Living Here with Lessons From There: Cosmopolitan Conversations After an International Service-Learning Trip

This research looks at four participants’ identity formation 3 years after their international service-learning (ISL) trip to Kenya. It focuses on life after ISL and the challenges of translating lessons learned abroad into meaningful action upon return. In the process, it speaks to participants’ struggles in resisting social conformity, conflicts with opinions of friends and family, consequences of challenging the status quo, ambivalent and contradictory commitments, and cosmopolitan identity formation attaching them to multiple global locations beyond the local. Findings are threefold: 1) ISL trips provided experiences, stories, relationships, challenges, and opportunities that contribute to various identity narratives; 2) struggles and conflicts experienced upon return destabilized participants’ sense of identity leading to, 3) an embodied cosmopolitan identity. Implications of these findings suggest educators recognize both the challenges and opportunities students may face when confronting hegemonic norms post-ISL.