Beyond the ‘normal’ to the ‘new possibles’: Australian students’ experiences in Asia and their roles in making connections with the region via the New Colombo Plan

Introduced in 2014, the New Colombo Plan (NCP) represents theAustralian government’s signature initiative of student mobility andpublic diplomacy. The programme aims to expose Australian under-graduate students to the Indo-Pacific. This article focuses onanalysing Australian students’ experiences in Asia via the NCP. Thearticle draws on a research project that includes policy discourse anal-ysis and 52 interviews with government representatives, academics,mobility officers and Australian students learning abroad via the NCP.The research found that if well designed, NCP student mobility pro-grammes have the potential to enable students to move beyond theirinitial instrumental goal of using learning abroad predominantly as ameans to pursue their personal interest in travel and/or enhance theirown employability towards engagement for the collective. The articleproposes the notions of mobility as becoming and mobility as con-necting as the conceptual frame to understand Australian students’experiences and engagement with Asia in the current context charac-terised by the government’sstrategytousestudentmobilityasavehicle of public diplomacy. It highlights the need to focus more ondeveloping students’ in-country participatory capitals and build acoherent mechanism to sustain NCP alumni’s post-return engagementwith individuals and communities in the region and promote theregion back in Australia. The article concludes with suggestions forrelated stakeholders to facilitate students’ roles in making meaningful,productive and sustainable connections between Australia and Asia.