‘My study abroad dream, my Chinese dream’: a Bangladeshi student’s multilingual entrepreneurship and peripheral cosmopolitanism in South-South educational mobility

Amid the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has become a major destination for educational migrants from Global South countries like Bangladesh. Yet, research on international student mobility and language learning overlooks the growing significance of South-South migration and the rise of Chinese as a global language. Drawing on the theoretical concepts of ‘linguistic entrepreneurship’ and ‘peripheral cosmopolitanism’, this study traces the transnational trajectory of Lin, a Bangladeshi student pursuing his ‘Chinese dream’ from rural Bangladesh to China. Data include personal journals, ethnographic field notes, semi-structured interviews, and online WeChat interactions and observations. Findings reveal how Lin mobilised his multilingual repertoire as an entrepreneurial resource to navigate educational and intercultural opportunities within China–Bangladesh relations. Three themes emerge from the data analysis: (i) multilingual entrepreneurship as both survival and aspiration, (ii) Chinese language learning as a new gateway to peripheral cosmopolitanism, and (iii) Confucius Institute as mediator of mobility and hope. The study challenges the dominance of English as the sole vehicle of global mobility, illustrating how Chinese language learning reshapes the meanings of entrepreneurship and cosmopolitanism in Global South contexts. The study contributes to debates on language learning, global inequalities, and the redefinition of cosmopolitanism from the periphery.