摘要 : This paper examines how student motivations to study abroad are shaped by whatmight be called the ‘rationality–emotion nexus’. Drawing from 15 months ofethnographic engagement at a Chinese university, we show how rational factors(... 展开 This paper examines how student motivations to study abroad are shaped by whatmight be called the ‘rationality–emotion nexus’. Drawing from 15 months ofethnographic engagement at a Chinese university, we show how rational factors(e.g., pursuit of financial resources) interact with emotional forces (e.g., love forfamily members) in dynamic and diverse ways to shape the pathways of Africanstudent migrants to higher education overseas. More specifically, we identify threedistinct dynamics in the nexus: (ⅰ) rationality is entangled with emotions; (ⅱ)rationality parallels emotions; and (ⅲ) rationality and emotions transform each other.By foregrounding this nexus, the present study offers a critical intervention intointernational student mobility/migration studies as it develops ‘an integrativeapproach’ that transcends either a widely established rational framework of capitalconversion or the emerging emotional geographies of transnational educationmigration. 收起