A case study of a British ERASMUS student in Italy

2013

This article focuses on the shaping of social identities and emotions of one British young woman who spent a Year Abroad (YA) in Italy as an ERASMUS student. I have examined her negotiation and (re)construction of social identities during her experience abroad from a poststructuralist perspective, which sees individuals’ identities as dynamic and changeable sites of struggles (Norton Pierce, 1995 and 2000). In order to analyse the participant's accounts of her language learning and emotional experiences during her YA I have used the notion of emotional investment developed by Pavlenko (2012). This notion has helped me to understand how, why and to what extent the participant in the study ga…