As human beings, as social entities, as institutions, we are all subjects of identitarian processes at different levels. The elements that constitute those processes originate from the texture of every day’s happening and we are at some point aware of them at different degrees of conscience.

At the Universidad Autónoma del Carmen (UNACAR), a University located in Southeast Mexico, our constituent processes as an institution are being faced day by day, attempting to qualify within all the required national standards but without the same advantages conferred by the prestige, budget and consequent resources.

At the UNACAR, our students are encouraged to participate in national and international exchange student programs that make them especially aware of their identitarian processes; their notion of being, living and inhabiting takes on a different meaning when they experience education at a whole different environment that potentially activates questioning and contrast. Subjects become extra aware of the different identitarian scopes and what their sole existence generates and means to “the others”, as individuals, as family members, as foreigners, as a student who represents all that “otherness” discourse to the recipient.

Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews done to the subjects involved, the purpose of the present research project in progress is to identify and unveil the elements of experience that constitute that Third Space where identity is conceived as an unfinished and imperfect sequence of events and these exchange students’ experiences propose a particularly porous texture whose elements are worth to be carefully exposed and analyzed.

Keywords: Exchange students, identity, Universidad Autónoma del Carmen.