2017 Volume 12 Pages 33-49
The purpose of this article is to explore possibilities of studentification studies by reviewing the previous literature from several analytical perspectives. Studentification stands for social, economic, cultural, and spatial transformations of urbanism caused by increase and concentration of student populations. As the term displays, studentification has similarity with gentrification in terms of processes of urban transfiromation. Studentification is also connected with gentrification by students’ life courses: Students are assumed to be candidates of gentrifiers. Students are expected to be trained as full members of the middle class, or gentrifiers, in “student spaces”, which are created by the processes of studentification. The author argues that “student spaces” sometimes serve as sites of marginalization of specific students populations, giving illustrations of stay-at-home students in the UK and international students in Antipodean countries. The last section discusses on implications of studentification studies for the future studies on urban geography in Japan.
