Circumscribed cosmopolitanism: travel aspirations and experiences

Recent scholarly conceptualisations of cosmopolitanism have often distinguished between mundane practices on the one hand and a conscious assertion of an ethical project on the other hand. But this kind of distinction may be less a matter of the simple presence or absence of a particular kind of consciousness than of the degree of self-awareness as well as of the consonance or disjuncture between this consciousness and what can actually be realised in practice. In this article I take up some of these questions of degree and disjuncture to reflect on the interaction between aspirations and circumscribed experiences occurring among two sets of Canadian travellers: (i) consultants whose specialisation in international projects involves frequent stays abroad, and (ii) young adults who have taken up opportunities for an extended stay abroad afforded by university exchanges or working holidaymakers programs.