This article presents the findings of a qualitative and comparative study on the cultural experience of international students in North and South Europe. I employ a narrative approach and the focus of the research revolves around the autoethnographies of 25 international students in Helsinki and 25 in Florence. The narratives were prompted by in-depth interviews following a template divided into the three phases of travel conceived as a rite of passage: departure–preliminal, transition–liminal, arrival–postliminal. To explore the meaning of geographical mobility in the lives of these young people, I sketched a series of self-identity types connected to mobility experiences: the Fated, whose biographical premises are all pushing-pulling toward the status of international student; the Academic, who is fascinated by the idea of becoming a worldly intellectual and sees the PhD as a natural step; the Globetrotter, whose mobility is an end in itself: the goal is the next city-country; the Explorer, who is abroad looking for new cultural challenges, with a genuine desire to discover and understand specific places and people; the Runaway, who feels like a stranger at home and is escaping abroad for political or existential reasons. I believe that the interpretation of international students’ sense of self-identity can be fruitfully achieved through the narrative path I have constructed (or a similar one).

本文介绍了一项关于北欧和南欧国际学生文化体验的定性和比较研究的结果。我采用叙事方法，研究重点围绕赫尔辛基 25 名国际学生和佛罗伦萨 25 名国际学生的民族志。这些叙述是由深度访谈引发的，模板分为旅行的三个阶段，被认为是一种通行仪式：出发-初步、过渡-临界、到达-临界后。为了探索地域流动在这些年轻人生活中的意义，我勾勒出一系列与流动经历相关的自我认同类型：命中注定的，其传记前提都是推拉国际学生的身份；学术的，他对成为世俗知识分子的想法着迷，并将博士学位视为自然而然的一步；环球旅行者，其流动性本身就是目的：目标是下一个城市国家；探索者，在国外寻找新的文化挑战，真诚地渴望发现和了解特定的地方和人物；离家出走者，在国内感觉像个陌生人，出于政治或生存原因逃离国外。我相信，通过我构建的（或类似的）叙事路径，国际学生自我认同感的解读可以得到圆满的实现。