migration but that different mobilities inform and are informed by tourism (Sheller & Urry, 2004). Thus, we need to continually examine the multiple mobilities in any situation: mobilities involve the movement of people such as students as tourists, but also the movement of a whole range of material things as well as the movement of thoughts and ideas – including educational ones (Allen-Robertson & Beer, 2010; Hannam & Guereno-Omil, 2015; Williams, 2006). The mobilities paradigm also calls for a shift of focus, a more in-depth look at the process of mobility itself and the circumstances in which mobilities takes place, maybe constituting the most innovative component of the mobilities paradigm (Adey, 2010, pp. 36–37). As Adey, Bissell, Hannam, Merriman, and Sheller (2013, p. 21) state, ‘Mobilities, cultures and identities can best be approached through an attention to routes and paths, flows, and connections’. An essential idea to understanding the purpose of the mobilities paradigm is that mobility has to be interpreted in more than ‘its usual connotation – movement’ (Adey, 2010, p. 34). Because movements always take place within a framework and have multiple consequences, to reduce their meaning to the sole act of a move from A to B is not adequate. Oftentimes, mobility is just stripped of its meaning by interpreting it purely as the study of movements, therefore making it a more descriptive field of studies: thus, ‘mobility is movement imbued with meaning’ (Adey, 2010, p. 34). A great deal of mobilities research has analysed forms and experiences of embodied travel involving the blurring of spaces of work, leisure, family life, migration and, indeed, education, organised in terms of contrasting time–space modalities (ranging from daily commuting to attend university or a once-in-a-lifetime round the world trip) (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, 2006). In particular, the concept of lifestyle mobility has been developed to describe ‘the spatial mobility of relatively affluent individuals of all ages, moving either part-time or full-time to places that are meaningful because, for various reasons, they offer the potential of a better quality of life’ (Benson, O’Reilly, & Kershen, 2009, p. 2). As Benson et al. (2009, p. 5) emphasise, the belief ‘that spatial mobility in itself enables some form of self-realization’ is key to understanding the concept of lifestyle mobility. The concept of lifestyle mobilities has been used to describe the mobilities of people that want to escape everyday lifestyles dominated by consumerism and materialism (Benson et al., 2009, p. 4). The desire for alternative lifestyles in the context of elite transnationalism and selfdevelopment has also been widely discussed in various contexts (see, for example, Benson et al., 2009; Cohen, 190 F. SCHUBERT AND K. HANNAM 2010; Cohen, Duncan, & Thulemark, 2015; Rickly, 2014; Thorpe, 2012). For many students, internship and related volunteering experiences have become ever more popular and a means to raise their social and cultural capital. It has been suggested that volunteer tourism mobilities ‘represent a novel (or at least evolving) form of globalised work practice that is bound into the changing needs of the global economy in general – and transnational firms in particular’ (Jones, 2011, p. 532). Intercultural experiences (often from the Global South) and internationally recognised qualifications (always from the Global North) are increasingly being expected by transnational firms, and non-state actors such as NGOs, educational providers and volunteers seem to clearly understand this and ‘are increasingly aware of and motivated by the specific and hard-to-acquire values, knowledges, skills and attitudes that international voluntary work experience provides’ (Jones, 2011, p. 532). Jones (2011, p. 532) further suggests that employers seeking ‘these skills and capacities were seen as intangible and different to those young volunteers would acquire from formal education, as well as being only acquirable by working abroad (i.e. outside of their home country)’. The extent to which the acquisition of these intangible skills also plays a role in internship mobilities has yet to be analysed however. While there have been critical analyses of volunteer tourism (see, for example, Butcher & Smith, 2015; Mostafanezhad, 2013, 2014), research on study abroad and internship programmes have been mainly focused on the educational and cultural benefits of such programmes with little recourse to the wider political ramifications (see, for example, Lam & Ching, 2007; Root & Ngampornchai, 2013). Hence, in this paper, we want to discuss how ideas of global citizenship, as well as stories and perceptions of Washington, DC, mobilise students to the city as young cosmopolitan consumers. Furthermore, we also note how their mobilities have helped to change both the image and fabric of the city. Research methodology This paper is based upon qualitative data collection which took place in Washington, DC during 2015. This included interviews with various stakeholders (5), students (19), field observations of urban change in Washington, DC in 2015, as well as analysis of websites and marketing materials from various stakeholders. The stakeholders interviewed were either WSP coordinators, staff or higher officials within the programmes and they were interviewed about their respective programme, Washington, DC and views on Higher Education policies. The four main themes in the interviews with WSP students focused on their lives in Washington, DC, their participation in their respective programme (as well as their decision-making process for participation in the programme), their experiences on the job market as well as their travel biographies. All of the interviews were transcribed verbatim and inputted into the software NviVo for analysis. The websites we analysed used a purposive sampling method using the most prominent and most established providers of study-internship programmes. While we did do a comprehensive review of the websites of educational providers in Washington, DC, we chose to use those that attract the most students. We then used textual analysis (Hannam & Knox, 2005). Hannam and Knox explain that textual analysis is a ‘qualitative technique concerned with unpacking the cultural meanings inherent in the material in question’ while the researcher has to draw upon his or her ‘own knowledge and beliefs as well as the symbolic meaning systems that they share with others’ (2005, p. 24). This analytical method requires the researcher to deal with the collected data and the text very closely, and even more importantly, it requires the reflexivity of the researcher in order to maintain the validity and credibility of the research. This means that the researcher needs to keep assumptions and preconceptions in check and highlight their impact on his or her research, as well as carefully explaining the steps that were taken in the data analysis (Hannam & Knox, 2005). The Washington, DC internship industry In Washington, DC, a number of study-internship programmes were developed in the course of the last century. These programmes usually combine internships with subject-specific study courses (at American University, you can take part in programmes on American Politics, Global Economics and Business, Foreign Policy, International Environment and Development, International Law and Organizations, Journalism, Justice and Law, The Middle East and World Affairs, Peace and Conflict Resolution and Transforming Communities). There are a variety of educational institutions that offer study-internship programmes in Washington, DC, including the universities based in DC that offer these programmes, branch campuses of universities that are located somewhere else in the US as well as private non-university organisations. The largest universities in the Washington, DC area that have significant study-internship programmes are American University (with about 700 participants per year and more than 40,000 alumni since it was TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH founded in 1947 (American University, 2014, p. 2), Georgetown University (founded in 1789) and George Washington University (founded in 1821). These programmes are open to both American and international students (who can fulfil the admission requirements). Then there are also off-branch campuses of universities that are not based in Washington (e.g. the Universities of California System). In 1982, the University of California, Irvine set up the UCDC programme that claims to have more than 10,000 alumni; other examples are Harvard and Stanford who have set up their own programmes in Washington. Stanford University bought a property in north western Washington in 1988 and consequently set up their own programme with about 1300 alumni to date (Stanford in Washington, 2016; UCDC, 2016). There is no official register for these programmes, which makes it difficult to differentiate between universities that physically built off-branch campuses and those that just cooperate and affiliate with existing programmes. Nonetheless, the fact that a significant number of universities offer their students the chance to participate in study-internship programmes in Washington, DC speaks for the success and the demand for this kind of student mobility. There are also some non-university actors such as The Fund for American Studies, which was established in 1967 and claims to be ‘a leader in educating young people from around the world in the fundamental principles of American democracy and our free market system’ (DC Internships, 2016). There are also other funds, associations or organisations such as the Washington Center (founded in 1970, with ‘140 professional staff, associate faculty and Alumni in Residence, 1,600 interns plus several hundred seminar participants each year’ and about 50,000 alumni (Washington Center, 2016), and the Washington Internship Institute (established in 1990, 2500 alumni). In addition to all of these programmes, there are summer schools and internship placement programmes organised by universities from outside the US that operate with similar aims. There are broad estimates that in total about 20,000 interns come to Washington each summer, of whom 6000 intern in Congress (Politico, 2009). According to Johnson (2010), the annual number of interns in Washington ranges from 20,000 to 40,000, of which about 2500 interns are participants of placement programmes. Johnson (2010) estimates that over the past 40 years, ‘the programs have collectively placed more than 60,000 interns. Some of them participate in alumni networks that function like college alumni associations, fundraise for the programs, join Facebook groups, volunteer to mentor or take on interns of their own’. 191 As its website states, American University’s WSP (in Washington, DC) is described as an ‘academic experiential learning programme’, established in 1947, enabling students to ‘spend a semester or an academic year in the dynamic, cosmopolitan city of Washington, DC, where you will have access to some of the most influential people and organizations in the world’ (American University, 2016). Furthermore, at their internships, which are a part of the programme, students are told that they will ‘gain invaluable work experience through an internship at a local organization and meet the movers and shakers of Washington, D.C.’ (American University, 2016). While there are increasingly more programmes (both in Washington, DC and in other global cities and hubs of education), the WSP is one of the older programmes and is deeply embedded into Washington, DC’s political landscape and was hence chosen as the main focus of this research. In the section below, we discuss the promotion of the study/ internship programmes in Washington, DC. Promoting cosmopolitanism and global citizenship in Washington, DC Apart from the unique study and networking opportunities of participation in one of these programmes, increasing one’s cosmopolitanism and global citizenship as part of the global knowledge economy plays a significant part in the promotion of these programmes. As both, cosmopolitanism and global citizenship develop in global cities, the global impact of Washington, DC is strongly advertised and moreover, the cultural and touristic opportunities of the city are highlighted. For instance, the Osgood Centre, a not-for-profit educational foundation, describes Washington, DC as an intern city where youth and power meet (Osgood Centre, 2016): If there is an internship capital, it is Washington DC. If there is a city where youth have extraordinary power, authority, and influence, it is Washington DC. The District of Columbia is host to thousands of interns each semester and tens of thousands in the summer. It is an extraordinary place to network, to make new friends, have once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and to watch (or be a part of) history in the making. With one of the best educated populations in the world, Washington is a place where you begin to synthesize all you learned from your college education and recognize the alternative paths to your future leadership endeavo[u]rs. The opportunity to intern and live in Washington is clearly marketed as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grow both as a person and career-wise. The way that Washington, DC is described as one of the best-educated populations in the world suggests that it is in fact more 192 F. SCHUBERT AND K. HANNAM than a city but a space that holds the qualities of future leadership and ambition. One could interpret this space as a key node in globalisation that breeds and furthers cosmopolitan capital. The sentence that refers to ‘thousands of interns each semester’ has a variety of functions. It makes the reader aware of his or her competition but simultaneously raises awareness for this ‘special’ opportunity to watch or ‘be part of history in the making’. Moreover, it soothes young students who might be scared and intimidated by this rhetoric of power and influence, arguing that they are following in the footsteps of others who have started as interns in Washington. After all, they are coming to the ‘internship capital’. Clearly, cosmopolitanism and global citizenship are values that are reflected and utilised in this quotation. American University’s advertisement materials for their WSP also emphasise Washington’s cosmopolitanism, pace and influence. The programme states that Washington, DC is: more than the dynamic and cosmopolitan city that is home to President Obama and your U.S. Senators and representatives. It’s an international cultural cent[re] loaded with opportunity and teeming with go-getters anxious to share life experiences, debate the day’s most timely topics, and weigh in on policies that help shape the world we know. The DC population is savvy and the pace is faster here, but if you can jump in and hang on there’s no better place to discover what you’re made of. (American University, 2010, p. 2) There is a certain tone of warning in this quotation, as it alerts that the DC population ‘is savvy and the pace is faster here’ but this test will show participants of the programme whether or not they are ready and prepared for such an environment. In this cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city, opportunities may come for those who work hard and are ready for this city and who are prepared for a fast pace of life and thus be highly mobile. This quote can actually be read as an updated American/Global Dream of hypermobility and visualises the image of a moving train, pulling away from the observing student who is seeking opportunities. While American University’s WSP hints at the cultural opportunities of Washington and focuses more on the career aspects of participation in the programme, the Washington Center promotes Washington, DC as a touristic city: At The Washington Center, you get not only great work and learning experience but also great life experience. Living in the U.S. capital is like nothing else in the world. The city’s energy is remarkable at both work and play. There’s so much to see and do, and it’s all at your doorstep as a TWC intern. (Washington Center, 2015, p. 12) Here, the exclusivity of the chance of being able to live in Washington is emphasised and it is asserted that it can compare to nothing else worldwide. Thus, the opportunities of Washington, not only for one’s career but also personally, as life experience are marketed. They elaborate more specifically that: Washington offers impressive architecture and monuments, incredible museums, World-class theatre, great nightlife, a rich international community and restaurants with a wide range of cuisines. Throughout your time with TWC, you’ll experience the city in a way that tourists never could. Best of all, you’ll get to know fellow students from the United States and around the world. You’ll participate in a variety of social activities, trips and adventures together. And by the time the program concludes, you’ll have created friendships that remain strong for many years in the future. (Washington Center, 2015, p. 12) The contradictory aspect of becoming ‘more than a tourist’ (whilst ostensibly doing tourism nevertheless) that can be found here in this quote are essential to branding the participation in this programme. The study programmes argue that participants will have more of an experience, a better, more sustainable and worthwhile experience than as a tourist, because participants are there for a longer amount of time and are able to utilise recommendations from locals and programme staff (an aspect of authenticity that companies such as Airbnb have promoted and utilised commercially). The networks that are formed in these ‘adventures’ in Washington, DC are then seen to lay a foundation for further travel and networking, as it is argued that the friendships and networks created may well be international and longstanding rather than just ‘weak ties’, according to the Washington Center advertisement. The possibility of adventure and developing social networks is, of course, commonly emphasised in volunteer tourism study-internships to the Global South (Mostafanezhad, 2013). A key difference from such volunteering opportunities is the political rhetoric espoused by the education providers in Washington, DC. The examples above from some of the largest educational providers in Washington, DC emphasise the allegedly rare opportunities the students may acquire in participating in these programmes and thus getting ‘into’ the Washington, DC political network. The rhetoric works in order to cast DC as a space of political globalisation, hence something common for today’s students, but also something fleeting, something that moves and possibly overtakes them and a chance that they will not get a hold of. The space of Washington, DC is described as the other, an extreme out of the ordinary as its benefits and its connections to the world (as a key node in globalisation) and to the decision-makers TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH and elites who inhabit this space are highlighted. The language used emphasises the uniqueness of the opportunity to get into this space of global decision-making and thus furthers the reification of global ideology at the expense of social resistance (Chandler, 2009). Below, we discuss the student’s reflections on their movements to and within Washington, DC firstly in terms of their need to build cultural capital in the context of an increasingly competitive labour market, and, secondly, in terms of their mobilities that are amplified through their engagement with their transient experiences of the city of Washington, DC. Student mobilities to Washington, DC Building competitive cultural capital One of the interviewees was a 22-year-old intern for a Congresswoman at the time of the interview and he was extremely concerned about his professional future. Moreover, he stated that he did not enjoy the internship that much because of a lack of responsibility but that this was not that important because ‘Here’s what is great about it though, even though a lot of what I am doing, I am not enjoying, it still looks good in a resume; as much as I hate to admit that it is the truth’ (Interview with Martyn, 2015). He also asserted that he was scared of the job market due to its competitiveness: Terrified, it is super competitive. I mean, yeah you have kids going to Stanford, you have kids going to all the Ivy League schools, you know there are so many great schools out there and so many smart kids. Someone like me, how do you compete? How do you compete, so, my whole thing is, I do programs like this to try to compete. (…) And my edge is going to be experience and exposure and professionalism. (Interview with Martyn, 2015) He was clearly aware that being able to have the proof for his internship in Washington, a letter of recommendation and a certificate from the WSP would be the proof he needed for his mobility experience in a place of power which would then help him to further his career. Moreover, as this quote suggests while claiming to not be as clever as some of his competition, he indirectly saw himself in competition with students who went to the more elite universities in the US. His solution to this competition was participation in programmes like the WSP in order to become more experienced and professional. Thus, he concluded that a time in Washington, at a University and in an internship was a way to replace studying at an elite university. As Perlin suggests, there might be a case to be made for Martyn’s reasoning as in recent years, 193 Dozens upon dozens of schools have set up their own Beltway operations in the last few decades, largely to position their students for the internship feeding frenzy. Among the most prominent are programs run by Cornell, Claremont McKenna, the University of California system, Syracuse, Boston University, Harvard Law School and Stanford, but there are many more. Between these university beachheads, the massive non-profit internship centres, and personal connections, young people on their own stand little chance of landing a well-placed internship in DC, if they can even afford it to begin with – given an estimated cost of living around $1,500 per month – –on a responsible student’s budget. (Perlin, 2011, p. 111) As some government departments increasingly source out their internship recruitment to programmes at the Washington Center (Perlin, 2011, p. 109), individual internship opportunities become sparse and students are indirectly forced to rely on study-internship programmes in Washington to find internships. Ploner (2015, p. 2), while acknowledging the number of cosmopolitan study and learning opportunities that have been developed in the global knowledge economy, also notes that ‘it is also characterised by uneven affordances and power relations which marginalise those who are “immobile” due to social, financial or political reasons’. Frändberg (2014, p. 148) further explains that there is a negative side to the increasing number of mobility opportunities for students: … the “freedom to explore” has another side, which is mobility as a strategy for handling increasing labour market insecurity and perhaps also for fulfilling expectations of becoming a (geographically) flexible adult. In certain social groups, transnational mobility competence is increasingly seen as a precondition for employability … One danger of mobility programmes is that as there are many families and students who are not able to afford these programmes and are not able to invest in their children’s cultural and human capital, such programmes will lead to further socio-economic divisions. Brad, 31, a WSP alumnus, elaborated on the competitive nature of social relationships in Washington and how even his private life was often shaped by networking, self-affirmation and competition: it is very elite-like transaction driven city, where everyone you meet: the first … questions are like: What do you do? i.e. How important are you? Where do you live? i.e. How much money do you have? Yeah, where do you live? What do you do? And where do you live? And those are just, it is kind of an instant sizing up or putting in somebody into like a certain bucket. And then the third question is basically how valuable are you to me? They don’t ask that directly but that is at the back of their head. (Interview with Brad, 31, American WSP Alumnus, 2015) 194 F. SCHUBERT AND K. HANNAM As Brad also added, in DC if you tell a good story and you are compelling, I think that is most important (…) people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it (…) [t]hey want to know your motivation and they want to know that you are like succeeding on your things and can tell a good story. (Interview with Brad, 31, American WSP Alumnus, 2015) A part of selling of your own story is to identify as a global citizen, especially for young people this seems essential to obtain a job in a transnational company or an NGO (Jones, 2011, p. 532). The WSPs themselves also tell a story, and convey a feeling of being part of the inner circle in the DC, the circle of ‘decisionmakers’. As George summarises and other participants also suggested, a feeling of being privileged seems to be common among WSP participants, due to the exclusive nature of the classroom activities, and trips that the WSP classes do in Washington: I mean sometimes, you know, you get into the World Bank you are talking to the communications director and you are like ‘wow, this is a really important person’, no one’s getting to like listen to this, really. There is not many people that get to listen to stuff like this. (…) And seeing every major organization over the course of a semester, where you like, there’s not, you mean if you haven’t seen the rest of the city you will still kind of figure it out, because you’ve been exposed to everything. So you get an education in Washington DC if anything. They are just not here to teach blunt material and textbook stuff. Like this is how the city operates and here is how to work it, if you want it you can have it here. It’s huge, it’s just a taste. (George, American, 22) As this quote reveals ‘the education in Washington DC’ perfectly summarises the acquisition of very specific cultural capital that other competitors on the global job market are lacking and which students want to acquire. As a Higher Executive of the WSP stated: We’ve had lot of students who say that they’re glad they learned when they were with us that this thing was not for them. And, many times they also identify what is for them; because they’ve been exposed to things they have never thought about or heard about before. And then they follow up with those people, and network with them, either to get another internship for the following year or for the summer, or just to get in touch with them to learn what kind of classes they should take to be able to start their careers; so in that sense I think you can say that people can jumpstart their careers. (Interview with a Higher Executive of the WSP, 2015) As can be identified in this quotation, the ‘education in Washington DC’ has many components, it is about selfsearch and questions of identity and possible careers for young people, as well as about networking, whether on the internship sites or among the classmates within the programmes or also with guest speakers. All of this showcases the ways in which these programmes are orchestrating the various resources of Washington, DC and put the participants in a position to reap those benefits. Through these actions, the WSPs contribute to the reproduction of elites within in the city of Washington, DC. This is further exemplified below in the following section that discusses further the mobilities of students, their reflections on employability and the influence of the transience of the city of Washington, DC. Mobilities and transience The notion of mobility as a means to prepare for the labour market and increase employability options might also be seen as impacting mobility decisionmaking and restricting the freedom of choice. As the example of Martyn shows, these programmes are utilised as a means of increasing student’s human capital value and employability. Especially with a closer look at the relation of human capital theory and internships, Perlin states that ‘students and their families may feel compelled to invest heavily in education and skills-building’ (2011, p. 129), but the idea is that they will be rewarded for this investment. Furthermore, he adds, ‘Economists assume that this “college bonus” (and any “internship bonus” that might exist) accurately reflects the results of human capital investment: better work and greater productivity, which employers are quick to reward’ (Perlin, 2011, pp. 129–130). The idea of the ‘mobility burden’ (Shove, 2002), the implicit necessity to be mobile, becomes important here as increasingly students like Martyn feel they are expected to join such global study-internship programmes in order to become valued members of society in competition with elites. Conversely, for other young people, the concept of home and the local may regain popularity as the pressures to be mobile become too much or may not fit into their value systems. As many young people try to go to Washington for an internship or for undergraduate or graduate studies, in the interviews conducted, the city was often described as an extremely transient place, as people tended to live there for a couple of years or months. What I find difficult about Washington is that there are many people mmm that move to DC after um, after finishing their Masters or maybe for their Masters and then they stay for a few years and then they move on. So in a way it’s not a place where you have like many real neighbourhoods. I feel and it’s not a place um where really people um, um stay to live. They come for a career and they might leave again. (Interview with Aaron, 2015) Here, Aaron suggests that many people do not associate and measure Washington that much by terms of quality TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH of living but rather in terms of usability for their careers. Aaron highlights that DC is not a place where people ‘stay to live’. He showcased a perspective that emphasises the value of career aspects in his value system. Another participant, Justine, who was working as an environmental lawyer, provided a very similar perspective, as she asserted: another thing that I think is unique about DC: it is very transient city, which is why rent is so high (Laughing), it is a very big renters market of people who are just coming for a few years, like jumpstart their career to like get a certain type of experience. (Interview with Justine, 2016) These statements confirm Frändberg’s argument that, ‘at least for large groups in the world’s richer countries, long-distance temporary moves have become a significant part of the transition to adulthood’, especially as they help young people in ‘exploring future social and professional opportunities as well as part of the “project of the self”’ and may substantially impact their future mobilities (Frändberg, 2014, p. 149). George also elaborated on the culturally attractive factors of Washington and the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city and social interactions. Yeah, socially it’s great. Everyone that you engage with, I mean there is like a big , you know the nightlife scene is totally thriving here, there is a lot of young people, you know most, I don’t know what the stat was, some ridiculous stat about everyone living here from like twenty to thirty years old, it’s like a place for young professionals, so. People are always out and engaging in the city, with events and music, you know going out to the bars and the restaurants. When you do engage it is, it is (…) when you engage with them, you like it is really stimulating. Everyone’s very smart, everyone kind of has a role, if you are in the city, you are kind of, you are not here to you know just work and live a normal job like there is something that you are going to be doing in the city because, just the chance you have of meeting someone that is doing something cool in the city is so high, so you can always have a conversation about what they are doing, what you are doing, somehow it relates and you have a great rich conversation, often intelligent and it’s fun. (Interview with George, 2015) What is significant about George’s remarks is how interwoven the cultural aspects that he highlights are with career aspects of getting to know people and networking. He notes the chances of meeting someone ‘cool’ is very high and he finds engaging with the city and its people stimulating. This helps to depict a culture of constant networking that is present in the leisure nightlife of the city. It also re-enforces the image that ‘outsiders’ might have of life within the beltway, as it describes a bubble in which the inhabitants of Washington, DC take themselves very seriously and have very political 195 debates that might seem strange to other Americans. Moreover, it is interesting that George highlighted the city as very young and fun some, an image that might in some ways contradict images of the ‘old elites’ that run the US and the city. Also, the emphasis on how many people might possibly be interesting or relevant to George also showcases the transience of the city as well as how fluent and short-lived personal relationships are in George’s experience. In addition, to these factors, these remarks show that career aspects are a dominant theme in the WSP participant’s mobility decisionmaking, but once the students arrive in Washington, the factor of personal development, opportunity for individualisation and participating in global citizenship lifestyles in Washington play a significant role in this form of student mobility and experiencing Washington, DC. While George, who was still very new to the city was excited by these aspects, other interviewees who had lived in Washington for a couple of years found the aspect of constant networking very exhausting and tiring. Albert, 24, a German Alumnus of a WSP also asserted that being in DC politicised him and he started to develop new ideas for future career paths due to the city. Albert interned for a medium-sized international NGO and stated that he, got way more enthusiastic about the topics and [when we went] to all the NGOs and public agencies and whatever, and it actually kind of triggered that I got more interested in this topic. Again. And that was also kind of very informative. (..) Also for my later kind of career plans. That was the big thing about the Washington Semester Program. It helped me a lot to find out basically what I can actually achieve, especially talking to people. (Interview with Albert, 2016) Just the exposure to the city of DC, especially within these WSPs, seems to have the capacity to shape their career and mobility paths. As Albert’s quote reveals, self-discovery, individualisation and exposure to the ‘NGOsphere’ of Washington were realised through the participation in a WSP. Alice, 21, an American student from California, explained that there were a number of reasons that made her come to Washington for a WSP: I studied abroad a year ago, and I was studying in El Salvador, when I returned I was in this kind of middle space where I had a very positive experience abroad, I spent a lot of time in the community of women and children, very impoverished community. (…) Back at school, and so I came back and I knew that I wanted to be a child studies major (…) but as far as career, I knew that it was never too early to start thinking about that, and feeling that I knew that exposure, I heard about the WSP, my school has a partnership with AU, which makes it really easy to come here (…) wanting to 196 F. SCHUBERT AND K. HANNAM explore specifically the area of policy, but at the same time had that component of (unintelligible) which is why I had an internship at a non-profit. And so having heard how the program really did a good job of combining the two, and giving us exposure to, being in DC, you see the policies, you see the politics, how that plays in, in with communities, and then how those communities, how non-profits fill in the gap, so that’s what I was really looking in and for and I wasn’t sure I was going to get that elsewhere. So it was really about coming to DC for me. (Interview with Alice, 2015) The direct exchange agreement between her home school and American University seemed to her as a simple way to gain this experience, as she only needed to pay the regular tuition of her home school. Moreover, she wanted to gain more experience in the field of community work. It should be mentioned that the vocabulary that Alice used was very specific and seemed to reflect the language that is used in the programme’s brochures, as well as her class teacher of the sustainable development class and in general in Washington, DC. Alice had been to Washington before participation in the programme because her sister was living in the city, and she stated that her ‘sister did a lovely job of showing me around DC and from that trip, I knew I wanted to see more of DC, I knew I wanted to come back’ (Interview with Alice, 2015). There were also other participants who highlighted previous trips to family members or friends in Washington as well as high school trips to Washington, DC. VFR (Visiting Friends and Relatives) connections and associations with Washington, DC were a key factor for their decision-making (see Boyne, Carswell, & Hall, 2002). Conversely, however, Nathalie, who was nominated for the programme, asserted that there were other more cultural reasons for coming to Washington, DC: There is a great live music scene in DC, there is poetry which I really like. (…) One big thing, a factor when I am deciding to move somewhere is how easy it is to get around on public transportation, because at that time; although I had my driver’s license I did not have a car; so I knew that I would be able to get around just fine. And I knew that my cousin would still be there, so I would have someone that I; I at least knew one person; I did not know anyone who was going to participate in the program but I know if I wanted an out I had family in the city that I could go and hang out with; so I think that made the decision a little bit easier, too. (Interview with Nathalie, 2015) knowledge about these opportunities. An attraction to the cultural possibilities in Washington as well as a more practical mundane mobility reason, the accessibility of Washington, DC via public transport, because she did not own a car all factored into Nathalie’s decision of taking part in this programme in Washington. Also in this case, there was a family member who was living in the city and alleviated her decision to move into a different city. Nathalie’s case exemplifies the multitude of factors that play a role in educational mobility decisions. Conclusions Washington, DC is an extremely transient city but with the election of President Trump, it remains to be seen whether DC will remain a focus for international students. In this paper, we have explored how Washington, DC has become a hub for student’s seeking to become part of the global elite through participation in study internships which are promoted as enabling them to become global political citizens. In particular, we have shown that apart from the unique study and networking opportunities of participation in one of these programmes, increasing one’s cosmopolitanism and global citizenship plays a significant part in the promotion of these programmes. Moreover, career aspects are a dominant theme in the participant’s mobility decision-making, but once the students arrive in Washington, the factor of personal development, opportunity for individualisation and participating in global citizenship lifestyles in Washington play a significant role in this form of student mobility and experiencing Washington, DC. While the studyinternship programmes emphasise that students will experience more of Washington, DC than a tourist, this has conversely helped to re-create Washington, DC as an increasingly transient city experienced by both students and tourists as a place that you would not ‘stay to live’ long term. This highlights the mobilities of both place and people, as Washington, DC has become a city of mobile global citizenship where the inequalities of access to power are often hidden within networks of cultural capital and cosmopolitanism. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. So, in her case, there were many factors, the nomination for the programme that made her aware of the programme in Washington, as well as the general possibility to go and take part in a programme at a different university. As her family received no tertiary education in the US, she did not have the cultural capital and required Notes on contributors Felix Schubert MA majored in Geography and American Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Business School at Edinburgh TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH Napier University, Craiglockhart Campus, Edinburgh EH14 1DJ, UK. Kevin Hannam has a PhD in Geography from the University of Portsmouth, UK and is Head of Tourism & Languages and Professor of Tourism Mobilities in the Business School at Edinburgh Napier University, Craiglockhart Campus, Edinburgh EH14 1DJ, UK. ORCID Felix Schubert Kevin Hannam http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6671-2225 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6034-3521 References Adey, P. (2010). Mobility. London: Routledge. Adey, P., Bissell, D., Hannam, K., Merriman, P., & Sheller, M. (2013). The routledge handbook of mobilities. London: Routledge. Allen-Robertson, J., & Beer, D. (2010). Mobile ideas: Tracking a concept through time and space. Mobilities, 5(4), 529–545. American University. (2010). Connect where it counts. Retrieved November 1, 2016, from https://issuu.com/raihansdg/docs/ connect American University. (2014). Washington Semester Program live, learn, know. Retrieved November 1, 2016, from http:// issuu.com/au_spexs/docs/wsp_brochure_2014 American University. (2016). Admission requirements for international students. Retrieved November 5, 2016, from http:// www.american.edu/spexs/washingtonsemester/AdmissionRequirements-For-International-Students2.cfm Benson, M., O’Reilly, K., & Kershen, A. J. (Eds.). (2009). Lifestyle migration: Expectations, aspirations and experiences. Farnham: Ashgate. Boyne, S., Carswell, F., & Hall, D. (2002). Reconceptualising VFR tourism. In C. M. Hall, & A. Williams (Eds.), Tourism and migration (pp. 241–256). Dordrecht: Springer. Butcher, J., & Smith, P. (2015). Volunteer tourism: The lifestyle politics of international development. London: Routledge. Chandler, D. (2009). Hollow hegemony. London: Pluto Press. Cohen, S. A. (2010). Personal identity (de)formation among lifestyle travellers: A double-edged sword. Leisure Studies, 29, 289–301. Cohen, S. A., Duncan, T., & Thulemark, M. (2015). Lifestyle mobilities: The crossroads of travel, leisure and migration. Mobilities, 10, 155–172. C-SPAN. (2004). John McCaslin: Inside the Beltway. Booknotes. Retrieved November 5, 2016, from http://www.book-notes. org/Watch/181421-1/John + McCaslin.aspx DC Internships. (2016). About us. Retrieved September 22, 2016, from: http://www.dcinternships.org/about-us/ Erickson, A. (2012). Washington, D.C.’s tourist trap. Retrieved November 8, 2016 from: http://www.citylab.com/politics/ 2012/04/washington-dcs-tourist-trap/1704/ Frändberg, L. (2014). Temporary transnational youth migration and its mobility links. Mobilities, 9(1), 146–164. Hannam, K., & Guereno-Omil, B. (2015). Educational mobilities: Mobile students, mobile knowledge. In D. Airey, D. Dredge, & M. Gross (Eds.), The routledge handbook of tourism and hospitality education (pp. 143–154). London: Routledge. Hannam, K., & Knox, D. (2005). Discourse analysis in tourism research a critical perspective. Tourism Recreation Research, 30(2), 23–30. 197 Hannam, K., & Knox, D. (2010). Understanding tourism: A critical introduction. London: Sage. Hannam, K., Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). Editorial: Mobilities, immobilities and moorings. Mobilities, 1(1), 1–22. Jackson, J. (2015). The consequences of gentrification for racial change in Washington, DC. Housing Policy Debate, 25(2), 353– 373. Johnson, J. (2010). More would-be interns paying thousands to land a coveted spot. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2010/08/29/AR2010082903743.html Jones, A. (2011). Theorising international youth volunteering: Training for global (corporate) work? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 36, 530–544. Knox, L. (1991). The restless urban landscape: Economic and sociocultural change and the transformation of metropolitan Washington, DC. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81(2), 181–209. Lam, T., & Ching, L. (2007). An exploratory study of an internship program: The case of Hong Kong students. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 26, 336–351. Maher, J. T. (2015). The capital of diversity: Neoliberal development and the discourse of difference in Washington, DC. Antipode, 47(4), 980–998. Marchio, N., & Berube, A. (2015). Benchmarking greater Washington’s global reach: The national capital region in the world economy. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. McCaslin, J. (2004). Inside the beltway: Offbeat stories, scoops, and shenanigans from around the nation’s capital. Nashville, TN: WND Books. Mostafanezhad, M. (2013). The geography of compassion in volunteer tourism. Tourism Geographies, 15(2), 318–337. Mostafanezhad, M. (2014). Volunteer tourism and the popular humanitarian gaze. Geoforum, 54, 111–118. Perlin, R. (2011). Intern nation: How to earn nothing and learn little in the brave new economy. Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books. Ploner, J. (2015). Resilience, moorings and international student mobilities – Exploring biographical narratives of social science students in the UK. Mobilities, doi.org/10.1080/ 17450101.2015.1087761. Politico. (2009). D.C. interns by the numbers. Retrieved August 26, 2016, from http://www.politico.com/story/2009/07/dcinterns-by-the-numbers-024883 Reuters. (2015). Washington, D.C. set tourism record in 2014 as foreign visits surged. Retrieved November 08, 2016 from: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-districtofcolumbiatourism-idUSKCN0QM21720150817 Rickly, J. M. (2014). Lifestyle mobilities: A politics of lifestyle rock climbing. Mobilities, 11, 243–263. Root, E., & Ngampornchai, A. (2013). ‘I came back as a new human being’ Student descriptions of intercultural competence acquired through education abroad experiences. Journal of Studies in International Education, 17(5), 513–532. Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (Eds.). (2004). Tourism mobilities. London: Routledge. Shove, E. (2002). Rushing around: Coordination, mobility and inequality. Draft paper for the Mobile Network meeting, October 2002. Lancaster. Retrieved from http://www. lancaster.ac.uk/staff/shove/choreography/rushingaround.pdf Standish, A. (2012). The false promise of global learning – Why education needs boundaries. London: Bloomsbury Open. 198 F. SCHUBERT AND K. HANNAM Stanford in Washington. (2016). Stanford in Washington Program. Retrieved September 22, 2016, from https://siw.stanford.edu The Osgood Center. (2016). Washington Experience – Leadership and professional development program. Retrieved November 7, 2016, from http://www. osgoodcenter.org/washington-experience.php Thorpe, H. (2012). Transnational mobilties in snowboarding culture: Travel, tourism and lifestyle migration. Mobilities, 7, 317–345. Trujilo, J. R., & Parilla, J. (2016). Redefining global cities. Global Cities Initiative. Retrieved November 5, 2016, from https:// www.brookings.edu/research/redefining-global-cities/ UCDC. (2016). Who we are. Retrieved September 22, 2016, from https://www.ucdc.edu/who-we-are/programs-dc Washington Center. (2015). Experience transforms. Washington, DC: The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. Washington Center. (2016). Accomplishments. Retrieved September 22, 2016, from http://www.twc.edu/about/ accomplishments Williams, A. (2006). Lost in translation? International migration, learning and knowledge. Progress in Human Geography, 30 (5), 588–607.