Publication Type: Paper (prepared oral presentation)
Abstract: Governments provide considerable support for exchange programmes, sometimes effectively paying foreign students to study in their country or their own nationals to go abroad. The Fulbright Programme is probably the best known example. Programmes designed to facilitate short-term study abroad, including the European Union's Erasmus Programme, also receive significant government support. Central to the case for government support of many of these programmes is the belief that exchangees' attitudes to foreign countries improve as a result, and this will influence their political behaviour and ultimately the policies of their governments and international relations. If these assumptions are correct, exchanges could be a vital tool of foreign policy. However, the evidence that exchangees tend to develop positive attitudes to the foreign countries involved, let alone that this then influences international relations, remains weak. Not only is there reason to doubt studies which claim to show that exchangees who become more favourable generally outnumber those who become more critical, but as yet no comprehensive framework has been developed to explain which students might be most likely to change their attitudes as a result of exchange experiences. Here I present the results of a panel study conducted on exchangees in the 2006-7 academic year to assess what political attitudes and behaviours might change as a result. I then go on to combine a set of plausible hypotheses drawn from post-panel interviews and existing literature to suggest which psychological factors might make students particularly malleable.