How International Study Is Carried Home: A Mechanism-Based Account of Returnee Engagement

International student mobility is increasingly framed through economic and security logics, yet less is known about how international study becomes consequential for civic and institutional practice after return. The analysis draws on in-depth interviews conducted between May 2023 and September 2024 with 393 internationally educated returnees across 68 countries, spanning social, political, and economic contexts. Return is treated as an analytic vantage point that reveals how comparative experience is carried into familiar institutional settings. Interviews are analysed interpretively, focusing on judgement and meaning-making. The study identifies five generative mechanisms through which international study becomes consequential after return: reflexive agency, civic understanding, knowledge translation, transnational social relations, and intercultural understanding. These mechanisms operate unevenly and in varied combinations, shaping how returnees judge what is possible and legitimate within constrained contexts. The analysis also introduces presence as a sustained reflexive and relational stance through which engagement, shaped by these mechanisms, may be held over time, even when institutional responsiveness is limited. The findings indicate that international student mobility matters not as a guarantee of transformation, but as a source of capacities that may support sustained judgement and engagement in the slow, cumulative work of institutional life.