Returning From Study Abroad in a Nontraditional Destination: Spatial Stigmatisation and the Crises of Capital Conversion

ABSTRACT Despite the popularity of the Philippines as a study destination for Korean students, this study finds that Korean student returnees from the country face persistent discrimination and devaluation of their qualifications and linguistic competencies at home. Wedding perspectives from Bourdieu's theory of capital and Said's imaginative geography, this paper adapts the concept of spatial stigmatisation to frame how capital conversion as a means to social reproduction is a complex process that is mediated by the discursive (de)valuation of destinations of study as spaces accorded with differential symbolic values. Conceptually, it argues for a geographic view of capital to foreground broader spatial hierarchies that shape the recognition and transferability of capital across borders. Empirically, it sheds light on the after‐study lives of Korean student returnees from a nontraditional destination whose realities are often hidden under dominant discourses that link study abroad outcomes with capital acquired from the Anglophone West and positive return experiences. By paying attention to Korean student returnees from the Philippines—an underrepresented topic within both international student mobilities and Korean study abroad literature—the paper similarly broadens the scope for deploying comparative research on return experiences across different spatialities, deepening at the same time understanding of the complex interactions between place, space and capital within the context of study abroad.