Abstract
This article theorises agency as a relational, improvisational practice through which masculinities are negotiated and reimagined in cross-border higher education. Using narrative inquiry, it traces the journey of Jiaming, a Chinese doctoral student at an elite UK university, as he navigates Confucian legacies of family-state masculinity while confronting racialised misrecognition and shifting enactments of nationalism. Drawing on the concept of figured worlds, the analysis shows how agency is enacted through situated acts of self-authoring that both draw on and rework available cultural resources. It demonstrates how cross-border mobility unsettles familiar gender norms while opening space for hybrid masculinities grounded in care, emotional openness, and peer solidarity, developing through horizontal negotiations rather than hierarchical positioning. Jiaming’s story illustrates transition not as linear adaptation or assimilation, but as an ongoing, embodied process of becoming. By reframing agency as a relational practice emerging at the intersection of self and structure, rather than an inner trait or deficit-compensating response, the article challenges binary views of mobility and calls on institutions to recognise students’ cultural resources and support inclusive spaces for identity negotiation.