Burgeoning international student mobility has given rise to academic scholarship on effects of study abroad on foreign students’ cultural and socio-political beliefs, and cosmopolitan orientations. Besides, increasing attention has been directed to the impact of students’ exposure to more democratic destination countries whereby mobile young people are expected to socialise into liberal democratic values and become inspired to bring about social and political change in their less developed home countries.

This thesis explores how educational mobility to the UK and the US has influenced Russian young people’s socio-political views and aspirations to engage socio-politically on return home. To set the stage for such an investigation, this study also sheds light on respondents’ motivations to study abroad. This qualitative inquiry involves an analysis of 55 in-depth interviews and examines participants’ narratives of change through the lens of cosmopolitanism, soft power and migration-development interaction theories.

The findings reveal that in embarking on international education, the vast majority of respondents are motivated by the pursuit of new personal and cultural experiences, career enhancement and education-related factors, and political motives are present only in a minority of cases. Further, study abroad fosters interviewees’ cosmopolitan outlook as evidenced by their openness to otherness, mobile imaginary and malleable imaginative geographies of home.

The analysis indicates that exposure to democracy improves socio-political knowledge and in some cases shapes democratic perspectives and notions of democracy. Yet, such effects are uneven and partly weakened by some undemocratic beliefs being reinforced.

Finally, the thesis argues that the political context of the home country and participants’ perceptions thereof are of paramount importance in applying migration-development nexus theories. The political climate in Russia, as well as interviewees’ own low political self-efficacy and priorities given to private sphere, suggest that foreign-educated Russians are not likely to become the driving force of socio-political change.