Leaving children behind for cross‐border education: Unveiling the emotional agency of international post‐graduate student mothers

Abstract Despite growing interest in the internationalisation of higher education, the experiences of international student parents, particularly international student mothers, remain largely marginalised in research and policy. This paper examines the emotional agency of international student mothers who leave their children behind in their home countries to pursue education abroad. Focusing on the narratives of nine Vietnamese post‐graduate student mothers, the study illustrates how these mothers navigated separation, caregiving and family dynamics across borders. It reveals how they reframed maternal absence, resisted deficit discourses and negotiated care responsibilities through emotional and spatial strategies. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the intersections between mobility, motherhood and emotion in the lives of transnationally mobile female students. It argues that the simplistic narratives of international students focusing only on their academic and social integration in the host countries, with no reference to their left‐behind family, cannot account for the diversity in their lived experiences and overlook their challenges and emotional experiences.