International Student Mobility and Democratic Regrounding: Returnees in Democratic Contexts

This paper examines how international study reshapes democratic judgement among returnees to democratic settings. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 45 internationally educated returnees from 26 countries, it introduces the novel concept of democratic regrounding: the renewal of democratic judgement through comparative exposure to familiar principles enacted in unfamiliar institutional and civic arrangements. The findings show that regrounding did not reliably produce visible activism. Instead, democratic engagement was mediated by reflexive deliberation, through which returnees assessed what could be pursued within specific institutional conditions. Four pathways of engagement were identified: institutional renewal, discursive reframing, civic infrastructure building, and collective mobilisation. Across cases, sustained democratic commitment depended on presence, a sustained relational stance toward public or institutional life, marked by attentiveness, comparative awareness, and endurance. Presence became visible through selective participation, refusal of complicity, strategic waiting, translation of concerns into professionally legible forms, and long-term relational work that accumulated credibility over time.