Domestic campus expansion in France as a practice of regional dissociation: Advancing reflections on the socio-spatial fragmentation of higher education ‘at home’

Little is known about how internationalization dynamics have reconfigured the national geography of higher education beyond the much-studied phenomena of transnational higher education and international branch campuses. This study addresses this gap by zooming in on two domestic spatial expansion strategies through which several French Grandes Écoles, mainly business schools, have sought to boost financial resources and raise international visibility in the last years: mergers and branch campuses in Paris. Drawing on interviews with key decision-makers of French higher education institutions, I show how these strategies are particularly relevant to institutions from outside Paris which – already occupying the backseat in the French arena – have seen themselves relegated to the margins of international university spaces. Originating from the so-called province, these institutions mobilize their domestic multi-local campus structure as a dissociation strategy: they use mergers and a campus in Paris to create a ‘purposeful ambiguity’ regarding where they are from or conceal regional origins perceived as detrimental in a globalizing marketplace. By showing how these strategies are strategically and discursively related to transnational expansion beyond national borders, the study advances a novel conceptual grammar of domestic spatial expansion as a crystallization point of the reconfigured regional geography of the university through wider transnational dynamics. In particular, the study highlights how domestic spatial expansion is driven by a perceived spatial stigma associated with institutional origins in more peripheral regions. From there, the study opens the door to taking the notion of the periphery seriously when analyzing the shifting geography of the university.