Malian student mobility to Turkey through the lens of historically marginalized actors

Abstract

This article focuses on the movement of the Malian student community who largely came from socially marginal backgrounds, female students and Malian Turkish scholarship students, towards Turkey, a new destination for study for Malian students since 2006. It analyzes the capacity of these students to realize their mobility in relation to the Turkish government’s soft power in the realm of higher education scholarships. By using a transnational approach, it identifies in which contexts these students have possibilities of empowerment or are the objects of power relations or global dynamics. The paper argues that the mobility of these students to Turkey is the result of several factors, including Turkish soft power and especially the manifestation of students’ ability to act.