ABSTRACT. International education is frequently narrated as a transformative pathway promising mobility, self-development and cosmopolitan belonging. Yet these celebratory narratives often obscure the sociohistorical and affective conditions that shape how mobility is experienced by students from the Global South. This article proposes that international education can be understood as a haunted formation, structured not only by opportunity and aspiration but also by lingering histories, family obligations and uncertain futures. Drawing on insights from hauntology, affect theory and critical internationalisation studies, the paper develops a conceptual framework for reading international student mobility through three interrelated dimensions of haunting. First, it examines the colonial afterlives that continue to shape knowledge hierarchies and recognition within global higher education. Second, it explores how mobility is embedded within familial moral economies, particularly through filial expectations and intergenerational investment. Third, it considers how aspirations for study abroad become entangled with suspended or foreclosed futures, producing emotional impasses when promises of transformation encounter precarity and disruption. By reframing international education through the lens of haunting, the article expands existing debates beyond metrics of access and success, highlighting the affective residues, moral debts and historical entanglements that continue to structure students’ experiences of global mobility.

Keywords: hauntology; international education; colonial afterlives; filial piety; student mobility; affective futures. 

How to cite: Thinh, M. P. (2026). Haunted international education: Ghosts of colonial legacies, family expectations and unsettled futures. Knowledge Cultures, 14(2), 118–136. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc14220266

Received February 28, 2026 • Received in revised form May 6, 2026
Accepted July 15, 2026 • Available online August 1, 2026