Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities 3030782948, 9783030782948

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Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities Johanna Waters · Rachel Brooks

Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities “This is a timely, eloquent and engaging book that shifts the ground in scholarship about international student mobilities. Waters and Brooks take us through exemplary new literatures to map the collective impact of new state-building projects and novel approaches to market-making. By centring the politics, economics and ethics of international higher education, this book makes an important contribution to debates about the post-pandemic futures of universities.” —Ravinder Sidhu, University of Queensland, Australia “In what will be a central text of the field for many years to come, Waters and Brooks raise critical new conceptual and ethical challenges that unsettle many of the orthodoxies that underpin the growing scholarship on educational mobilities and student migration. With a sharp and timely focus on the politics of international student mobility (ISM), the book unpacks new forms diversification, stratification and inequality and addresses the complexities of capital accumulation and value in higher education across different scalar geographies. The chapters weave skilfully between campuses, cities, classrooms and nation-states, drawing forth a nuanced analysis of the changing landscapes of ISM that is carefully attuned to both emergent geopolitics and alternative theoretical perspectives.” —Shanthi Robertson, University of Western Sydney, Australia “This book offers a valuable contribution to the field of international student mobilities. It is a fascinating survey of the contemporary issues and evidence, making an original synthesis of evidence from a range of different disciplines, pushing existing scholarship forward into what I see as very important areas. This authoritative contribution is a holistic, timely and, as usual from this pair of established authors, eloquently written analysis.” —Sylvie Lomer, University of Manchester, UK

Johanna Waters • Rachel Brooks

Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities

Johanna Waters Department of Geography University College London London, UK

Rachel Brooks Department of Sociology University of Surrey Guildford, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-78294-8    ISBN 978-3-030-78295-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78295-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Andrea Geiss / Alamy This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Hana, Alys, Daniel, Betsan, Martha and Hannah

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Sylvie Lomer for providing very helpful feedback on a draft of Chap. 6 and Peidong Yang for the helpful references he has provided.

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Contents

1 Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities  1 2 Geographies of International Student Mobilities 21 3 Socio-Economic Diversification 55 4 The Value of International Higher Education 87 5 Migration, State-Building and Citizenship Projects131 6 Learning and Classroom Experiences167 7 Ethics and Student Mobility205 8 Conclusion241 Index255

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In 2017, the OECD described an ‘explosion’ in the number of tertiary-­ level students studying outside their home countries; increasing from 0.8 million in the late 1970s to 4.6 million in 2015 to 5.6 million in 2018 (OECD, 2020). This growth has lately been matched by an intellectual ‘explosion’ of sorts, as more scholars engage directly with questions concerning international student mobility and the internationalisation of higher education (HE). Despite being an academic ‘backwater’ for a number of years, international education and students’ attendant mobilities have gradually but decisively emerged as vital; both to an understanding of contemporary transformations of education systems around the world and also to the construction and reconstruction of societies more broadly. Conceptual developments over the past ten years have also been significant (Madge et al., 2015), as studies primarily focused on ‘capital accumulation’ have given way to more diverse conceptualisations of students’ mobilities, including a sense of the non-strategic, less tangible and embodied decision-making undertaken by students with respect to their education and subsequent employment, and their everyday and ‘mundane’ experiences of dwelling in mobility. In terms of topics covered, there is now a significant amount of work on international students’ © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Waters, R. Brooks, Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78295-5_1

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decision-making processes and their experiences of study abroad. There is less research on post-study experiences and transitions into employment and on the longer-term impacts of educational mobilities. This book recognises the significance and balance of these debates, offers a timely reflection on how these have changed over the last decade, and suggests potential avenues for future enquiry. The international mobility and migration of students has raised questions relating to, inter alia, the national boundedness of education systems, the role of education in the production of (global/national) citizen-subjects, the positioning of overseas students vis-à-vis other ‘migrant’ groups, colonial legacies, postcolonial and transnational relationships, international education and global class formation, knowledge mobilities, the neo-liberalisation and decolonisation of the university, the production and framing of skilled workers and elite social reproduction. For many years, international higher education has been considered an ‘elite’ pursuit; over the past four decades, international credentials have had a pivotal role to play in the creation of a ‘transnational capitalist class’ (Sklair, 2001). It is, however, necessary to reflect upon how ‘other’ (less elite and privileged) groups also and increasingly make use of international credentials, and the advantages that mobility for education may or may not bestow upon them (Brooks & Waters, 2011). As the OECD (2020) claims, ‘Studying abroad has become a key differentiating experience for young adults’ (p. 229, emphasis added). Uncovering the complex differentiation underpinning international student mobility (ISM) is at the heart of our endeavour in this book. Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities brings together work in the social sciences—geography, sociology, education studies and cognate disciplines (discussed below)—to explore questions associated with the meaning and significance of international student migrations. The essential context to this discussion includes changes to higher education and its institutions wrought through ‘internationalisation’ (and globalisation). The book explores the meanings of the internationalisation of higher education in relation to the mobilities of students, and is structured around six key themes: changes in the geographies of student mobilities; socio-economic diversification in mobile students; the differential value of international higher education; migration,

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citizenship and state-building projects; learning and classroom experiences; and ethics and international student mobility. These themes are not exhaustive, of course, but reflect what we see as the most significant developments in the academic literature over the past ten years. We bring knowledge of different but complementary disciplinary backgrounds to the arguments made in the book, significantly enriching the text and widening its appeal. Over a decade ago, we began work on a book that was published in 2011 as Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education. We have been overwhelmed by the positive response we have received to this book from the wider academic community. However, over the past decade, research on international student mobilities has burgeoned. Between us, we have examined dozens of outstanding PhD theses on this topic, learning a great deal in the process, and have become increasingly aware of how scholarship has progressed and changed—how arguments are shaping disciplines and sub-disciplines. This new book, Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities, is a timely celebration of the wealth of new scholarship in this area whilst also providing some critical reflections on the nature and substance of this scholarship. (We do not, however, confine ourselves to studies published since 2011, and draw on older research, too, where relevant.) What we see as changes in the way in which this area has developed are reflected in the structure of the book (it is quite different from the 2011 publication). Below we provide justification for the decisions made around the structure of this new book, reflecting trends in recent scholarship. In order to introduce the book properly, however, there are two significant issues to which we must initially attend. The first concerns definitions: how we are defining student mobility and migration in the chapters that follow. A second issue (which underpins the subsequent arguments) concerns the political nature of international student mobility. These politics include (but of course are not limited to) challenging simplistic depictions of ISM, and paying heed to citation practices and the need to decolonise work in academia (and beyond).

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Definitions We begin with a discussion of two key terms—those in the title of our book: migrants and mobilities. International students are fascinating in part because they can be seen to be engaged in both ‘types’ of movement. Mobilities concerns a range of individuals’ movements, from the smallest, everyday  motions  of the body to those  that involve international flights and the traversing of oceans and continents—what Adey (2017) describes as ‘little mobilities’ and ‘big mobilities’. On the whole, work on mobilities has avoided an overt focus on the nation-state and has tended to examine people’s experiences at smaller and/or larger scales. Educational mobilities can involve ‘local’ travel (or commuting) (Finn & Holton, 2019; Bissell, 2018) or transnational movements (Waters, 2008). Migration, on the other hand, is a concept that has been around for a much longer time, discussed for centuries in relation to nation-states, their territorial borders and the need to control flows of populations into and out of them. It tends to be concerned with the legal-territorial basis for and implications of students’ movements. Nevertheless, there will be many occasions when we use these terms interchangeably in this book. For internationally established definitions of student mobility, the OECD’s ‘Education at a Glance’ is a useful resource. According to this report, there are ‘two types’ of international student mobility: credit mobility and degree mobility. Degree-mobile students are physically present at an overseas higher education institution (HEI) for the duration of a degree programme (usually three years or more). Distance learners, according to this definition, do not count as internationally mobile students (raising inevitable questions about the ambiguous status of ‘international’ students undertaking online learning due to COVID-19).1 Credit mobility, on the other hand, is seen as a ‘temporary’ stay (for a shorter duration—between one semester and a year) at an overseas HEI, where the final degree will be awarded by the ‘home’ institution. The ‘credits’ acquired at the overseas institution will count towards the final degree awarded. In Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational  In this book, we do not adhere strictly to this definition, but include a discussion of distance learners when it seems appropriate to do so. 1

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Mobilities, we discuss literature concerned with both these types of international mobility. Another term that is used frequently (and is often interchangeable with ‘international students’) is ‘foreign students.’ According to the OECD (2017), foreign students ‘are those who are not citizens of the country in which they are enrolled and where the data are collected. Although they are counted as internationally mobile, they may be long-­ term residents or even born in the “host” country’ (p. 238). This, therefore, could include individuals who have lived in the ‘destination’ country for many years, have permanent residency, do not need a ‘student visa’ and are counted (within institutional data) as ‘domestic’ students. In this book, we have made the decision to exclude individuals born in the so-­ called ‘host’ country, focussing instead on those who move internationally primarily for education. International students are described as a sub-set of foreign students (OECD, 2017): International students are those who left their country of origin and moved to another country for the purpose of study. The country of origin of a tertiary student is defined according to the criterion of ‘country of upper secondary education’, ‘country of prior education’ or ‘country of usual residence’. (p. 238)

Of course, various regional arrangements (such as free movement within the European Union (EU)) can affect students’ official classifications. Data availability and limitations can also impact on the definition of mobile students. In some countries, international students are defined as students who are not permanent residents of their country of study and, in others, students who obtained their prior education in a different country (i.e. their upper secondary or equivalent qualification). In countries where these data are not available, it is likely that ‘the country of usual or permanent residence’ will be used to determine students’ countries of origin. Finally, some countries use ‘country of citizenship’ to establish international student status. In this book, we use the term ‘international student’ to encompass all individuals who have intentionally moved internationally (i.e. across

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national borders) for the purposes of acquiring a higher education, either whole (degree mobility) or in part (credit mobility). This might, of course, include young people who moved internationally for the whole or part of their secondary education, if the goal was to stay on for higher education within that destination country (some of these individuals will have acquired either permanent residency or citizenship of the destination country—an issue discussed in Chap. 5—but we still include work on them here). The focus on intentionality means that (unless otherwise specified), we generally exclude scholarship on forced migration. This means that we do not engage with the growing literature on refugees within higher education (see, for example, Cin & Dogan, 2020; Jungblut et al., 2020; Molla, 2020; Stevenson & Baker, 2018; Streitwieser et al., 2020; Unangst et al., 2020) or the concept of ‘forced internationalisation’ (Ergin et  al., 2019)—referring to the response of universities to the presence of ‘forced migrants’ within their student bodies. Although such studies clearly constitute an important area of research, with implications for education and migration policy, practice within higher education institutions, and social justice more broadly, our interest here lies with those individuals for whom education has been the primary driver of their mobility, and those institutions and countries for whom attracting fee-­paying mobile students is an important and worthwhile endeavour. We also acknowledge a large and growing literature on international education that focuses on children and young people’s mobilities for schooling; in other words, education prior to tertiary level. For the sake of clarity and manageability, this book looks only at students within higher education, therefore excluding children from our discussion. It is worth noting that some of the issues discussed with respect to schooling (theoretically and empirically) are likely to be similar or the same as those for higher education students, and that (as noted above) a number of the students we discuss will have initially moved as children. At the same time, there will be differences: unlike children, higher education students may be explicitly framed as ‘future workers’ or ‘skilled migrants’ and encouraged to stay following graduation. They often (but not always) move alone, without a support network of family and friends around them (unlike children who move with family members). Consequently,

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we feel that the literature on mobility for higher education is now so substantial that to do it justice our focus needs to be only on this area. The literature on international student mobilities and student migration often falls back on crude demarcations of the world into broad, unsubstantiated territories of East and West and (more commonly) Global North and Global South. As Müller (2021) has argued, dividing the world in this way creates a ‘black hole’ of sorts, where countries too rich to be classed as Global South but (historically) too poor or ‘non-­ Western’ to be located in the Global North, fall between the cracks. The imperial history of the world, discussed in Chap. 4, and the ‘centres’ of knowledge production that arose as a consequence, have been unable to account for the contemporary period—notably the ‘rise’ of China as a global superpower. In Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities we acknowledge such problems and omissions that terms such as Global North and South create. Nevertheless, in reviewing the literature on international student mobilities, it is frankly impossible to avoid them.

Challenging Simplistic Depictions of ISM Within Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities we are keen to emphasise and illustrate the complexity of student mobilities; a complexity rarely captured in depictions of ISM as a South-North or East-West phenomenon. Depicting the world in this way, as crude geographical regions, negates national and regional histories, and geographies, that may in fact underpin education-related flows (Yu, 2020; see Chap. 2). For example, Yu’s (2020) recent work on the everyday practices and narratives of queer Chinese Malaysians who have returned from Taiwan, has clearly demonstrated how her research participants’ ‘educational trajectories were historically shaped by institutional racism, Cold War tensions and Sinophone affinities’ (Yu, 2020, p. 12). Such historical and geopolitical relationships are not easily captured within a framework of ‘capital’ (elaborated upon in Chap. 4) most often deployed to explain students’ international mobility, nor by recourse to the idea that students uniformly seek education in ‘the Anglophone West’. Another example

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might be found in Yang’s (2018, 2020) work on Indian medical students in China. These are self-funded students (unlike the scholarship holders found in a lot of literature on international students in China); China has become the most popular destination country for Indian students seeking a medical degree overseas. They are taught in English. According to Yang (2020), contrary to an emergent literature citing the significance of the ‘rise’ of China as a global super-power as explanation for why numbers of international students going to China are increasing so significantly, students were in fact attracted there because of considerably cheaper tuition fees and living costs (see Chap. 3). Indian students had ‘little interest in or knowledge about the country’ (p. 12). To understand this example,  students’ less-affluent status, colonial histories in India (prioritising the English language) and China’s relative lack of interest in benefiting financially from ISM (unlike other countries) all add to a complex picture around these particular flows. Furthermore, in contra-­ distinction to other accounts of ISM from India, where students are seen to be pursuing permanent residency status, this case also indicates that students typically return to their home country ‘as soon as they graduate’ (Yang, 2020, p. 12). Indian medical students found life in China generally ‘dissatisfying’ and ISM was absolutely not a route to permanent relocation there. In this book, we will cover many more examples of where ISM fails to fit neatly into predefined conceptual frameworks.

 itation Practices, Politics C and Decolonising Academia The literature that we cite in this book has been published in the English language, which is, inevitably, a shortcoming in so far as work in other languages (that has not been translated into English) is not represented here. We are cognisant of the politics surrounding citation and the requirement to ‘publish in English’ found within academia in many, if not most, countries (Müller, 2021). The ‘rise of English’ is/will be discussed, in part, in Chap. 4. Here, we wanted to say a few words about the influence that contemporary politics has had on our writing process.

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Despite these linguistic limitations, where practicable we have sought to access articles from a range of journals and countries, with the widest scope of examples to illustrate our points. To some extent, our choices reflect some of the issues we discuss later in the book. We draw, for example, on a relatively large number of studies about China, partially because of the growing interest in the country, not only as a ‘sender’ of international students but, increasingly, as a destination. Many of the projects that we have discovered through our reading have been based on doctoral research—underlining the point that some of the best intellectual work often emanates from more junior scholars. We have been conscious of the role of imperial histories in ‘knowledge creation’ (we discuss this in Chap. 4 in relation to the value of international higher education) and have intentionally looked beyond the ‘West’ in our reading and citations, although the extent to which we have achieved this is worthy of further discussion. There is a political as well as intellectual imperative to this. Intellectually, exploring a wider range of examples from a diverse body of scholars significantly enriches our argument. However, we write this book also at a political moment, where the ‘Black Lives Matters’ movement has gained significant momentum and we feel it is apposite to address this and the positive impact it has had on our thinking and academic practices. There is, of course, much more to be done in addressing inequalities within academic knowledge production, but here, at least, we wanted to acknowledge the active part we (all) play in this process.

Chapter Outline: The Book’s Structure A great deal of thought has gone into the structure and content of the book. We spent some time reflecting on Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education (Brooks & Waters, 2011) and the ways in which we wanted this new book, ten years on, to look and feel. There are many differences between the two books, which reflect changes in the way we think about—and research—international student mobilities, although certain aspects also remain similar. The 2011 book

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adopted (in some sections) a regional perspective on student mobilities, with three chapters dedicated to specific regions and their experiences of ISM: East Asia, Mainland Europe and the UK. It considered both outgoing and incoming mobilities, although the chapters on East Asia and the UK dealt mostly with students moving outwards (to countries and institutions located in ‘the West’). In this new book, we have sought to reflect some quite profound changes in the geographies of ISM, not least the growth in regional mobilities within Asia, lead by China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. The structure of the rest of the book seeks to reflect dominant narratives and emergent perspectives within the ISM literature. We consider the socio-economic diversification of internationally mobile students, reflecting the fact that whilst ISM continues often to be practised by the most wealthy and privileged members of society, it is also interesting and valuable to examine examples of ‘less conventional’ student mobilities. Students from different backgrounds (including the less privileged and wealthy) are engaging in study abroad and we explore the implications of this diversification for how we understand ISM. Another chapter focuses specifically on a question that dominates the extant literature on ISM, and that is its value. Value is, as we discuss, a complex term, with different meanings for different people, institutions and countries. And yet, value, of some sort or other, seems to be at the heart of most discussions of international education and concomitant student mobilities. More recently, we have seen a groundswell of interest in the complicated and sometimes problematic relationship between international students and nation-states. We consider the role that international students play in ‘state-building’, focusing on residency and citizenship. We then turn to explore (the sociological characteristics of ) learning, as experienced by international students, including a discussion of how students are constructed in particular ways as ‘learners’ and their in-classroom experiences. The final substantive chapter of the book (and something we barely touched upon in 2011) concerns the question of ethics that has been raised, more recently, in relation to ISM. In particular, we consider the role that international HE plays in the reproduction of inequalities amongst young people in relation to the ethical questions this poses, issues about the (unethical) treatment of international students

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and how they are habitually positioned, in media and popular discourse, as ‘revenue generating’. In what follows, we provide a brief overview of these different chapters.

Chapter 2: Geographies of International Student Mobilities for Higher Education Student mobilities to the ‘West’ from non-Western destinations (Eastern Europe, countries in Africa and parts of Asia) have a long and well-­ documented history, closely tied to legacies of colonialism. Opportunities for overseas study have unfolded differently in different parts of the world but have nevertheless resulted in a general propensity for well-resourced and often-elite students to seek education (including language skills and status) in ‘the West’ (Kenway et al., 2017). On the whole, these patterns continue to manifest in contemporary geographies of international student migration (the US and the UK are by far the largest ‘destination countries’ for international students by total student numbers) (Findlay et al., 2012). The chapter reviews these enduring patterns, and reflects upon just why they continue to persist in the way that they do. Over the past few years, however, there has been a growing recognition and intellectual acknowledgement of the importance of other, divergent ‘flows’ of students—including those of students crossing proximate borders and more regional patterns of intra-continental mobilities. China, for example, is increasingly attracting higher education students from outside its borders, within and beyond the Asian continent—the number of international students studying in China increased by over 400 per cent between 1999 and 2008 (Haugen, 2013). Many countries, not traditionally considered student destinations, are choosing to market their HEIs directly to international students (Singapore being an excellent example, see Sidhu et  al., 2011). Furthermore, traditional ‘receiving’ countries of international students, such as the UK, are seeing increased outward mobility; a small number of British students are opting to study within other European countries—particularly those that do not charge tuition fees, rather than taking out a large loan to cover the £9250 a year cost of obtaining a British degree ‘at home’ (Collinson, 2015; Brooks &

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Waters, 2011). In addition, some European undergraduate degree programmes are offering an ‘international’ component, where students are able to spend either a term or a year ‘abroad’ as part of their degree (e.g. Courtois, 2018). Geographies of international student mobility are not simply captured by a discussion of state-to-state mobility, but are also manifest at the level of regions, urban areas and institutions. We try, in our discussion, to represent these different scalar geographies of international student mobilities. This chapter provides a segue to Chap. 3—changes to the geographies of student mobilities are at least partly related to changes in the socio-economic status of students and a transformation of aspirations when it comes to attaining international higher education.

Chapter 3: Socio-Economic Diversification Traditionally, international student mobility has been seen as the preserve of the privileged. Researchers have shown how studying abroad can be an effective means for affluent groups to: obtain educational credentials that will give them a labour market advantage when they return home (e.g. Kratz & Netz, 2018; Waters, 2009); gain access to elite universities, when such routes have been closed down domestically (e.g. Brooks & Waters, 2009); and take an important first step towards securing citizenship of another country (e.g. Ong, 1999; Robertson, 2013). However, Chap. 3 considers the growing evidence that such patterns may be shifting and, in particular, that the socio-economic profiles of mobile students are diversifying. It explores, for example, the changes seen in the background of Erasmus2 participants when the European Union higher education mobility scheme was broadened to include work placements (Deakin, 2014), and the increasing prevalence of ‘middling transnationals’—as opposed to ‘cosmopolitan elites’—in many popular destination countries (e.g. Luthra & Platt, 2016). The chapter goes on to suggest, however, that this evidence of socio-economic diversification has been accompanied by the emergence of new forms of stratification—in which the ‘education  Although the scheme changed its name to Erasmus+ in 2014, for simplicity we use ‘Erasmus’ throughout this book. 2

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abroad’ accessed by less privileged social groups is qualitatively different from that accessed by their more affluent and well-resourced peers.

Chapter 4: The Differential Value of International Higher Education There has been a tendency, in much of the sociological and geographical literature exploring international student mobility, to emphasise the strategic importance of an international education, typically framed in ‘Bourdieusian’ terms of the accumulation of cultural capital (Waters, 2006; Yang, 2018). And there is much evidence in the literature to suggest that for many student groups, international mobility is indeed a means of accumulating cultural capital and, down the line, securing improved job prospects (Brooks & Waters, 2011). However, over the past few years, research has begun to emphasise the complexities of capital accumulation and exchange, most notably the way in which they are enmeshed within intricate socio-spatial relations that enable or restrict an individual or group’s ability to access and subsequently ‘use’ their education in a particular way. The sense that any straight-forward formula for the conversion of capitals exists has been largely discredited; researchers have begun to show how education is inflected by class, gender, sexuality, religious and other important dimensions (Holloway et  al., 2012; Yang, 2018). Value is likewise expressed (and sought) by various institutional actors, such as universities, cities and states. We also consider, therefore, how these institutional actors impact upon and help generate value in international higher education. This chapter explores these important debates, examining the literature that has shown the complex ways in which international higher education is ‘valued’ (ascribed value to) in different global (and more localised) settings. Within this discussion, we explore the meanings and interpretations of value in international higher education (Cheng, 2016).

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Chapter 5: Migration, State-Building and Citizenship Projects In different ways, migrant students have been drawn into projects of the state, whether through the implementation of soft-power strategies played out via scholarship programmes (as in China, see Haugen, 2013); the creation of citizen subjects (Mitchell, 2003; Cheng, 2016); competitive state strategies involving immigration policy (Geddie, 2015); surveillance and securitisation of borders (Warren & Mavroudi, 2011); or diaspora policies concerning, amongst other things, attracting knowledge workers and remittances (Larner, 2015; Yang, 2018). As Yang (2018) observed for Singapore, tensions and even conflicts can emerge between ‘foreign talent’ and ‘locals’, or in the context of Hong Kong, between ‘overseas educated’ and ‘domestically educated’ graduates (Waters, 2008). In the UK, in recent years, international students have found themselves implicated in discussions around immigration policy and ‘Brexit’. One notable development in the literature on student migration, for example, has been the sense in which international education is inextricably tied into larger state projects. This chapter explores the complex and multifaceted ways in which international students can be seen to be embroiled with the state in different contexts and at different levels. Students can become permanent residents and, eventually, citizens of the countries within which they are studying, for example; they can contribute as a member of a diaspora (Larner, 2015; Yang, 2018) or can be involved in multiple nation-states as transnational migrants (Liu-Farrer, 2011). States themselves may see international students as an opportunity to create new citizens and enhance their stock of human capital (Mitchell, 2003; Cheng, 2016); and competitive state strategies may involve immigration policy directly related to international students (Geddie, 2015).

Chapter 6: Learning and Classroom Experiences Social processes related to learning are an important consideration when it comes to understanding international students’ experiences—both

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inside and outside the ‘classroom’. This chapter begins by considering the extent to which academic factors (aspects of learning) motivate students’ decisions about international higher education, before exploring literature that has addressed students’ academic performance. We argue that a notion of the ‘struggling foreigner’ (Tannock, 2018) exerts considerable power within higher education environments, and that this trope can influence how fellow students, university staff and policy makers respond to and engage with international students (Heng, 2018). We also, in this chapter, consider the concept of ‘cultural hegemony’, in terms of how international students experience classroom learning within university (e.g., Song & McCarthy, 2018). The notion of ‘engaged pedagogy’ is apposite here (Madge et  al., 2009); we argue that a persistent binary between ‘home’ and ‘international’ students risks essentialising young people’s cultural differences in ways that can cause division and segregation (Choudaha et al., 2012).

Chapter 7: Ethics and Student Mobility Drawing on a number of the themes introduced in previous chapters, this chapter brings some of the ethical concerns related to international student mobility into sharp relief. We first consider issues associated with access to educational mobility—and how this impacts debates about equity and fairness. We then develop this discussion by exploring the treatment of home and international students. We note that while many countries have implemented policies to increase the social diversity of the population of ‘home’ students, such actions are rarely, if ever, taken with respect to their ‘international’ peers. International students often suffer worse experiences than domestic students during their time in higher education because of the higher fees they have to pay in many nations, the more limited work opportunities available to them, and their greater propensity to experience racism and discrimination, for example (Fong, 2011; Hayes, 2019). The chapter then considers the ways in which international students are constructed in marketing, media and policy texts from around the world, and contends that we see inequalities here, too— as such individuals are frequently positioned as economic or political

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resources, in need of tutelage from nations of the Global North (Lomer, 2017; Sidhu, 2006). Finally, the chapter argues that while international student mobility can, in some circumstances, be advantageous for both sending and receiving countries, it can also work to exacerbate inequalities between nation-states and this, also, has ethical implications (Urbanovic et al., 2016).

A Note on Reading the Book There is no ‘right’ way to read this book. Whilst there are arguments that thread through all the chapters, the chapters can be read individually—or out of sequence—as required. We hope that readers will find this to be a valuable resource on the latest scholarship dealing with aspects of international student mobilities and migration. As mentioned, it does not claim to be an exhaustive account, but we feel confident that we represent well the thrust of the arguments within English-language publications across a range of disciplines. We hope you find it enjoyable and informative.

References Adey, P. (2017). Mobility. Taylor & Francis. Bissell, D. (2018). Transit Life: How Commuting is Transforming our Cities. Cambridge: MIT Press. Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2009). A Second Chance at ‘Success’: UK students and global circuits of higher education. Sociology, 43(6), 1085–1102. Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2011). Student mobilities, migration and the internationalization of higher education. Palgrave Macmillan. Cheng, Y. E. (2016). Learning in neoliberal times: Private degree students and the politics of value coding in Singapore. Environment and Planning A, 48(2), 292–308. Choudaha, R., Orosz, K., & Channg, L. (2012). Not all international students are the same. World Education News and Reviews, August, pp. 1–21. Collinson, P. (2015). Go Dutch and save yourself £50,000. The Guardian, 5 September.

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Courtois, A. (2018). ‘It doesn’t really matter which university you attend or which subject you study while abroad’. The massification of student mobility programmes and its implications for equality in higher education. European Journal of Higher Education, 22(4), 475–500. Deakin, H. (2014). The drivers to Erasmus student work placement mobility: A UK student perspective. Children’s Geographies, 12(1), 25–39. Ergin, H., de Wit, H., & Leask, B. (2019). Forced Internationalization of higher education: An emerging phenomenon. International Higher Education, 97, 9–10. Findlay, A.  M., King, R., Smith, F.  M., Geddes, A., & Skeldon, R. (2012). World class? An investigation of globalisation, difference and international student mobility. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(1), 118–131. Finn, K., & Holton, M. (2019). Everyday Mobile Belonging: Theorising Higher Education Student Mobilities. Bloomsbury Publishing, London. Fong, V. (2011). Paradise redefined. Transnational Chinese students and the quest for flexible citizenship in the developed world. Stanford University Press. Geddie, K. (2015). Policy mobilities in the race for talent: Competitive state strategies in international student mobility. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 40(2), 235–248. Haugen, H. Ø. (2013). China’s recruitment of African university students: Policy efficacy and unintended outcomes. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 11(3), 315–334. Hayes, A. (2019). Inclusion, epistemic democracy and international students. The teaching excellence framework and education policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Heng, T.  T. (2018). Different is not deficient: Contradicting stereotypes of Chinese international students in US higher education. Higher Education, 43(1), 22–36. Holloway, S.  L., O’Hara, S.  L., & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2012). Educational mobility and the gendered geography of cultural capital: The case of international student flows between Central Asia and the UK. Environment and Planning A, 44(9), 2278–2294. Jungblut, J., Vukasovic, M., & Steinhardt, I. (2020). Higher education policy dynamics in turbulent times—access to higher education for refugees in Europe. Studies in Higher Education, 45(2), 327–338. Kenway, J., Fahey, J., Epstein, D., Koh, A., McCarthy, C., & Rizvi, F. (2017). Class choreographies: Elite schools and globalization. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Kratz, F., & Netz, N. (2018). Which mechanisms explain monetary returns to international student mobility? Studies in Higher Education, 43(2), 375–400. Larner, W. (2015). Globalising knowledge networks: Universities, diaspora strategies, and academic intermediaries. Geoforum, 59, 197–205. Liu-Farrer, G. (2011). Labor migration from China to Japan: International students, transnational migrants (Vol. 77). Routledge. Lomer, S. (2017). Recruiting international students in higher education. Representations and rationales in British policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Luthra, R., & Platt, L. (2016). Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification. Ethnicities, 16(2), 316–344. Madge, C., Raghuram, P., & Noxolo, P. (2009). Engaged pedagogy and responsibility: A postcolonial analysis of international students. Geoforum, 40, 34–45. Madge, C., Raghuram, P., & Noxolo, P. (2015). Conceptualizing international education: From international student to international study. Progress in Human Geography, 39(6), 681–701. Melis Cin, F., & Dogan, N. (2020). Navigating university spaces as refugees: Syrian students’ pathways of access to and through higher education in Turkey. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 25, 298–312. Mitchell, K. (2003). Educating the national citizen in Neoliberal Times: From the multicultural self to the strategic cosmopolitan. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 28(4), 387–403. Molla, T. (2020). Refugees and equity policy in Australian higher education. Policy Reviews in Higher Education, 5, 5–27. Müller, M. (2021). Worlding geography: From linguistic privilege to decolonial anywheres. Progress in Human Geography. (Advance online access) OECD. (2017). Education at a glance. OECD. OECD. (2020). Education at a glance. OECD. Ong, A. (1999). Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Duke University Press. Robertson, S. (2013). Transnational student-migrants and the state: The education-­ migration nexus. Palgrave Macmillan. Sidhu, R. (2006). Universities and globalization. To market, to market. Laurence Erlbaum Associates Ltd. Sidhu, R., Ho, K. C., & Yeoh, B. (2011). The global schoolhouse: Governing Singapore’s knowledge economy aspirations. In Higher education in the Asia-­ Pacific (pp. 255–271). Springer. Sklair, L. (2001). Transnational capitalist class. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Song, X., & McCarthy, G. (2018). Governing Asian international students: The policy and practice of essentialising ‘critical thinking’. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 353–365. Stevenson, J., & Baker, S. (2018). Refugees in higher education: Debate, discourse and practice. Emerald Publishing. Streitwieser, B., Duffy-Jaeger, K., & Roche, J. (2020). Comparing the responses of US higher education institutions to international and undocumented students in the Trump era. Comparative Education Review, 64(3), 404–427. Tannock, S. (2018). Educational equality and international students. Justice across borders? Palgrave Macmillan. Unangst, L., Ergin, H., Khajarian, A., DeLaquil, T., & de Wit, H. (Eds.). (2020). Refugees and Higher Education. Transnational perspectives on access, equity and internationalisation. Brill Books. Urbanovic, J., Wilkins, S., & Huisman, J. (2016). Issues and challenges for small countries in attracting and hosting international students: The case of Lithuania. Studies in Higher Education, 41(3), 491–507. Warren, A., & Mavroudi, E. (2011). Managing surveillance? The impact of biometric residence permits on UK migrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37(9), 1495–1511. Waters, J. L. (2006). Geographies of cultural capital: Education, international migration and family strategies between Hong Kong and Canada. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(2), 179–192. Waters, J.  L. (2008). Education, migration, and cultural capital in the Chinese diaspora. Cambria Press. Waters, J.  L. (2009). Transnational geographies of academic distinction: The role of social capital in the recognition and evaluation of ‘overseas’ credentials. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 7(2), 113–129. Yang, P. (2018). International mobility and educational desire: Chinese foreign talent students in Singapore. Springer: New York. Yang, P. (2020). China in the global field of international student mobility: An analysis of economic, human and symbolic capitals. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 39(5), 1–19. Yu, T. F. (2020). Queer migration across the Sinophone world: Queer Chinese Malaysian students’ educational mobility to Taiwan. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–15. (Advance online access)

2 Geographies of International Student Mobilities

Introduction In recent years, calls have emerged to consider what has been described as the ‘re-spatialisation’ of international higher education, with a focus on its multiple geographies (Mulvey, 2020). Madge et al. (2015) discuss this in relation to ‘international study’, where they deconstruct ‘the international’ with a view to enabling: a more distributed, unsettled and decentred view…that starts to develop multicentre, multi-scalar spatial imaginations and which unsettles commonly assumed spatialities through a focus on student immobilities and a political reading of the international in relation to the nation… We can [then] start to reveal an expanded notion of the international, moving from (largely unmarked) European-American-Australian centres towards a version that explicitly resituates itself as coming out of multiple locations. (p. 684)

This quotation is replete with spatial references: centres, scales, (im) mobilities and relocations, underlining the importance of adopting a

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geographical perspective to international student mobilities. Madge et al. (2015) describe the way in which international education (and coterminous student mobilities) have been discussed in relation to particular parts of the world, elevating ‘the nation’ and continually valorising Europe, North America and Australia as assumed centres of knowledge production (Jöns, 2007; Jöns & Hoyler, 2013). Instead, they call for researchers actively to overturn commonly held assumptions about the geographies of international student mobility, challenging the view that mobilities ‘centre’ on (and can be centred upon) particular, preeminent and distinguished locations. Instead, international student mobilities can be revealed as multiply (re)located and decentred (Mulvey, 2020). In this chapter, we adopt this approach to understanding the geographies of international student mobility: viewing them as multiple and diversely located. One of our goals is to discuss and complicate dominant depictions of ISM, with an emphasis on alternative and ‘counter’ flows. As will be seen, the grey literature discusses ISM in terms of broad-level patterns and illustrative statistics. The globe is divided into crude territories and students are largely depicted as moving to the Anglophone ‘West’ from non-Western countries (Eastern Europe, countries in Africa and parts of Asia). Such visions of the world, of course, are closely tied to historical geographies of imperialism and colonialism (Said, 1978; discussed in Chap. 4). The way in which statistics on ISM are collated means that these patterns continue to manifest in contemporary geographies of international student migration—the US and the UK remain by far the most significant ‘destination countries’ for international students by total student numbers (Findlay et  al., 2012). Whilst this chapter will review these patterns, and reflect upon their apparent persistence, we will also consider how such patterns may be ‘decentred’; how different patterns are emerging and alternative interpretations of student mobilities serve to unsettle this East-West narrative. Over the past few years, there has been a growing recognition and intellectual engagement with divergent movements of students. These have included, for example, attention paid to students crossing proximate borders (as opposed to long distance travel) and regional patterns of intra-continental mobilities. Many countries not traditionally considered student ‘destinations’, such as Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea, are

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choosing to market their HEIs directly to international students, creating new ‘regional dynamics’ around international student mobilities (Chan & Ng, 2008; Mulvey, 2020). Furthermore, traditional ‘host’ countries for international students, such as the UK, are seeing increased outward mobility (Brooks & Waters, 2011). A final aim of this chapter is to highlight the different scales at which student mobilities might be apprehended, refocusing the discussion away from the nation-state. In so doing, we consider the geographies of student mobilities at the level of the city and the campus. As discussed in the conclusion, COVID-19 has reconfigured yet again the everyday geographies of international student mobilities, so this is very much a live and ongoing discussion. This chapter contributes, in part, to attempts to counter large-scale and depersonalising narratives of international students as ‘global flows’.

 lobal and Regional Patterns of International G Student Mobilities When we use the term ‘global’, we are of course cognisant of the fact that not every country of the world is represented in these discussions, and that a small number of countries are significantly predominant. This, in part, reflects imperial legacies (discussed in Chaps. 1, 4, and below) and how narratives of ‘globality’ have become tied to Western-centric visions of the world (Said, 1978; Kölbel, 2020).

Dominant Flows of ISM As we observed in Chap. 1, the OECD (2018) describes the increase in the total number of international students over the past few decades: ‘rising from 2 million in 1999 to 5 million 17 years later’ (p.  219). The numbers are undeniable. Globally, international students are a significant population of mobile young people, whose impact has only relatively recently been recognised within public and media discourse. Some key features of international student mobilities have come, over the past two

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decades, to characterise these mobilities on a global scale, as depicted by a more recent OECD report in starkly geographical terms: Students from Asia form the largest group of international students enrolled in OECD tertiary education programmes at all levels (1.9 million, 55 per cent of all international students in 2016….). Of these, over 860 000 come from China. Two-thirds of Asian students converge towards only three countries: Australia (15%), the United Kingdom (11%) and the United States (38%). (OECD, 2018, p. 221)

Regionally, Asia sends the largest number of young people ‘abroad’ for education and China has been, and still is, the most significant individual country in this regard. The majority of students continue to look to Anglophone ‘Western’ countries as a study destination. Figures from the latest OECD (2019) report highlight that: ‘English-speaking destinations’ remain the most attractive to international students, and students from Asia represent the majority of international students globally. The report accounts for these geographical patterns by arguing that ‘domestic’ and ‘external’ factors combine to create the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ of international study. Knowledge-based economies around the world require skilled workers leading to an overall increase in demand for tertiary education. Local education systems cannot always meet that demand. In addition, the report notes the importance of cheaper flights and the spread of the internet, making ISM not only ‘more affordable’ but also, interestingly, ‘less irreversible’ than at earlier times. It implies the significance of transnationalism in the lives of contemporary students, and how their mobility is far more likely to result in cross-border engagements and cosmopolitanism than in permanent relocation and citizenship acquisition (see Chap. 7; Waters & Brooks, 2012). A recent edited collection by Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood (2019) focuses on student mobility for higher education to these more traditional host countries of the United States, the United Kingdom (and Europe more broadly), Australia and Canada; countries that continue to dominate contemporary research on international student mobility.1 In  A search of research using Google Scholar reveals that of the top eight more searched for ‘host countries for international students’, only two (Malaysia and China) are found outside of this ‘traditional’ nexus. 1

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justifying the structure of their book (around these host countries), Rose-­ Redwood and Rose-Redwood write: The purpose… is not to reinforce the ‘territorial trap’ (Agnew, 1994), which naturalizes sovereign states as containers within which international student experiences occur. Rather, we have presented our scholarship here based on the premise that place matters when it comes to understanding the specificities of the international student experience in different geographical locales. (p. 10)

In other words, students recognise and respond to such crude depictions of ‘place’: they actively choose particular countries in the ‘West’ based on these depictions. This book makes a significant contribution to the extant literature, but also serves to reinforce the point that research still favours traditional ‘host’ countries. There is still work to be done in diversifying the geographical foci of research on ISM, even if great strides, over the past ten years, have been made. It is notable that other measures of the significance of a country as a ‘destination’ for or ‘host’ of international students are possible, in addition to a concern with total student numbers at the national level: including, for example, the number of international students as a percentage of the total student body, differentiating by subject area or institution (some subjects are far more dominated by international students than are others), or including the number of transnational [TNE]2 students enrolled on a university course. These data are not widely available globally, and so such international comparisons are not possible in practice. Existing statistics tend to reinforce and reinscribe a circumscribed but powerful geography of ISM revolving around Western, Anglophone destinations, directing student flows to a limited number of countries (Shahjahan, Estera et al., 2020; Shahjahan, Sonneveldt et al., 2020). What might be the implications if international student mobility was discussed using different data, in different ways? For example, courses with high numbers of international students will be experienced very differently (by everyone concerned) than courses dominated by domestic students or ‘locals’. We  TNE can be defined as academic programmes where students on those programmes are located outside the awarding host institution country. 2

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touch on this in other chapters of the book (especially in Chaps. 3 and 6) where we discuss issues related to students’ social segregation. Here, we simply seek to stress that the ways in which statistics are collected on ISM play a significant role in shaping extant debates.

Interpreting Dominant Flows of ISM How do we interpret these large-scale trends? The enduring legacy of colonialism and imperialism, which has seen English become the ‘global language’ and Western forms of knowledge valorised (see also Chap. 4), is clearly crucial. As Kölbel (2020) has argued with respect to prospective international students in Nepal, ‘images and stories circulated by the various actors involved in international education can further manifest historically rooted imaginative geographies in which the “West” is seen to be more sophisticated and advanced than the “East”’ (p.  96). As suggested by Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood (2019) in relation to their arguments (above) about the role of place in ISM, in cases where students lack detailed knowledge of or information about study abroad locations, they will often resort to stereotyped imaginaries of West and East. These ideas have been reinforced through the proliferation of league tables: up until relatively recently, higher education institutions located in North America and the UK have dominated international rankings for higher education, making them supremely attractive destinations for international students (for whom league tables are often an important source of ‘objective’ information on the value of a particular qualification) (Jöns & Hoyler, 2013). As noted in Chap. 4, some government scholarships facilitating international mobility will only support students attending highly ranked institutions. These rankings have their roots in notions of distinction developed during colonialism (Jöns, 2007). Relatedly, the importance of the ‘supply side’ in ISM is very frequently overlooked, with literature tending to over-emphasise, in comparison, the significance of student ‘demand’ in relation to dominant student flows. Findlay’s (2011) work describes the relevance of state policy (which might include immigration policy and access to post-study work visas)

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and marketing campaigns (see Geddie, 2015). There is also a significant role to be played by various intermediaries in directing students to ‘dominant’ countries. These might include educational organisations such as (in the context of the UK) Universities UK and the British Council (Findlay, 2011; see also Sidhu, 2006; Beech, 2019), who promote certain destinations (and institutions). Other research has emphasised the important influence of educational agents and consultants in channelling ISM, who draw upon the crude geographical statistics described above (such as Altbach, 2013; Beech, 2019; Collins, 2012; Kölbel, 2020; Nikula & Kivistö, 2020). Agents can be instrumental at many different levels, from influencing the destination country and city, and the higher education institution, as well as students’ housing choices. Thus, agents have an important role to play in shaping broad-scale geographies of international student mobility—with the power to reinforce existing patterns and potentially help create new ones.

Alternative ‘Flows’ of International Students Over the past decade, notable changes within international league tables have become apparent. There were seven Asian universities in the top 50 of global universities as reported in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings in 2019. University World News (2020) recently wrote in relation to another ‘popular’ ranking system: Asian universities have gained ground with record representation in the top 100, while the United States, United Kingdom and other European countries have seen an overall decline in performance in the Quacquarelli Symonds or QS World University Rankings 2021, a trend which Ben Sowter, QS director of research, says ‘reflects the increasing competitiveness of the global higher education landscape’. This year’s instalment of the rankings sees Asian universities enjoy a greater presence among the global top 100 than at any point in the ranking’s 17-edition history. There are now 26 Asian universities achieving top-100 ranks. (n.p.)

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This represents a significant shift, over the past few decades, in how universities outside the West have been perceived, evaluated and represented. East Asia is a good example of a region consolidating its position within emergent maps of international student migration. In East Asia, an increasing number of students circulate between countries. Sidhu et  al. (2020) explore ‘Asian regionalism’ in relation to student mobilities, in an attempt explicitly to counter what they describe as a Eurocentric depiction of Asia that sees it as fragmented and conflict-ridden and, consequently, not a popular or desirable destination country for ISM.  In contrast, international student mobility within Asia offers the ‘possibility for regional goodwill and cosmopolitan sensibilities’ (p. 4). In developing this idea of Asian regionalism, Sidhu et al. (2020) adopt a postcolonial lens through which they explore student mobilities with the goal of ‘decentring’ Europe’s ‘modernist claims’ (p. 4) (this decentring is similar to the aims of Madge et al. (2015), described above). In their book, Sidhu et al. (2020) have three key objectives: the first is to examine international student mobility within East Asia. As already noted, this focus has been significantly underrepresented in the literature compared to work on the ‘traditional’ host countries. Such refocusing of research away from the ‘West’ can thus be envisaged as an act of political intervention. Second, by positioning themselves as researchers within (not outside) Asia, they highlight the need for ‘a politics of critique and care’ in both research and in relation to the practices of international education (p. 4). A small but growing body of literature on ISM has asserted this need—for an ethics-driven politics (Madge et al., 2009, Waters, 2018, Yang, 2020—see Chap. 7)—calling for researchers to look beyond a narrow concern with ‘capital’ and the generation of ‘value’ through international education (as discussed in the conclusion to Chap. 4). The final aim of Sidhu et al.’s (2020) book is to consider the governmentalities of “Rising Asia”; in other words, how states within Asia are actively attempting to counter narratives of Western superiority with various state-level policies and strategies. Many of these relate directly to higher education and aim to position Asian universities favourably  within global knowledge and innovation networks. Asian regionalism in part reflects deliberate efforts  by non-Western states ‘to assemble and govern ‘new knowledge spaces’ in and through the institution

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of the ‘world-class’ university’ (Sidhu et al., 2020, p. 31). In other words, universities have become a focal point in states’ attempts to boost their economies through ‘knowledge’, and this has included the recruitment (and retention) of international students, focused on the wider geographical region (Olds, 2007). This shift in focus (away from the West) also reflects a momentum, within academia, to acknowledge and eschew Western-centric discourses (Jazeel & McFarlane, 2010; Jazeel, 2019; Müller, 2021). Western forms of knowledge continue to be privileged in both the practices of ISM and in the foci of scholarship (Jöns & Hoyler, 2013). Over the last ten years, however, we have seen growing diversity in this regard: these changes are, we hope, reflected in the pages of this book. Conceptually, we have also seen far greater application of post-colonial approaches than previously: ignited with Madge et  al.’s (2009) important initial intervention and continued in the work of Raghuram et al. (2020), França et al. (2018), Riaño et al. (2018), Yang (2020), Waters (2018) and others. In recent scholarship, there has been more explicit recognition that international mobility itself can reinforce and entrench pre-existing (post) colonial structures (Koh, 2017; Sin, 2009). In the next section, we explore the empirical evidence for emergent flows and surgent regional dynamics underpinning contemporary international student mobilities.

 on-traditional Students Travelling N to Non-traditional Destinations As will be discussed in detail in Chap. 3, the market in international student migration has ‘opened up’ in recent years to include students for whom international education, hitherto, may not have been an option. This might include less well-off students, students travelling under expensive mobility programmes, students from traditional ‘receiving’ countries (such as the UK) seeking a cheaper or just ‘different’ education elsewhere, and individuals traveling to traditional ‘sending’ countries. The result has been a partial ‘decentring’ of the debate. Scholarships have had a big role to play in these developing patterns. China’s Belt and Road initiative

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(BRI),3 for example, has, since its inception, provided over 10,000 full scholarships to international students from ‘belt and road’ countries, including many from Africa (Mulvey, 2020) and India (Yang, 2018). More than 12 per cent of all international students in China in 2018 held a Chinese government scholarship (over 50,000 students) (MoE, 2019). The emergence of regional educational hubs (for example, in the Philippines, see Ortiga, 2017; and Singapore, Sidhu et al., 2011) have also made overseas education more widely accessible to a broader range of (less privileged) students, for whom travel to North America or Western Europe is prohibitively expensive. China has led the way in changing previously persistent global and regional patterns of ISM by becoming not just a major sending country (it has dominated over the past 20 years) but also the world’s third largest host of international students. In 2018, China received 492,185 international students from 196 countries, placing it behind only the US and UK in terms of number of resident overseas students. Although many of these students were from within the wider Asian region (South Korea, Thailand, Pakistan and India), other countries in the ‘top ten’ included the US, Russia and France (MoE, 2019). An example of ‘non-traditional’ mobility has been documented by Lee (2020a, 2020b) in her work on ‘Western’ students at a branch campus university in China. She found that students attempted to position themselves against, and differentiated themselves from, a variety of ‘Others’: the local (Chinese) community, immobile peers back home, ‘mainstream’ international students from the Global South moving to the Global North, ‘educational tourists’, and those international students who only move within their ‘comfort zone’ in the Global North. Such projects have begun the work of ‘decentring’ and unsettling prevailing narratives of ISM: there is, however, more to be done on non-traditional mobilities, its drivers and implications and  The Belt and Road initiative (BRI) has been heavily examined by academics for its broader, regional significance. It is a programme implemented by the Chinese state to connect China with Europe and parts of Africa via networks or transport routes (‘infrastructural connectivity’). The term ‘belt and road’ was coined by the Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2013, inspired by the historical concept of the Silk Road. With similarities to the development of the European Union, the BRI aims for greater regional corporation and exchange, including in the field of higher education. Consequently, the BRI has included the provision of over 10,000 scholarships annually to individuals residing in countries within the belt and road area (European Bank, n.d.). 3

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students’ experiences.4 In addition to China, we might also highlight other examples of regional patterns of international study, such as South Africa’s role in attracting students throughout the region (Raghuram et  al., 2020) and South Korea’s growing role as a ‘regional hub’ for incoming students (Jon et al., 2014). To this point, we have considered both the dominant and alternative global narratives attached to international student mobility. We now turn to explore other, ‘smaller’, more localised geographies, beginning with the urban.

City Spaces of ISM Although the nation state is still the implicit spatial framework for research on student migration, many of the explicit comparisons that students engage in appear to be in relation to places. (Raghuram, 2013, p. X)

To date, the role that cities or urban areas play in international student mobilities has been largely overlooked within the literature. Cities have been perceived primarily as ‘destinations’ of international students (for example, see Collins, 2008, 2010; Sidhu et al., 2011; Fincher & Shaw, 2009; He, 2015). And yet, students in general, and international students more specifically, have been seen to transform the urban landscape through their consumption practices and residential choices (Smith & Hubbard, 2014; Collins & Ho, 2014). The active part that cities can play in the creation of international student mobility has also been largely neglected. Here, we reflect upon Collins’s (2014) intervention concerning the ‘contingent assembly of the urban and its role in globalising higher education’ (p.  242). He argues that cities are more than just a ‘backdrop’ to internationalising higher education (Collins, 2014). Rather, powerful imaginative geographies exist of cities as desirable places, inducing ‘aspirations to become mobile’ amongst international students (Collins, 2014, p. 243). In addition, Collins highlights the role that cities  Nevertheless, while a focus on the emergence on China does decentre existing geographies, it also (from a post-colonial perspective) needs to recognise the colonising ambitions of the Chinese state and the sources of power over other territories that it, consequently, yields. 4

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play in ‘situated learning’, wherein students acquire ‘place-specific knowledge’ within the classroom and beyond, in terms of language and culture in daily interactions in the city’ (p. 243). (See also Brooks and Waters, 2017, for an extensive discussion of the city in relation to education and mobilities.) Researchers interested in international higher education are beginning to consider the complex geographies of institutional reputation and prestige and how these interact with the identities of cities (Findlay et  al., 2012; Beech, 2014). Beech (2014), in her detailed examination of why international students chose to study in particular cities (Aberdeen, Belfast and Nottingham), has made claims for the importance of ‘imaginative geographies’; especially for those who studied outside of England. She has shown how those imaginative geographies, anticipated in advance of moving to a place to study, can sit uncomfortably alongside the reality of living in those places. Prazeres et al. (2017) have also considered the ‘distinctive qualities’ of place that might attract international students to less prestigious higher educational institutions. The city may enmesh with ‘specific lifestyle desires’ of students, corresponding to ‘personal imaginaries’ (p. 116). Places (including cities as places) play a key role in the imaginative geographies of ISM (Beech, 2014; Kölbel, 2020), particularly for those students who have no first-hand prior experience of travel abroad. Discussions of imaginative geographies often invoke Appadurai’s (1996) work on the role of media and the imagination in precipitating human mobility and Said’s (1978) account of imaginative geographies (see Chap. 4 for a more detailed discussion of Said’s ideas). Kölbel’s (2020) work with 40 young people from Kathmandu, Nepal, explored the role of the media in shaping narratives of international student mobility, which entered young people’s daily lives. The out-migration of students from Nepal to overseas destination countries has tripled over the last ten years, to over nine per cent of total Nepalis in HE, far exceeding global trends in ISM (Kölbel, 2020). Their choice of destination cities has, Kölbel argues, been fundamentally influenced by the media, shaping students’ imaginative geographies of places they had never visited. Kölbel’s (2020) paper explores how aspiring international students understand place. Rather than thinking solely about how dominant imaginaries shape

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students’ mobility choices, it also considers ‘the ways in which dominant imaginaries attached to international student mobility shape young people’s identities and their life chances’ (2020, p. 88). She notes that young people in Kathmandu are consistently exposed to images and ideas relating to study abroad by education marketing consultants. Materially, this has included ‘countless billboards’ advertising study abroad opportunities and advertisements in daily newspapers and flyers posted everywhere. Some students accessed information on social networking sites (although this was not uniform across young people), whilst for others, having a family member overseas (usually in employment) provided important insights into what studying overseas might entail. Significantly, Kölbel (2020) notes, this degree of ‘connectivity’ to images and individuals overseas rarely results in a fuller understanding of overseas places but rather a partial and incomplete picture of particular cities and what it would be like to study there. These projects are important because they explore why international students, specifically, might be attracted to cities within the usual, global city nexus (Sassen, 1991). Here, it feels apposite to discuss our project on the development of so called ‘satellite campuses’, in the UK. This refers to UK universities based outside the capital developing new, additional campuses located in London. These began to appear around 2009 and, by 2014 (shortly before we commenced our research), there were 13 in operation (QAA, 2014). We draw, here, on this project’s findings to explore these ideas (around place and urban geographies of international student mobilities) in more detail (see Brooks & Waters, 2018).

London-based Satellite Campuses The ‘off-shoot’ London campuses of UK HEIs (located outside the capital) were identified through an online search and with reference to a QAA [Quality Assurance Agency] report published in 2014. Although a number of London campuses open in 2014 were no longer operating (notably the University of East Anglia and the University of South Wales), at the time of research (between April and June 2018), there were 14 HEIs with a subsidiary campus in the City of London. Our data analysis focused on:

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campus websites; prospectuses; promotional films; and open days (see Table 2.1 for a summary). Importantly, for the arguments in this chapter, these London campuses were largely being marketed to international students. In what follows, we briefly discuss the main implications arising from the analysis of our data as it relates to the broader literature (see Brooks & Waters, 2018, for a full discussion of these data). In short, we found that: international students were the ‘target market’ for the majority of these campus offshoots; and in many cases there were significant disparities between the teaching and resources offered at the ‘parent’ campus and the London counterpart (leading us to conclude that London campuses appeared to offer an inferior teaching and learning experience). There are further implications for the ethics surrounding how international students are viewed and treated in relation to domestic students, drawing links with the discussion in Chap. 7. The role and function of London, as a pre-eminent global city, is crucial to this story (Sassen, 1991). UK HEIs appeal to and draw upon such place-making and how it intersects with ISM (Beech, 2019) when designing and locating their branch-campus. It is no accident that London is the primary location of UK universities’ satellite campuses. London is widely understood to appeal to international students. Such appeal includes (but is not limited to): aesthetic elements (high rise buildings and iconic landmarks); its global financial district (concentrating headquarters of banks and other financial and legal institutions); cultural appeal (Britishness and a cosmopolitan internationalism); leisure and arts facilities (theatres, cafes, restaurants and night life); and ‘prestigious’ HEIs centred on the colleges of the University of London (King’s, Imperial, London School of Economics, UCL, and so on). The attraction of a London campus to international students lacking the information needed to make an informed decision about the pedagogical experience they might expect can trump all else when it comes to the apparent success of UK HEIs’ London offshoots. As Prazeres et al. (2017) have argued: The appeal of place is one of the main motivations that lures students to particular cities rather than specific institutions […]. Particular places and

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2  Geographies of International Student Mobilities  Table 2.1  London campuses and methods of data collection

Parent HEI Anglia Ruskin University Coventry University Glasgow Caledonian University Glyndwr University

Name and location of London campus

Website analysed

Prospectus analysed

ARU London

Yes

Yes

Coventry University London GCU London

Yes

Glyndwr University London Campus Loughborough Loughborough University University London Newcastle Newcastle University University London Northumbria Northumbria University University London Ulster University Ulster University London University of Cumbria London Cumbria University of University of Liverpool Liverpool in London University of University of Sunderland Sunderland in London University of UWTSD London Wales Trinity St David University of WBS London Warwick [only the Warwick Business School had a London campus] University of UWS London West of Campus Scotland

Promotional film Open day analysed attended Yes

Yes

No film available Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No prospectus No film available available

No

Yes

No prospectus Yes available

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

No film available

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No film available Yes

Yes

Yes

No film available

No

Yes

No prospectus Yes available

No

Yes

No prospectus No film available available

No

Yes

No prospectus No film available available

No

No

No

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the particularities of these places can offer desirable opportunities and amenities that appeal to students’ everyday lifestyle aspirations. The value and prestige of reputable universities are thus weighted against students’ more mundane and extra-curricular interests. (p. 117)

Place becomes profoundly important in international students’ decision-­making with respect to their mobilities and where they choose to study. Cities have an ineffable quality when it comes to their appeal, linked to what Collins (2014) has described as ‘urban educational prestige’ (p. 242). Our research has suggested that UK universities are acutely aware of (and are exploiting) this allure of place in their marketing materials. The appeal of London may in fact be used to ‘offset’ a deficit in the services, opportunities and experiences provided to students studying at one of these satellite campuses (which can lack a wide range of programmes and a degree of choice within those programmes, excellent teaching facilities, a ‘campus life’, dedicated accommodation, well qualified staff, and so on). In the marketing materials that we reviewed, especially striking images of London loom large. We concur with Collins (2014), who has described cities as ‘more than just the geographical backdrop’ to universities’ internationalising efforts. Chapter 5 discusses the active role that the governance of cities plays in international student migration. The wider literature suggests that international students often have ‘poor’ educational experiences and relatively low levels of satisfaction when it comes to teaching and learning. It has been suggested that international students are frequently undervalued—if not outright exploited— by UK HEIs, where universities seem largely to lack an ‘ethics of care’ around their treatment of international students (Tannock, 2013; Lomer, 2017; Beech, 2018, 2019). We observed that universities gave little substantive detail on what students can expect in the way of ‘wider student life’ and habitually made recourse (instead) to the opportunities that London provides. We noted one example, in particular, taken from the University of the West of Scotland’s London Campus materials, where the campus is described in these terms:

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The…Campus is right in the heart of London and the area surrounding the campus offers plenty of entertainment and relaxation options…There are numerous coffee shops, cafes and restaurants…. and the surrounding areas offer a wealth of leisure facilities and visitor attractions (e.g. Borough Market, London Bridge, Southbank and the Old Vic Theatre), so there is a huge range of options on offer…There are also a number of leisure centres nearby operated by Southwark Council for taking part in sporting activities.

The ‘opportunities’ described here refer to  private businesses or c­ ouncil-run facilities. They are independent of the HEI in question, and yet explicitly used to market the HEI. This example epitomises how UK HEIs are using ‘place’ and location to their advantage, whilst correspondingly scrimping on the facilities and opportunities offered to students by the institution themselves. Unsurprisingly, given this point, HEIs largely avoided showcasing their teaching facilities in their marketing. Glyndwr University London Campus was one exception, describing its satellite campus as ‘compact’. During the research, we attended some open days for these London campuses and got to experience, in a limited way, the nature of the learning environment. They were quite different from what one might associate with a ‘campus’: small, and office-like, with few obvious social spaces. UK HEIs exploit the fact that many international students desire ‘proximity to employers’ and the London campus, marketing materials stress, provides such proximity. We found little evidence, however, to support the expectation that students will be ‘exposed’ to (able to interact with) employers in any meaningful sense. As Beaverstock and Hall (2012) describe, in their analysis of the financial services industry within London, there are identifiable ‘barriers to entry’ when it comes to getting a job in this sector: ‘an Oxbridge or a globally recognized business school education… graduate entry through internships, often available through personal City ties; and of growing importance, experience of working in financial centres in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa….’ (p. 273). These ‘pipelines’ through which international talent travel are very likely to exclude the kinds of students attending the satellite campus, and yet ‘proximity to employers’ (or something similar) was a commonly

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used expression in the marketing materials we reviewed (see Brooks & Waters, 2018). What does this example add to the discussion around the geographies of international student mobilities? For one, it highlights the pivotal role that place plays in attracting (and potentially leading to the exploitation of ) international students (Prazeres et al., 2017; Collins, 2014). UK universities with London campuses are using the appeal of London, widely described as one of the world’s preeminent global cities (Sassen, 1991), to entice aspiring students. More broadly, our findings contribute to an analysis of the ‘multi-sited’ nature of ISM (Madge et al., 2015) and the changing ‘spatialities’ of higher education as it relates to student experiences (Raghuram, 2013, p. X). The discussion of internationalisation and its multi-sitedness should be extended to consider how universities are re-situating themselves (in this case, in London) in a bid to attract international students to their institutions and, thus, how student mobilities intersect with institutional mobilities. As Madge et  al. (2015) have argued, the internationalisation of HE ‘explicitly locates itself as coming out of, and to, multiple locations’ (Madge et al., 2015, p. 692). These data also lead us to reflect upon the increasingly differentiated and diverse nature of international student mobility, and the opening up of opportunities to those of more modest means (e.g. Cairns, 2014; Collins, 2014) (see Chap. 3 for further discussion) and the fact that many international students face precarious and less than desirable circumstances in the host country (e.g. see Gilmartin et al., 2020). Finally, it chimes with discussions (see Chap. 7) on ethics and responsibility around international student mobilities and migration. In the next sub-section, we consider some other ways in which the geographies of ISM unfold within urban areas.

Students as Urban Consumers The term ‘studentification’ has been around for almost two decades, signalling the ways in which students (both domestic and international) have changed the fabric and culture of many urban areas. The UK has provided the focus of much of this work (Smith, 2005; Smith & Holt,

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2007), but studentification has also been described in other countries, including Ireland (Kenna, 2011), China (He 2015) and Spain (Garmendia et al., 2012). International students, the literature would suggest, have a role to play in the wider phenomenon of studentification. Revington and August (2020) discuss one aspect of studentification, that is the financialisation of the student housing market in Canada (in relation to the growth of so-called Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) since 2011). PBSA has also been discussed in the context of housing markets in the UK and Australia (Nakazawa, 2017). Here, the differences between international and domestic students are often noted: in Australia and New Zealand, for example, domestic students will habitually remain in the family home and commute to university whilst international students are channelled into PBSAs via university housing offices or private housing companies catering to students (Nakazawa, 2017). Consequently, the segregation of international students in city spaces becomes apparent. Fincher and Shaw (2009, 2011) observed this not just for housing, but also for leisure and cultural spaces. Often, universities (unintentionally, through their practices) end up spatially separating international students and domestic students, with implications for how diversity within the institution and the broader urban area is experienced (Fincher & Shaw, 2009). Calvo (2018) argues that international students are having a profound effect on cities above and beyond the impact of studentification, claiming that their role ‘as a new class of transnational urban consumers has been widely disregarded’ (p.  2143). International students as consumers (of more than education) is an important but often overlooked aspect of the impact that this group may have on wider society. Often, international students have (perhaps more so than other groups of students) ‘disposable income’. Collins (2008) describes the culinary choices of South Korean international students in Auckland, New Zealand in relation to the ‘transnational production of familiarity’ (p. 151) and transnational commodity cultures (Dwyer, 2004). He observes the ways in which international students eat out at ‘Korean’ restaurants, which have proliferated as a result of student mobility. These places, he argues, embody Korean-­ ness whilst creating a form of transnational, hybrid, Korean experience often far removed from the regional or neighbourhood eateries students

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would have been used to ‘back home’. International students quite literally not only ‘buy into’ this transnational food imaginary but actively help create it.

Urban Education ‘Hubs’ Urban education hubs are purpose-built areas of cities that focus specifically on the provision of (international) education and are a relatively recent phenomenon. As Knight (2018) describes: ‘the term education hub is used by countries seeking to position themselves as centers for student recruitment, education and training, research, and innovation’ (Knight, 2018, p. 638). In other words, they are state-level developments undertaken at a city-scale—using the advantages that the concentration of resources, facilities and opportunities within an urban area can bring. The development of urban hubs has been driven by factors such as the commercialisation of higher education and its ‘monetarisation’, a need to generate income, the desire to create a skilled workforce and retain economic competitiveness and productivity, knowledge diplomacy and the transition to a knowledge/service-based economy (Knight, 2018). The most high profile examples of these are found in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Botswana, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong (Knight, 2018), whilst lesser known examples continue to proliferate: ‘for instance Panama City, Bangalore in India, and Monterey in Mexico […] have been seeking to brand themselves as education or knowledge cities’ (Knight, 2018, p. 643). These hubs attempt to attract not just domestic students but also international students, from the wider region and beyond. Some even give priority to international student recruitment (Knight, 2018). Interestingly, Knight (2018) notes, education hubs have not been developed in countries deemed traditional or popular destinations for international students (for example, the US or the UK), but rather by smaller countries less able to attract international students to their domestic education systems and cities—another example of the recentring and re-spatialisation of international higher education that we have attempted to highlight in this chapter. As discussed in Chap. 5, for some smaller countries and city-states, attracting international students

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has become an important pillar of economic development and standing on a global stage. A pertinent example of urban hub development can be found in the city-state of Singapore, which in the early 2000s developed an alliance with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in a bid to become the ‘Boston of the East’ (invoking both its city status and a larger scale regional geography discussed above and in Chap. 4) (Sidhu et al., 2011; Collins et al., 2014). The policy was named the Global School House and, in a study of this policy, Sidhu et al. (2011) set out to understand what attracted international students to Singapore (and if these considerations aligned with the policy). They concluded overwhelmingly that students valued Singapore’s safe urban environment, followed by proximity to friends and family (presumably residing in the wider South East Asian region). They also observed: ‘more than a third of those surveyed mentioned good job prospects as a reason for coming to Singapore [which] suggests that the government’s promotional message of an economically dynamic global city in a bustling region is being heard’ (Sidhu et  al., 2011, pp. 35–36). To date, however, little research has explored how students experience urban education hubs—what it is like to study and live within one, and what their subsequent outcomes might be. This sub-section has drawn out the quite diverse ‘urban geographies’ of international higher education and student mobilities, discussing consumption, residential segregation and urban hubs. These scales are generally neglected in the wider literature and discussions around ISM—yet are crucial to how students engage with ISM (in terms of what attracts them to particular places and how they experience them) as well as the ways in which their experiences play out locally (and in relation to ‘locals’—see Chacko, 2020). We now turn to consider the ‘everyday’, after Hall’s (2019) extensive efforts to highlight the political and ethical significance of foregrounding the everyday in discussions of social geographies. We do this through a focus on ‘the campus’ and the role it plays in the lives of international students.

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Campus Geographies of International Students Geographers are increasingly attentive to the importance of understanding students’ on-campus experiences (Holton & Riley, 2013), and international students should be treated no differently in this regard. Chacko (2020) writes in relation to international students in Singapore: ‘Campus was the place where students felt most at home’ (p.  12). International students’ everyday interactions and experiences often unfold within the university campus space. International students’ campus interactions are examined by Beech (2018) (see also Lee, 2020a). She notes that: universities may do little to encourage cross-cultural and multi-cultural communication both inside and outside of the classroom… International students mentioned, for example, that they were housed separately from local or host students and one of the universities, at the time of the research, offered a separate welcome week programme for international students and so from the outset they were treated as a distinctive other rather than as part of a unified student community. (p. 23)

There are, Beech (2018) highlights, significant structural impediments to international students’ ability to ‘mix’ with domestic students. However, like Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood (2019), Beech also argues that self-segregation can be significantly beneficial to international students (see discussion in Chap. 6), offering the emotional and practical support that institutions often fail to provide. Students come to rely on the support networks they develop with co-nationals (Mittelmeier et al., 2018). Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood (2019, p. 25) talk about the perceived ‘benefits of primarily interacting with co-nationals, including speaking a common language, eating similar food, abstaining from alcohol consumption and practising the same religion.’ Usually, these activities will occur in particular spaces on, or within, university campuses, either face-to-face or in close proximity. The geographies of these interactions are worthy of further consideration. Friendships amongst international students can function as social capital (Rose-Redwood & Rose-Redwood, 2019; Beech, 2018; Waters, 2009; Brooks & Waters, 2010); and the space of the classroom, and how

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it is utilised, can directly influence the development of friendships. One of Beech’s research participants, Priya, explained how friendships are prevented through the segregation experienced by international students in the UK. Priya lived with other Indian students: international students at her university were housed separately. Although her Master’s course had a relatively diverse student body (students from Europe, China and Thailand as well as India), she experienced limited engagement with them. She described how in class there is a ‘European table, British table, there are two Indian tables and there’s a Thai table and a Chinese table’ (p. 21) and very little interaction between them. Although this study foregrounds the geographies of students’ interactions, in other work this spatial aspect is notably absent. Research on ‘social interactions’ between international students and others pays little heed to where and how interactions take place—the significance of space, spatiality, distance and place-making (Brooks & Waters, 2017). This is quite surprising given the centrality of space and place in enabling interactions to unfold. Social interactions can be facilitated or significantly hindered by spatial factors, as Priya indicated (see Holton, 2016a, 2016b on university halls and students’ living arrangements). Yuan (2011), for example, explored the experiences of Chinese students at an American university, highlighting the importance of ‘socialisation’, ‘hanging out’ with co-nationals and living with other Chinese students. However, the intricate geographies of these arrangements (where, for example, social activities took place and how living quarters were organised) were omitted from the discussion. Brief reference was made to how, when observing interactions on campus, ‘It was not uncommon to see a Chinese student and an American standing next to each other and smiling at each other but never conversing’ (Yuan, 2011, p. 41). These hints at a disconnect between spatial distance and social distance suggest some fascinating future avenues for research. Other studies have also focused on the ‘social interactions’ of international students and how these may or may not indicate forms of ethnic or co-national segregation (Montgomery, 2009; Montgomery & McDowell, 2009) (see also discussion in Chaps. 6 and 7). Rose-Redwood and Rose-­ Redwood (2019) explore the literature on the ‘self-segregation’ of international students at higher education institutions in the United States,

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drawing on their own (qualitative) research to explore: the types of social interactions occurring between international students and the implications of these for processes of inclusion and exclusion; the ways in which social networks provide access to or, alternatively, circumscribe various resources or opportunities; and the role played by institutional and non-­ institutional social capital in shaping international students’ social interactions. Their research resulted in the development of a typology of social interaction amongst international graduate students at a US university campus: self-segregators, exclusive global mixers, inclusive global mixers and host interactors. Self-segregators were largely female and had limited travelling experience outside of their home countries. They had experienced negative encounters with other individuals on campus, leading to the tendency to self-segregate (and interact largely with co-­nationals). Exclusive global mixers comprised the largest group in their sample (just over 38 per cent of research participants). According to their criteria, exclusive global mixers ‘socially interact only with co-nationals and other internationals, excluding host nationals’ (p. 23). This group was further divided into ‘ethnic global mixers’ (who mix with ethnically similar international students) and ‘international global mixers’ (interacting with a range of other internationals, excluding host nationals). Self-­segregators, on the other hand (27 per cent of the sample) socially interacted only with co-nationals, excluding all others. Inclusive global mixers’ social interactions included a combination of co-nationals, other international students and host nationals. They had wide prior travel experiences and were fluent in English. Unlike exclusive global mixers, they included Americans in their friendship groups. A very small number of participants in their study were defined as host interactors. In this group, international students’ primary contacts were with others in the ‘host’ community (i.e. American nationals). These participants were English speaking, usually White and showed strong interest in aspects of US culture (such as sport). Whilst this model would benefit from further empirical elaboration, it does suggest the complex and differentiated ways in which international students interact with others (there is no ‘one size fits all’). The model outlined by Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood (2019) places the burden of responsibility for social interactions squarely at the

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feet of students themselves. Indeed, this perspective is not uncommon within the literature, which rarely discusses the lack of intervention, by universities, actively to prevent ethnic and social segregation and encourage interactions and integration. This is a lamentable ‘gap’ in research: what institutions can and should do in response is important. Extant segregation between international and domestic students may have both short-term and longer-term impacts on a wider sense of societal diversity and, more specifically, opportunities for both groups to interact within varied job markets and work-spaces. One example of direct intervention on the part of institutions is explored by Sidhu et al. (2016) in relation to campus housing projects at three different higher education institutions in East Asia. In some of these, international students were housed separately from domestic students, and whilst students often expressed ‘approval’ at these arrangements, this also prevented interactions ‘that might generate uncomfortable but also generative socialities’ between individuals (p. 11). At the National University of Singapore (one of the institutions studied), there was deliberate intervention to prevent damaging segregation and what they described as ‘ghettoisation’, by ensuring a ‘good mix of students’ within each hall of residence. This fitted, Sidhu et al. (2016) argued, with the institution’s ‘globalising vision’, echoing the state’s ‘racialised governmentality’: In short, rather than mobile students who are free to circulate as they desire, and perhaps encounter friction and risk in daily life, these universities have actively assembled campus spaces where flows of students are conducted to smooth their mobility and achieve strategic outcomes. While differing across the three campuses, these strategies unfold as practices of containment that are enacted through built form, imaginings of what it means to be global, research renderings of students and inducements towards diversity. International students, and particular nationalities, are defined as distinct and in need of management. The campus becomes demarcated in order to guide their bodies through educational and social spaces and to manage their integration into the broader urban fabrics the universities sit within. (Sidhu et al., 2016, pp. 11–12)

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Here, the link between the university campus and ‘broader urban fabrics’ is highlighted, as is the role of the state in micro-managing international students’ interactions on an everyday and mundane level (see discussions in Chap. 5 on state-student relations). Our point about the multi-scalar nature of student mobilities is illustrated well here (as discussed by Madge et al. (2015) in the introduction to this chapter).

Conclusions Over the past year, during the writing of this book, new geographies of international student mobilities have emerged as important. As a result of the pandemic, borders have been closed to international students, study abroad placements cancelled and some students have been either repatriated or ‘stranded’ overseas, unable to leave their accommodation. International students have experienced hotel quarantining on returning home or back to their place of study, and most have found at least part of their learning has been transferred online. Above all else, the recent pandemic has brought into sharp relief the ways in which ISM is multiply located—from state borders to the extreme localisation of the international student experience, where students’ quotidian geographies have been transformed in hitherto unforeseen ways. This chapter has provided a way of understanding these experiences by focusing on the geographies of ISM.  It has argued that international study is not simply some gigantic ‘flow’ from the Global South to the Global North, or from ‘East’ to ‘West’, but is far more complex and nuanced. As Madge et al. (2015) have insightfully argued, international education is increasingly ‘distributed’, ‘decentred’ and ‘multi-scalar’: ‘coming out of multiple locations’ (p. 684). And yet, as we have noted, discussions often remain wedded to a particular ‘dominant’ representation of ISM. Large-scale data sets collated by international organisations have had a role to play in representing and reinforcing dominant student flows, which continue to valorise a Western, English-language education. Recent research, however, has explored alternative representations of international student mobilities, eschewing the dominance of the West and Global North in these accounts. We spent some time exploring these

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alternative perspectives, which are a welcome and necessary corrective to overly Western-centric depictions of educational value. ‘New markets’ attracting international students have emerged, expanded, and aggressively pursued international students: regional flows of students, particularly within Asia, have become far more pronounced. So called South-South movements (from, for example, countries in Africa to China) and North-South migrations (as exemplified with European students also choosing China as a key destination) have emerged. Undoubtedly, it is partly a reflection of the actions of states, located outside the West and their investment in higher education, including international higher education. As will be apparent in Chap. 5, states retain complex relationships to international student mobility. There are also conceptual reasons why non-Western countries as destinations for ISM are being observed and discussed far more widely. The growing popularity of post-colonial perspectives has marked a shift in how knowledge around international student mobility is appraised. We sought to explore the multiple geographies of ISM—so in addition to this consideration of ‘flows’ and international trends, we stressed the role that cities play: how such urban sites serve to attract international students whilst also being transformed by their presence. We considered the function of cities in the imaginative geographies of international students (Kölbel, 2020) and also how, through their contribution to the process of studentification and their daily consumption practices, international students are impacting urban geographies. Some urban areas, such as ‘education hubs’, are being developed with the principal aim of attracting large volumes of international students from the surrounding region, and yet we still know very little about their more intimate social geographies. International student mobility is such a profoundly geographical process and yet the depictions of its geographies, within the grey literature, are often wedded to international flows and national-level policies and statistics around ISM (e.g. Geddie, 2015). Whilst this level of analysis remains important, it paints only a partial picture, ignoring: other scales and registers of analysis; alternative perspectives on the (non-Western) destinations that students are increasingly choosing; the impacts that students are having on urban areas; and the role of cities in attracting

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international students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, international students’ geographies have in many cases contracted dramatically—travel restrictions have meant that their spaces of engagement have been limited to their student room, a local supermarket and, in some cases, a local food bank. This calls for a revaluation of the multiple geographies of ISM (something that we visit in more detail in the book’s conclusion).

References Agnew, J. (1994). The territorial trap: The geographical assumptions of international relations theory. Review of International Political Economy, 1(1), 53–80. Altbach, P. G. (2013). Globalization and forces for change in higher education. In The international imperative in higher education (pp. 7–10). Brill Sense. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Beaverstock, J. V., & Hall, S. (2012). Competing for talent: Global mobility, immigration and the City of London’s labour market Cambridge. Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 5, 271–287. Beech, S. (2018). Adapting to change in the higher education system: International student mobility as a migration industry. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(4), 610–625. Beech, S. (2019). The geographies of international student mobility. Spaces, places and decision-making. Palgrave Macmillan. Beech, S.  E. (2014). Why place matters: Imaginative geography and international student mobility. Area, 46(2), 170–177. Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2011). Social networks and educational mobility: the experiences of UK students. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 143–157. Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2017). Materialities and mobilities in education. Routledge. Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2018). Signalling the ‘multi-local’university? The place of the city in the growth of London-based satellite campuses, and the implications for social stratification. Social Sciences, 7(10), 195. Cairns, D. (2014). Youth transitions, international student mobility and spatial reflexivity: Being mobile? Springer.

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Calvo, D. (2018). Understanding international students beyond studentification: A new class of transnational urban consumers. The example of Erasmus students in Lisbon (Portugal). Urban Studies, 55(10), 2142–2158. Chacko, E. (2020). Emerging precarity among international students in Singapore: Experiences, understandings and responses. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–17. (Advance online access) Chan, D., & Ng, P. T. (2008). Similar agendas, diverse strategies: The quest for a regional hub of higher education in Hong Kong and Singapore. Higher Education Policy, 21(4), 487–503. Collins, F. (2014). Globalising higher education in and through urban spaces: Higher education projects, international student mobilities and trans-local connections in Seoul. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 55(2), 242–257. Collins, F. L. (2008). Bridges to learning: International student mobilities, education agencies and inter-personal networks. Global Networks, 8(4), 398–417. Collins, F. L. (2010). International students as urban agents: International education and urban transformation in Auckland, New Zealand. Geoforum, 41(6), 940–950. Collins, F. L. (2012). Researching mobility and emplacement: Examining transience and transnationality in international student lives. Area, 44(3), 296–304. Collins, F. L., & Ho, K. C. (2014). Globalising higher education and cities in Asia and the Pacific. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 55(2), 127–131. https://doi. org/10.1111/apv.12050 Collins, F. L., Sidhu, R., Lewis, N., & Yeoh, B. S. (2014). Mobility and desire: International students and Asian regionalism in aspirational Singapore. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(5), 661–676. Dwyer, C. (2004). Tracing transnationalities through commodity culture: A case study of British-South Asian fashion. In P. Crang, C. Dwyer, & P. Jackson (Eds.), Transnational spaces (pp. 72–89). Routledge. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. (n.d.). Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://www.ebrd.com/what-­we-­do/belt-­and-­road/ overview.html Fincher, R., & Shaw, K. (2009). The unintended segregation of transnational students in central Melbourne. Environment and Planning A, 41(8), 1884–1902. Fincher, R., & Shaw, K. (2011). Enacting separate social worlds: ‘International’ and ‘local’ students in public space in central Melbourne. Geoforum, 42(5), 539–549.

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Findlay, A. M. (2011). An assessment of supply and demand-side theorizations of international student mobility. International Migration, 49(2), 162–190. Findlay, A.  M., King, R., Smith, F.  M., Geddes, A., & Skeldon, R. (2012). World class? An investigation of globalisation, difference and international student mobility. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(1), 118–131. França, T., Alves, E., & Padilla, B. (2018). Portuguese policies fostering international student mobility: A colonial legacy or a new strategy? Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 325–338. Garmendia, M., Coronado, J. M., & Ureña, J. M. (2012). University students sharing flats: When studentification becomes vertical. Urban Studies, 49(12), 2651–2668. Geddie, K. (2015). Policy mobilities in the race for talent: Competitive state strategies in international student mobility. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 40(2), 235–248. Gilmartin, M., Coppari, P. R., & Phelan, D. (2020). Promising precarity: The lives of Dublin’s international students. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–18. (Advance online access) Hall, S. M. (2019). Everyday austerity: Towards relational geographies of family, friendship and intimacy. Progress in Human Geography, 43(5), 769–789. He, S. (2015). Consuming urban living in ‘villages in the city’: Studentification in Guangzhou, China. Urban Studies, 52(15), 2849–2873. Holton, M. (2016a). The geographies of UK university halls of residence: Examining students’ embodiment of social capital. Children’s Geographies, 14(1), 63–76. Holton, M. (2016b). Living together in student accommodation: Performances, boundaries and homemaking. Area, 48(1), 57–63. Holton, M., & Riley, M. (2013). Student geographies: Exploring the diverse geographies of students and higher education. Geography Compass, 7(1), 61–74. Jazeel, T. (2019). Postcolonialism. Routledge. Jazeel, T., & McFarlane, C. (2010). The limits of responsibility: A postcolonial politics of academic knowledge production. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(1), 109–124. Jon, J.  E., Lee, J.  J., & Byun, K. (2014). The emergence of a regional hub: Comparing international student choices and experiences in South Korea. Higher Education, 67(5), 691–710.

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Jöns, H. (2007). Transnational mobility and the spaces of knowledge production: A comparison of global patterns, motivations and collaborations in different academic fields. Social Geography, 2, 97–114. Jöns, H., & Hoyler, M. (2013). Global geographies of higher education: The perspective of world university rankings. Geoforum, 46, 45–59. Kenna, T. (2011). Studentification in Ireland? Analysing the impacts of students and student accommodation on Cork City. Irish Geography, 44(2–3), 191–213. Knight, J. (2018). International education hubs. In P. Meusburger, M. Heffernan, & L. Suarsana (Eds.), Geographies of the university (p. 676). Springer Nature. Koh, S.  Y. (2017). Race, education and citizenship. Mobile Malaysians, British colonial legacies and a culture of migration. Palgrave Macmillan. Kölbel, A. (2020). Imaginative geographies of international student mobility. Social & Cultural Geography, 21(1), 86–104. Lee, K. (2020a). Becoming a bona fide cosmopolitan: Unpacking the narratives of Western-situated degree-seeking transnational students in China. Social and Cultural Geography, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.202 0.1821393 (Advance online access) Lee, K. H. (2020b). “I Post, therefore I Become# cosmopolitan”: The materiality of online representations of study abroad in China. Population, Space and Place, 26(3), e2297. Lomer, S. (2017). Recruiting students in higher education. Representations and rationales in British policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Madge, C., Raghuram, P., & Noxolo, P. (2009). Engaged pedagogy and responsibility: A postcolonial analysis of international students. Geoforum, 40(1), 34–45. Madge, C., Raghuram, P., & Noxolo, P. (2015). Conceptualizing international education: From international student to international study. Progress in Human Geography, 39(6), 681–701. Mittelmeier, J., Rienties, B., Tempelaar, D., & Whitelock, D. (2018). Overcoming cross-cultural group work tensions: Mixed student perspectives on the role of social relationships. Higher Education, 75(1), 149–166. Moe. (2019). Statistical report on international students in China for 2018. http://en.moe.gov.cn/news/press_releases/201904/t20190418_378586. html#:~:text=Figures%20show%20that%20in%202018,or%20 0.62%25%20compared%20to%202017 Montgomery, C. (2009). A decade of internationalisation: Has it influenced students’ views of cross-cultural group work at university? Journal of Studies in International Education, 13(2), 256–270.

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Montgomery, C., & McDowell, L. (2009). Social networks and the international student experience. An international community of practice? Journal of Studies in International Education, 13(4), 455–466. Müller, M. (2021). Worlding geography: From linguistic privilege to decolonial anywheres. Progress in Human Geography. (Advance online access) Mulvey, B. (2020). “Decentring” international student mobility: The case of African student migrants in China. Population, Space and Place, e2393. (Advance online access) Nakazawa, T. (2017). Expanding the scope of studentification studies. Geography Compass, 11(1), e12300. Nikula, P. T., & Kivistö, J. (2020). Monitoring of education agents engaged in international student recruitment: perspectives from agency theory. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(2), 212–231. OECD. (2018). Education at a glance. OECD. OECD. (2019). Education at a glance. OECD. Olds, K. (2007). ‘Global assemblage: Singapore, foreign universities and the construction of a ‘global education hub’’. World Development, 35(6), 959–975. Ortiga, Y.  Y. (2017). Emigration, employability and higher education in the Philippines. Routledge. Prazeres, L., Findlay, A., McCollum, D., Sander, N., Musil, E., Krisjane, Z., & Apsite-Berina, E. (2017). Distinctive and comparative places: Alternative narratives of distinction within international student mobility. Geoforum, 80, 114–122. QAA. (2014). London campuses of UK universities: Overview report of a thematic enquiry by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/21786/1/London-­campuses-­of-­UK-­universities.pdf Raghuram, P. (2013). Theorising the spaces of student migration. Population, Space and Place, 19(2), 138–154. Raghuram, P., Breines, M., & Gunter, A. (2020). Beyond #FeesMustFall: International students, fees and everyday agency in the era of decolonisation. Geoforum, 109, 95–105. Revington, N., & August, M. (2020). Making a market for itself: The emergent financialization of student housing in Canada. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(5), 856–877. Riaño, Y., Van Mol, C., & Raghuram, P. (2018). New directions in studying policies of international student mobility and migration. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 283–294.

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Rose-Redwood, C., & Rose-Redwood, R. (2019). Self-segregation of global mixing? Social interactions and the international student experience. In C. Rose-Redwood, R. Rose-Redwood, & R. (Eds.), International encounters. Higher education and the international student experience (pp. 19–34). Rowan and Littlefield. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage. Sassen, S. (1991). The global city: New  York, London, Tokyo. Princeton University Press. Shahjahan, R. A., Estera, A. L., Bae, S., & Sonneveldt, E. L. (2020). Imagining ‘Asian’ higher education: Visual campus gaze and global university rankings (GURs) websites. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1–18. (Advance online access) Shahjahan, R. A., Sonneveldt, E. L., Estera, A. L., & Bae, S. (2020). Emoscapes and commercial university rankers: The role of affect in global higher education policy. Critical Studies in Education, 1–16. (Advance online access) Sidhu, R. (2006). Universities and globalization. To market, to market. Laurence Erlbaum Associates Ltd. Sindu, R., Collins, F., Lewis, N., & Yeoh, B. (2016). Governmental assembleges of internationalising universities: mediating circulation and containment in East Asia. Environment and Planning A, 48(8), 1493–1513. Sidhu, R., Ho, K. C., & Yeoh, B. (2011). Emerging education hubs: The case of Singapore. Higher Education, 61(1), 23–40. Sidhu, R., Ho, K. C., & Yeoh, B. (2020). Student Mobility and International Education in Asia: Emotional Geographies of Knowledge Spaces. Palgrave Macmillan, London. Sin, I. L. (2009). The aspiration for social distinction: Malaysian students in a British university. Studies in Higher Education, 34(3), 285–299. Smith, D. (2005). Patterns and processes of ‘studentification’ in Leeds. The Regional Review, 12, 14–16. Smith, D.  P., & Holt, L. (2007). Studentification and ‘apprentice’ gentrifiers within Britain’s provincial towns and cities: Extending the meaning of gentrification. Environment and Planning A, 39(1), 142–161. Smith, D.  P., & Hubbard, P. (2014). The segregation of educated youth and dynamic geographies of studentification. Area, 46(1), 92–100. Tannock, S. (2013). When the demand for educational equality stops at the border: Wealthy students, international students and the restructuring of higher education in the UK. Journal of Education Policy, 28(4), 449–464.

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3 Socio-Economic Diversification

Introduction Traditionally, international student mobility has been seen as the preserve of the privileged in society. Researchers have shown how studying abroad can be an effective means for affluent groups to: obtain educational credentials that will give them a labour market advantage when they return home (e.g. Kratz & Netz, 2018; Waters, 2009); gain access to elite universities, when such routes have been closed down domestically (e.g. Brooks & Waters, 2009); and take an important first step towards securing permanent residency or citizenship of another country (e.g. Ong, 1999; Waters, 2006; see also discussion in Chap. 4). However, this chapter considers the growing evidence that such patterns may be changing and, in particular, that the socio-economic profile of mobile students is diversifying. We first present evidence that suggests that both credit and degree mobility are being taken up by a wider group of students—from lower middle class backgrounds as well as, in a small number of cases, those from ‘working class’ families.1 We then go on to explore some of the  We acknowledge that there are different ways of measuring and defining social class. However, in this chapter, we use the term ‘working class’ to refer to students from families where there is no experience of higher education and/or whose parents are employed in unskilled or manual jobs. 1

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reasons for this shift, considering the impact of both education and migration policy, as well as broader societal factors such as the sharp growth in the size of the middle classes in particular nations, and the increasing use of social media across national borders. We subsequently argue, however, that this apparent ‘opening up’ of opportunities is being accompanied by the emergence of new forms of stratification and differentiation. Thus, while less privileged students may now be more likely to move abroad for higher education, they are not necessarily accessing the same quality of education. Building on this argument, we suggest that, as a consequence of these new forms of stratification, the often-assumed relationship between student mobility and subsequent social advantage needs to be rethought. Moreover, we show that, even for elite groups, mobility does not always lead straightforwardly to positive social outcomes. In the final section of the chapter, we contend that although social class should remain a key focus of research, it is not the only social characteristic that has a bearing on students’ decisions to move and their experiences whilst abroad. Indeed, we draw on recent research to show how social class is often mediated by other variables, such as gender and ethnicity, and how an intersectional approach (i.e. one that recognises the interconnectedness of social characteristics) enables some of the complexity inherent in ISM to emerge.

Evidence of Greater Diversification There are still strong indications that international mobility for higher education remains very attractive to elite social groups intent on ensuring the social reproduction of their families (e.g. Cranston et al., 2020; Lee & Wright, 2016). Nevertheless, there is a growing body of work that has shown how, in various places, cohorts of mobile students are becoming more socially diverse. In this section, we provide evidence to support this claim before, in the subsequent section, exploring the reasons for these subtle shifts. We do not assert that all students now have the same opportunity to move abroad for higher education; rather, that opportunities are increasingly being opened up for, and taken advantage of by, those occupying more ‘middling’ social positions. We focus initially on the Erasmus

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scheme—the EU’s programme for credit mobility—because of its important role in stimulating educational mobility in Europe, and because various scholars have explored the socio-economic characteristics of participants over time. Writing in 2008, Souto-Otero argued that when survey data from Erasmus participants in 2004–2005 were compared with equivalent data from 1998, there was evidence that access to the scheme had moderately widened. Although in 2004–2005 a large proportion of students came from relatively privileged families, there were also more students from average and below-average economic backgrounds than previously. However, Souto-Otero (2008) also notes that while there was more diversity in the types of jobs in which the students’ parents were employed (with more from lower income categories), the level of parental educational attainment remained high; indeed, in both surveys a very large proportion of participants had parents with a higher education. In addition, he remarks upon some interesting differences by country: the richer the ‘home’ country (measured by GDP level), the more likely were students from higher income families to have participated in the scheme. Although the data offer no obvious explanation for this pattern, Souto-­ Otero speculates that the meaning of such mobility may differ between nations: in richer countries it may be perceived as primarily an act of ‘consumption’ (and so something with which one should engage only if sufficient familial resources are available), whereas in poorer nations it may be understood more as an ‘investment’ (and so something worth making a sacrifice for now, in the hope of significant economic reward in the future). More recent work, however, has indicated that increasing numbers of students from lower-income families are taking part in the Erasmus scheme. In the UK, this has been linked to the introduction of a work placement as part of the programme (Deakin, 2014), and we discuss this further below. However, across Europe more broadly, Van Mol (2014) found no statistically significant relationship between a student’s socio-economic status and their likelihood of participating in an international exchange programme. Nevertheless, like Souto-Otero, he suggests that the specific national context may be important in the meaning that is attached to studying abroad by students—contending, for example, that when making their decisions about whether to participate in the

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Erasmus programme and where to study, students often make direct comparisons between the economic situation of their home nation and that of their destination country. Polish students, Van Mol asserts, typically aim to move to countries with a higher standard of living (such as those in western parts of Europe) as they believe this will offer them direct economic returns when they combine study with part-time work. More generally, in countries with a high level of youth unemployment and a long transition from education into the labour market, a period abroad can be viewed as a strategy to maximise students’ long-term employment prospects (ibid.). Such perspectives may encourage those from lower income families to take the cultural risk of studying abroad if it is thought to be a useful means of improving their economic position. Other studies of Erasmus students have also pointed to the heterogeneity of participants. Calvo (2018), for example, identifies four distinct groups of Erasmus students in his ethnographic study of student communities in Lisbon, Portugal. One of these groups (which he labels the ‘neo-­ Bohemians’, who live in frequently-impoverished neighbourhoods in the old part of the city centre), he claims had considerably less economic capital to draw upon than the other three. The Erasmus programme is, in many respects, quite unusual and it may be difficult to generalise from it to other forms of short-term mobility. Nevertheless, increasing diversity can also be seen in the social profile of some students who move abroad for the whole of a degree. Writing with respect to the UK, Luthra and Platt (2016) argue that flows from outside the EU have become increasingly heterogeneous. They illustrate this claim by drawing on data with respect to Pakistani students recently arrived in London. They use latent class analysis2 to identify three discrete groups of student: one from elite backgrounds (who might be seen as the more traditional type of international student) and two from what they term ‘middling’ backgrounds (who constituted the majority—84 per cent—of the total sample). Of the two middling groups, Luthra and Platt label one as ‘middle-class middling’ and the other as ‘lower middling’ or  Latent class analysis is a measurement model in which individuals can be classified into mutually exclusive and exhaustive types, or latent classes, based on their pattern of answers on a set of categorical indicator variables. 2

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‘networked middling’. The mobility of the latter, the authors suggest, is motivated by the maintenance of ethnic ties, rather than the reproduction of social position. Individuals in the former have a higher socio-­ economic profile than the ‘lower middling group’ but are also different from the traditional profile of mobile students: With its urban origins, more uncertain future orientations and lack of networks, this group could be seen as representing a ‘new middle class’ from a lower-income country context where the urban middle class is expanding swiftly. (Luthra & Platt, 2016, p. 334)

Other scholars have also placed emphasis on the increasing participation of a wider group of middle class students. In Yang’s (2016) account of Chinese students who took up scholarships to study abroad offered by the Singaporean government, he emphasises that these individuals were typically not the most privileged members of society. Although they were not from humble origins, neither were they from rich or powerful backgrounds—they frequently came from urban families of middling standing, with parents employed as teachers, civil servants, doctors and similar. Fong (2011) has argued in relation to mobile Chinese students more generally that while wealthier families were still more likely to send their children abroad for study, there was considerable diversity at the individual level. Indeed, she gives numerous examples of pairs of students— from very similar socio-economic backgrounds—who made quite different decisions about whether to move abroad for higher education. Moreover, in a more recent analysis of mobility from China (to the US), Ma (2020) notes that there is a misconception that the new wave of Chinese students comes entirely from wealthy families, going on to recount how some of the participants in her ethnographic study came from lower middle class or working class families, ‘whose parents had to sell their apartments to afford an American education for their children’ (p.  41) (see also Choudaha et  al., 2012). Various scholars (e.g. Baas, 2010; Robertson, 2013) have similarly maintained that, within India, international mobility is no longer only the preserve of elite groups— although Baas (2010) also notes that the type of mobility pursued by different fractions of the Indian middle varies considerably. (We develop

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this point further in a later section of this chapter.) Broadening the analysis to international students in general, Robertson (2013) argues that such individuals are more accurately characterised as ‘middling migrants’—positioned somewhere between highly skilled elites on the one hand and refugees on the other. She asserts: Although they often have more resources to craft their mobility to their advantage than unskilled labour migrants or irregular migrants, they do not have the flexibility and status of elite transnational knowledge workers …. They face both opportunity and marginalisation and their migration journeys tend to be a complex negotiation of capital accumulation, aspiration and survival. (p. 82)

While many of the studies cited above suggest, or argue explicitly, that the social profile of mobile students has changed over the last decade or so, there is also a small but important body of recent work that has highlighted the international mobility of highly disadvantaged students and argued that this has a relatively long history. Unlike the ‘forced internationalisation’ mentioned in Chap. 1, these studies typically emphasise the voluntary nature of the students’ movement for higher education. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh’s (2015) research has shown how refugees have moved between nations of the Global South for higher education. Specifically, she analyses scholarship programmes in Cuba and Libya, which have offered free education to young people (as well as older adults and children) from refugee camps in the Algerian desert and Lebanon, contending that, within such programmes, education is provided ‘by the Other for the Other, with providers and recipients alike being from and of the periphery’ (p. 142). She also acknowledges the atypicality of this provision, noting that such schemes are exceptional in many respects: They embody a clear ‘alternative’ to Northern-led humanitarian ‘rules’, explicitly positioning themselves outside traditional conceptions of ‘donor states’ and officially aiming, in that process, to disrupt the power imbalances which characterise post-colonial and neo-colonial North-South/ donor-recipient relations. (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2015, p. 139)

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While the exceptionalism of this particular case is not in doubt, it does nevertheless constitute an important example of the ways in which international mobility is not just confined to those from very advantaged families.

Drivers of Diversification In examining what has led to this increase in diversity by socio-economic status, we can identify a wide range of factors, some more associated with the supply of opportunities and others more related to the changing nature of demand for international mobility. However, clearly the two are inter-related. For example, as Findlay et  al. (2017) have argued, active marketing strategies and the commitment of a significant level of resource of the part of those ‘supplying’ or wishing to promote international student mobility can have a profound effect on demand, shaping both the size and direction of student flows. As we will explore in more detail in the following section, the actions of national governments have been significant (see also the discussion in Chaps. 5 and 7), in relation to policy in the areas of both education and migration. With respect to education, the massification of the sector in many parts of the world (Tight, 2019) has clearly opened up the possibility of studying for a degree—whether at home or abroad—for many more young people. As national systems of HE become diverse, we would expect to see this change, to some degree at least, reflected in the characteristics of those who take up opportunities to study abroad—particularly as the number of mobile students has itself increased significantly (see Chap. 1). Indeed, Luthra and Platt (2016) argue that: ‘This much larger group of international students is therefore likely to be more diverse in background and intentions, analogous to the increasing diversity in student populations undergoing expansion at the national level’ (p. 319). Increasing ease of access to English language education at pre-university level across the globe has also had an impact, in opening up the possibility of studying abroad (where tuition is often in English) to a larger group of people. In addition, tuition fee policies have been influential in shaping some specific migration flows. Indian students interviewed by Jayadeva

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(2020) explained how they had been attracted to Germany for their higher education because no tuition fees were payable by international students, unlike in countries that are typically more popular with Indian students, such as Australia and the US. Although all described themselves as middle class, there was significant variation in their socio-­economic background. Moreover, none had previously seen moving abroad for higher education as part of their anticipated trajectory, and they all claimed that if they had had to pay tuition fees, then they would not have been able to study abroad at all. In addition, over the past decade or so, various new players have entered the market for international students, in some cases facilitating the mobility of those from groups that have traditionally remained in their own nation-state for higher education. With respect to credit mobility, this can be seen in the development of work placements as part of the European Erasmus scheme, and the increasing popularity of ‘sandwich year’ or ‘gap year’ opportunities—whereby students spend an additional year of their degree programme abroad (i.e. it is not substituted for a year at their ‘home’ institution). Deakin (2014) has shown how this change to the Erasmus programme ‘widened participation’ among UK students— through reducing the cost of spending time abroad (as the work placements were paid) and perhaps also increasing the attractiveness of the scheme to students concerned about their future employability (UK research suggests that those from lower socio-economic groups are more likely to worry about the economic and material rewards of their higher education than their middle class peers (Ball et al., 2002)). Evidence from Ireland indicates that the new credit mobility programmes—such as those based on the ‘gap year’ model—have also opened up opportunities to those from less privileged families (Courtois, 2018). However, as we discuss in more detail below, these opportunities may have also ushered in new forms of inequality. With respect to degree mobility, a small number of philanthropic organisations have sought to promote the international educational mobility of traditionally disadvantaged groups (see, for example, Gaulter & Mountford-Zimdars, 2018). The beneficiaries of such schemes are, however, limited in number. Of more significant impact, although with a less intentional focus on increasing socio-economic diversification, the

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emergence of ‘regional education hubs’ have enabled students unable to afford study in more traditional overseas locations to benefit from an international education (Kondakci et al., 2018; see Chap. 2). Turkey, for example, has emerged as an attractive location for students from the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans and Central Asia, while South Africa has performed the same function for those from sub-Saharan Africa, and South Korea and Hong Kong for South East Asian students (ibid.). Kondakci et  al. (2018) suggest that study in these countries is often taken up by those who are not able to access opportunities in more traditional locations because of economic constraints, travel restrictions, lack of competence in the language and, in some cases, a need to leave their own country quickly because of political unrest or difficult economic conditions. Similarly, the commitment of many Asian countries to attracting international students (see Chap. 2) has, some scholars have argued, made studying abroad a more feasible option for less affluent students located in other Asian nations, not least because the cost of travel to neighbouring countries is typically less than to the more traditional locations of the US, UK and, for some, Australia (e.g. Collins, 2013). The growth of distance learning programmes has also changed the make-up of ‘international student’ populations in some specific cases. Writing with respect to southern Africa, Raghuram et al. (2020) contend that, through offering affordable degrees to study at a distance, the University of South Africa is able to attract students from neighbouring African countries, relatively few of whom conform to the figure of the wealthy, privileged student that pervades much of the international student mobility literature. Although such students spend most of their time in their home country (indeed, this is one of the attractions for them, and a key means of saving money), they are required to visit the campus from time to time, and can thus be considered a type of mobile student. Increasing socio-economic diversification can also be linked, at least to some extent, to the specific actions taken by individual universities. In countries that do charge fees to international students, institutions are pursuing much more active strategies to recruit this group; indeed, the fee income from such students has become a key means of off-setting cuts in public expenditure on higher education in many countries (O’Connor, 2018; Tannock, 2018). International students are also valued by

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universities for their contribution to broader strategies of ‘internationalisation’—which are often seen as a proxy for ‘academic excellence’ (Findlay et  al., 2017)—and to metrics that feed into international league tables. These institutional priorities have resulted in very active marketing strategies, and the increasing use of educational agents who are paid for the number of students they enrol within particular universities (Beech, 2018). They have also been supported, in various countries, by governmental initiatives and marketing agencies (see the discussion of ‘state strategies’ in Chap. 5): in the UK, for example, the British Council (a non-­departmental public body, funded by the UK tax-payer) has run a high-profile ‘Study in the UK’ campaign to help support the government’s aim to increase the number of international students to 600,000 by 2030 (from a base of 460,000 in 2017–2018). Given this level of activity and competition between institutions, it is perhaps to be expected that institutions will attempt to attract a broader range of internationally-­mobile students than has often been the case in the past. National education policy within students’ countries of origin has also been important and can be seen as contributing to an increased diversity in students’ backgrounds. Focussing on Kazakhstan, in particular, Holloway et  al. (2012) have shown how the government’s decision to introduce state-funded scholarships for outward mobility, as a part of a development strategy, opened up opportunities to those from families who would otherwise not have been able to afford a foreign education. Although all the young people in Holloway et al.’s sample were broadly middle class, many were from families without significant economic resources, and represented a wider range of backgrounds than had been evident in previous waves of outward mobility from Kazakhstan. While the Kazakhstan government was motivated to send students abroad to increase their knowledge and skills so that they could return home and help strengthen the country, rather different motivations on the part of the state have been evident in South Korea. Kim (2018) has argued that the South Korean government has encouraged working class and lower middle class Koreans who are viewed as not sufficiently economically productive to leave the country and pursue higher education elsewhere. Indeed, Kim argues that, for these individuals, study abroad is considered

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a form of ‘voluntary exile’. On the basis of her analysis of national reports, she argues that the government ‘consistently implemented policies to drive less-profitable domestic college students and recent graduates out of Korea by framing these people’s exile as a form of … economic patriotism: asking them to work and live abroad while also recruiting lower-wage foreign workers to Korea’ (p. 359) [italics in the original]. These policies included providing funding for studying abroad, and were accompanied by public discourses and wider cultural politics that labelled those who failed to gain access to reputable South Korean universities as ‘losers’ or ‘surplus to requirements’ (Kim, 2018). One of Kim’s interviewees described how he had felt pressure to study abroad, and how the government had offered funding to facilitate taking up a college place in New Zealand—but only on condition that he stayed there to work for a further three years after graduating. Thus, unlike in Kazakhstan, where students in receipt of national scholarships are obliged to return home to work on completion of their degree (or otherwise incur harsh penalties (Del Sordi, 2018)), in South Korea the apparent aim was to encourage these young people to stay abroad for as long as possible. For other interviewees in Kim’s study who had moved to community colleges in the US, they viewed their move not as an act of freedom and free choice, and certainly not a privileged opportunity, but as ‘an escape from the harsh reality in which their value as individuals was repudiated’ (Kim, 2018, p.  363) and a temporary deviation from what they considered to be a ‘normal’ life trajectory. The following quotation, from Dain, one of Kim’s participants, is illustrative of the ambivalence that characterised many of the students’ narratives: I miss becoming a college student in Korea. As a typical student, I want to walk on campus and have blind dates …. However, it is impossible for me to study and manage my life with a low salary as a part-time employee in Korea. But, here it is possible if I work hard. …. Here, I receive at least 10 dollars total [as a waiter]. But in Korea I cannot even dream of it …. Yet I want to work and live there.

In such narratives, there are clearly parallels to the ‘forced internationalisation’ we discussed in Chap. 1.

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Alongside education policies, those relating to migration have also been highly influential (see Chap. 5). Robertson (2013) usefully distinguishes between nations such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, which have historically viewed international student graduates as potential ‘skilled migration’ (and where the transition from student to migrant is relatively straightforward) and others such as France, Germany, the UK and the US, which have been slower to favour international students over other potential migrants and tend to stream them into already existing visa categories rather than creating specific student-focussed pathways. There is now a large literature on the close entanglement between education and migration in Australia and Canada, demonstrating how many international students in both countries have been attracted by the possibility of being able to stay and make their lives in these nations (e.g. Ong, 1999; Pe-Pua et al., 1996; Waters, 2006). With respect to Australia, in particular, Robertson (2013) has documented how a change in migration policy in the early 2000s, attempting to address a shortage of workers in relatively low-skilled occupations, led to greater numbers of students from lower income backgrounds and with less strong academic credentials entering the country. (We discuss this further below.) However, some scholars have argued that migration policy has also been influential in the second group of countries, where transitioning from international student to permanent resident is much harder. Luthra and Platt (2016), for example, have asserted that, in the case of the UK, the tightening up of migration policy, making it more difficult for individuals to secure visas for employment or to join family, may have channelled would-be migrants to student visas instead—what they term a ‘substitution effect’. They suggest that this increased the appeal of international study to those from less affluent backgrounds, who may not otherwise have considered relocating for their higher education. They write: … in an era of ‘managed migration’, the student visa remains the only viable option for many potential third country migrants. Student migrants are therefore likely to be more diverse than traditional representations of an elite migration stream that maximises its human capital in a prestigious Western institution and returns, like Jinnah or Nehru, to form the ruling class in the country of origin. (p. 318)

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Some research has suggested that broader social phenomena are also influencing the profile of students who take up opportunities to study abroad. Flights have become cheaper, enabling more students to travel, while smart phones have made staying in touch with family much easier (Vertovec, 2004)—and thus studying abroad is perhaps less of a daunting prospect for those without extensive experience of life in other countries. Moreover, Jayadeva (2020) maintains that the increasing use of social media has enabled prospective international students to access the type of support and advice that has traditionally been available primarily to those with significant amounts of social and cultural capital. She argues that Indian students considering a move to Germany for a master’s degree developed important ‘communities of practice’ through the Facebook and WhatsApp groups they joined. These enabled them to establish connections with others in the same situation, who had already arrived in Germany for study, and constituted, Jayadeva contends, ‘sites of a sustained collaboration between regularly interacting members’ (2020, p. 2242). They were not only spaces where individuals could get answers to their questions, but where they could collaborate together on applications, and receive guidance and encouragement throughout the process of applying and, ultimately, relocating. The groups, Jayadeva goes on to argue: … give members a chance to connect meaningfully and collaborate with people outside their existing social networks, dramatically increasing their social capital and ability to successfully navigate the proves of going to Germany for study. To some extent then, these groups can be seen as democratising access to study abroad. (2020, p. 2255)

More general arguments about the impact of technological change on opening up opportunities for ISM are made by Luthra and Platt (2016). They note that just as such change has ‘smoothed the existing paths of international movement among global elites, it has also lowered costs sufficiently to enable the international mobility of the middle class’ (p. 320), and thus made study abroad a more feasible prospect for students from a wider range of socio-economic backgrounds.

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The changes outlined above, in relation to education and migration policy, as well as broader social shifts with respect to technology, clearly inform the decisions made on the ground by prospective students and their families. Indeed, there is evidence from this level that while a foreign educational qualification continues to be seen, by many, as an important means of reproducing familial advantage, it has also come to be viewed as way to enhance status and capital for those from less advantaged backgrounds. This is linked to the rapid growth in the size of the middle class in nations including China, India and Pakistan and an associated desire among those ‘newly arrived’ in such class positions, to consolidate their social status (Baas, 2010; Luthra & Platt, 2016). Writing with respect to Indian students, Sancho (2017) argues that, for those from the lowest or most struggling middle classes, studying abroad is seen as a route to becoming a ‘global Indian’ and a means of acquiring the cultural capital (often couched in terms of fluency in English) necessary to become a fully-fledged member of the middle class and secure a middle class job. He maintains that a good command of English and access to a high-quality English education are both seen in India as crucial to securing one’s place in the middle classes, but are often outside the grasp of those from more liminal middle class families. For such students, studying abroad can be viewed as a way of compensating for what is perceived as ‘failure’ within the Indian educational system (see also Chap. 4). Sancho describes how a number of his research participants ‘engaged with educational migration in a way that reproduced the aspirations, strategies and investments of those better positioned within the middle classes, whilst simultaneously involving an effort to catch up with and accumulate forms of cultural capital which they had failed to accrue’ (p. 523). Thus, for these students, study abroad was not an outcome of privileged middle class status but rather a means through which such status was hoped to be achieved and then sustained (ibid.). Similar trends are identified by Fong (2011) in her ethnographic study of Chinese students who moved abroad for their education. Indeed, she maintains that perceived educational ‘failure’ domestically was a strong driver of mobility—including among those from less privileged backgrounds. More generally, however, she describes how studying abroad had become normalised among many of the families with whom

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she interacted during her research in China, with parents encouraging their children to study abroad as part of a strategy of upward social mobility. Although she acknowledges that children of the urban Chinese middle classes were still more likely than their peers from less affluent families to study abroad, she observes that, ‘some of those who ended up studying abroad were among those I had thought were least likely to do so, based on their limited financial resources, lack of knowledge about study abroad opportunities and/or relatively low interest in going abroad’ (p. 67). She goes on to argue that this can be explained, at least to some extent, by a growing sense among young people in China that they have a right to what she calls ‘developed world citizenship’. While they hoped to gain this through China becoming more developed, they were unsure that this would happen in their lifetime and so looked abroad for opportunities to develop the competences that they associated with more developed nations. Such ambitions are linked, Fong suggests, to China’s one-child policy (1979–2015), in which only children became their parents’ ‘only hope for the future’ and thus socialised ‘to aspire to developed world citizenship regardless of their abilities and their parents’ ability to pay for their education and career opportunities’ (p.  71). Moreover, with only one child to support, parents were able to spend significantly more on their education than would have been the case if they had had siblings. This financial commitment was evident among low income families as well as those with greater resources to call upon—and often involved a considerable degree of sacrifice. Fong notes that ‘Children of factory workers who went abroad often had to use their parents’ entire life savings and proceeds from sales of their family homes in addition to loans from aunts, uncles and friends just to pay for the start-up costs of studying abroad’ (p. 78). Nevertheless, the decision to study abroad, made by less affluent students in Fong’s study, were not always couched in individualistic terms. Indeed, she maintains that students from lower class backgrounds, as well as their more privileged peers, were motivated to study abroad by a sense of patriotic duty, and a desire to further the development of their country. She writes: They [her research participants] often talked about the analogy between filial duty and the duty of those who study abroad to return to China with

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skills, credentials and connections that would aid in China’s integration with the global economy. (p. 53).

Here, we see the interplay of individual and collective factors in the motivations of students from less affluent families.

New Forms of Stratification In many ways, the changes outlined above are positive—providing opportunities to study abroad to an ostensibly more diverse group of students. However, a growing body of research has suggested that, as participation in study abroad has widened, so experiences have become more differentiated, with those from less privileged backgrounds more likely to encounter problems and have negative experiences than their more privileged peers. We allude to this in subsequent chapters, when we discuss students’ different experiences of immigration regimes in Chap. 5, for example. However, in this section, we explore these differences in some detail; our examples relate to both credit and degree mobility, and are from different parts of the world. Drawing on a questionnaire survey and interviews with both staff and students, Courtois (2018) shows how opportunities for spending a semester or year abroad, during one’s degree, have expanded considerably in Ireland over recent years. In 2012–2013, the Irish government took an important step towards increasing outward mobility by negotiating quantitative targets for the number of students moving abroad with individual higher education institutions as part of a broader set of performance metrics. The reasons for this policy move are multiple. While a period abroad is often seen as an effective means of developing students’ intercultural skills and, thus, their employability, within the particular Irish context, it also presented, Courtois (2018, 2020) suggests, a way of reducing the size of the student body within Ireland at a time when staffing levels in universities were low, and possibly also a response to high levels of graduate unemployment. She argues:

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The promotion of international mobility may … be understood as a technology of control, aimed to foster voluntary attitudes to mobility, and thus to legitimate decreasing wages and downgraded conditions for those who have failed to become adequately (hyper)mobile. (Courtois, 2020, p. 242)

To achieve the targets for outward mobility that were set, Irish higher education institutions introduced a suite of new initiatives. The range of destinations was increased significantly, and new types of opportunity were unveiled, which decisively moved away from the traditional academic, voluntary, language-focussed exchange. In some institutions, for example, study abroad was made compulsory. In others, an additional year was added to degree programmes to cater for time abroad and to make it less important that modules were ‘matched’. Academic staff were not always involved in the new programmes, and students’ work, whilst abroad, was sometimes not monitored or graded. Courtois (2018) argues that, taken together, these moves represented a shift away from understanding student mobility as an academic or cultural enterprise, and towards justifying it on the grounds of improved employability and/or an enjoyable ‘lifestyle’ experience. While these changes had the effect of increasing the number of students who participated in mobility programmes, and including those from less privileged social backgrounds (not least because, in some cases, participation was mandatory), they also led to an increasing stratification of opportunities. Courtois (2018) writes: Most universities offer a small number of places on exchange programmes with prestigious ‘world class’ universities as well as places in much less-­ known places. Yet the differentiated statuses of destinations are obscured by a discourse that focuses on individualism and the rhetoric of choice, as well as on the supposedly homogenously beneficial effects of credit mobility under the gaze of the imagined future employer. The academic aspect is devalued, obscured by a focus placed instead on employability and lifestyle. (p. 108)

She goes on to argue that although this type of differentiation was not made explicit, students’ backgrounds—and, in particular, the economic

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resources to which they had access—affected the type of opportunities they were able to take up. While those from the most affluent families were able to take advantage of ‘top tier’ programmes in the ‘best’ (non-­ European) destinations, less privileged students were more constrained by cost and thus typically ended up in neighbouring or low-cost destinations and/or on ‘second tier’ programmes often characterised by poor academic quality (ibid.). It has also been argued, with respect to European students more generally, that as the Erasmus scheme has expanded and been taken up by more students across the continent, so the subsequent labour market rewards (in their home nation and elsewhere) have reduced (Bracht et al., 2006). The experiences documented in Ireland, with respect to credit mobility, are reflected in other nations in relation to degree mobility. As we have argued in Chap. 2, various Asian countries have become attractive destinations for mobile students and within-Asia degree mobility has increased significantly. Yang (2018) explores such mobility, arguing that as it has expanded, so its class-differentiated nature has become more pronounced. He compares the experiences of middle class students from urban China, in receipt of studentships from the Singaporean government to study in Singapore, with their counterparts from lower middle class families in India who moved to second-tier universities in China to study for English-medium degrees in clinical medicine (largely because they were not able to access medical training in India). Yang illustrates how initial differences in social background (‘established’ versus ‘emergent’ middle class) were reflected in the experiences and, ultimately, outcomes of the two groups of students. The Chinese students located at a prestigious university in Singapore were able to avail themselves of opportunities for international exchange, overseas internships and summer study abroad schemes. They went on to enter mainstream professional work, with middle class incomes and lifestyles—typically reinforcing patterns already established within their families. In contrast, the Indian students in China did not always receive a good quality education, which then affected their ability to pursue a medical career on return home. Yang concludes by noting that while international education is no longer the privilege of the few and Asian youth now have more opportunities than ever before to be mobile for their higher education, ‘accompanying

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this wider access to educational mobility is a clear class-differentiation … not all study abroad is the same, and the outcomes can be even more divergent’ (p. 735). Whilst Yang contrasts outward mobility by different social groups from China and India, other scholars have focused on within-country social diversity. Baas (2010) has argued that, within India, migration decisions and experiences vary greatly among students from different middle class backgrounds, with those from more privileged families commonly accessing high status universities abroad, while those from less-­ established middle class fractions are more likely to access new, cheap colleges that have been set up in various parts of the world to cater primarily for Indian and Chinese students. With respect to China, Xiang and Shen (2009) have similarly shown how significant differences can be observed among mobile students. This is played out particularly in relation the age of a young person when they move abroad. More affluent families are more likely to send their children abroad at a younger age— for an undergraduate degree or even high school—whereas those with more limited means are more likely to send their child abroad for postgraduate study only, or wait until they are an adult and are able to fund themselves. Xiang and Shen outline the different financial commitments associated with each of these routes: First, there were adult students, particularly professionals with working experience, who typically spent RMB3 250,000–3,000,000 [approximately £29,000–£347,000] of their own savings for a Masters degree overseas; second were middle-income families which paid about RMB 3,000,000 to send their children overseas for postgraduate courses; and finally, wealthy families put in RMB 800,000 as the first phase investment for high school, undergraduate or junior college education in the West, and were ready to spend more for subsequent education. The third group … are not only willing to spend the most, but also had sufficient financial resources to draw on constantly over a long period of time …. (p. 519)

These differences map on to the quality of the higher education students receive. Those who move abroad at an earlier age are more likely to  The official currency of China (Renminbi).

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gain the language skills and knowledge of the local higher education system necessary to maximise their chances of gaining access to elite universities (ibid.). Writing also with respect to outward mobility from China, Ma (2020) shows how, in her ethnographic study in the US, ‘first generation’ students were much less likely than their peers with familial experience of higher education to enrol in selective institutions. Again, we see a more differentiated system of international higher education emerging, in which, despite the increased participation of less affluent groups, the most privileged are able to preserve their relative advantage. Empirical studies from Australia suggest similar concerns with regards to the class-differentiated nature of mobility decisions and destinations, and the experiences of students once abroad. As in the case of Ireland, discussed above, changes to the composition of the mobile student body can be related directly to government policy—although with respect to migration rather than education. Indeed, a stark change in the social and class demographics of incoming students was seen in 2004–2005  in Australia as a result of the opening up of a vocational pathway to achieving permanent residency (Robertson, 2013). Under this new policy, a high number of points (under a points-based migration system) were awarded for trade occupations that were in high demand. This, then, increased demand for places on vocational higher education courses (and other such courses offered at a lower level) and, as these typically had lower entry requirements (in terms of academic credentials and English language proficiency) and charged lower fees, many of the students who arrived after 2004, to take up places on such courses, were from less affluent families (ibid.). The experiences of these students differed considerably from those of their more affluent counterparts who had historically enrolled in more academically-focussed programmes. As they often had to work in low-skilled jobs to support themselves and live in private housing (as there were insufficient university residences to cater for the increase in students), they were more visible within public space. This led, as Robertson (2013) and Baas (2010) have recounted in some detail, to negative media portrayals and, ultimately, violence towards these students. Robertson (2013) notes that, after the mid-2000s:

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Students were no longer the elite, affluent, inner-city transient. They were workers, often in unskilled and dangerous jobs like taxi-driving. They were vulnerable and marginalised. Their presence in Australia could no longer merely be seen within the narrow role of consumers of education who were the responsibility of education providers. (p. 55)

Indeed, public attitudes in general changed. International students were no longer seen as self-reliant, ideal neo-liberal subjects, as had been the case in Australia in the past, but either as passive victims of a higher education system out to extract as much income as possible from those willing to pay international fees, or as ‘strategic opportunists’ bent on exploiting the Australian education system in order to gain residency (ibid.). Attacks on Indian international students were reported regularly in the Australia media and, between 2003 and 2009, 32 students died as a result of such violence (Singh & Cabraal, 2010). Thus, while the Australian higher education system had, in effect, been opened up for students from poorer backgrounds, this new wave of student-migrants was treated qualitatively differently from their more privileged predecessors and faced unprecedented levels of public hostility. (We discuss the racism that often underpinned this hostility, and its impact on students, more fully in Chap. 7.) It is notable that Australia changed its migration policy again in 2010, to reduce the number of ‘undesirable’ migrants coming through the vocational pathway. By requiring a higher level of savings and foregrounding highly skilled occupations (rather than more general trades), routes to permanent residency were made much more difficult for those from poorer families, and the social class composition of international students changed accordingly. The examples above have all suggested that, when student mobility has ostensibly become more inclusive, by enabling students from lower socio-­ economic groups to cross borders for all or part of their higher education, other forms of differentiation emerge, which serve, ultimately, to protect the position of those from more advantaged backgrounds. These processes can be seen to reflect those observed across higher education systems more generally. In various nations of the world, as universities have shifted from being elite institutions to those that educate around 40–50

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per cent or more of young people,4 so those who are socially privileged have found new ways of protecting their advantage. These have included placing more emphasis on the prestige of the institution attended (thus leading to more acute vertical stratification of institutions in many countries5), and enrolling in postgraduate programmes (Brooks, 2009; Reay et al., 2005). There is also, however, some evidence that mobile students are engaged, to some extent at least, in the contestation of categories of differentiation and stratification. Prazeres et al. (2017), for example, have argued—on the basis of interviews they conducted with international students in Austria, Latvia and the UK—that many young people studying abroad emphasised the importance of lifestyle and place rather than institutional prestige (see also discussion in Chap. 2). They suggest that many of their interviewees’ choices about where to study were governed as much by assessments about quality of life and the distinctiveness of a particular location as by concerns about the quality of education on offer. Urban lifestyles and plentiful amenities were particularly valued (see discussion in Chap. 2). Prazeres and colleagues argue that ‘given constraints (e.g. finances and failures which might impede access to world class universities), some students seek out other ways to validate and enhance the recognition that might be given to their education and reconfigure distinction through alternative markers’ (2017, p. 115). Here, we see evidence of students embracing the ‘lifestyle’ aspects of their mobility rather than bemoaning an inability to secure access to the most prestigious institutions. While this may seem like a healthy repudiation of university hierarchies and a more positive interpretation of ‘lifestyle’ student mobility than in the Irish example discussed above, it may also be read as further evidence of stratification—students without the capital to secure access to elite universities, rationalising their ‘choice’ of lower status substitutes. Indeed, Prazeres et  al. (2017) contend that their respondents’ emphasis on the importance of ‘place’ as a marker of distinction can be

 Across OECD countries in 2019, the average percentage of 25–34 year olds with a tertiary education was 45 per cent (OECD, 2020). 5  Vertical stratification refers here to the hierarchical positioning of higher education institutions. 4

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interpreted as a tactic to compensate for lower institutional prestige, and a means of generating and competing for symbolic capital.

 nsettling Assumptions about U Class Reproduction As we have noted earlier, traditionally, the academic literature has emphasised the largely socially-reproductive effects of international student mobility suggesting that a foreign degree is often valued more highly than a domestic counterpart within students’ home labour markets, and that the cultural capital associated with studying abroad is often converted in a straightforward manner into economic capital (see, for example, Waters, 2005, 2009; Chap. 4). Indeed, as we have argued above, there is strong evidence that students and, in many cases, their parents, continue to see a foreign qualification as a means of either securing or reinforcing one’s social position. Nevertheless, alongside this line of argument is another that highlights the complexity of processes of capital conversion. This asserts that understandings of social class can vary across time and space, and questions assumptions that ISM leads automatically to upward social mobility (Leung, 2017). Various empirical studies have shown how even those from well-­ established families can experience life more typically associated with less privileged social classes in destination countries. Writing with respect to Australia, Robertson and Runganaikaloo (2014) have shown how many of the 35 student-migrants they interviewed, although often coming from highly educated and/or upper class families, were working in low-­ skilled jobs in Australia, which rarely made use of the skills and knowledge they had gained during their degrees. They all hoped eventually to settle in Australia but had experienced both uncertainty in relation to their immigration and precarity as far as employment was concerned. As families back home typically expected ‘a return on their various financial and care investments in the education-migration strategy in terms of eventual increased earning capacity of the student-migrant family member in Australia’ (p. 220), failure to achieve secure and well-remunerated

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employment often led to strained transnational relationships. Robertson (2013) makes similar points in her larger-scale study of student-migrants in Australia. In relation to these ‘middling’ transnationals, she notes: This in-betweenness denotes some contradictory experiences and some complex class and labour market positionings for student-migrants, and problematises the very idea of the ‘skilled’ migrant. Postgraduate-qualified technical experts can find themselves washing cars or picking fruit for a living, and entrepreneurial and creative class workers can find themselves enrolling in cookery and hairdressing courses to gain access to migration options. (pp. 160–161)

Similar themes are addressed by Valentin (2015) in her account of the experiences of Nepalese students in Denmark. Here, however, they engaged in paid work, not as part of a strategy to achieve citizenship nor to pass time while they waited for the outcome of applications for permanent residency, but to help fund their studies. The Nepalese students in Valentin’s study all came from middle class families but typically took unskilled jobs such as cleaning during their degree. This, Valentin contends, raised various identity challenges for them, as it rarely corresponded ‘to their idea of a proper occupation for people of their “level” in society’ (p. 328) and was used by the Danish media to underline their similarity to other migrants from the Global South and the negative stereotypes associated with them. In this context, the young people made considerable effort to emphasise their student identity, as a means of trying to reassert their middle class credentials and distance themselves from other categories of mobile person. Leung’s (2017) research—drawing on a range of different empirical studies of academic mobility—develops a number of similar themes. She maintains that the narratives of her interviewees, who had moved from Hong Kong and Indonesia to Germany, the Netherlands and the US, ‘demonstrate how migrants practise class and attach meanings to class (and other) identities in multiple and often contradictory ways in the course of their mobility experiences and afterwards’, thus ‘unsettling uni-directional and dichotomous terminologies such as “downward” vs. “upward” in conventional class and migration discourses’ (p. 2714). In particular, she shows how cultural capital from

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the Global South cannot always be converted smoothly to other capitals in other spaces. Here, we see played out some of the geo-political inequalities discussed in Chaps. 6 and 7 (see also Chap. 4 for a discussion of the ‘value’ attached to international education).

Other Axes of Social Difference It is important to note, however, that while a large majority of the literature focuses on social class and/or family background to the exclusion of many other variables, it is not the only social characteristic that affects a student’s propensity to study abroad and, for those who do relocate for this purpose, their experiences during their degree. Indeed, Holloway et al. (2012) have argued that although social class is deeply implicated in mobility decisions, it is ‘experienced in significantly different ways by young men and women in the context of locally specific forms of heterosexuality’ (p. 2284). They thus contend that scholars need to trace the ways in which class intersects with other axes of social difference. Drawing on the case of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic located in central Asia, they show how the motivations and experiences of the mobile young people in their sample were patterned strongly by gender. For example, the cultural capital acquired during overseas study was recognised differently within the labour market for young women and young men. Because of widespread gender-based discrimination with the Kazak labour market, young women tended to believe that their foreign degrees would be valued more highly within multinational companies than national organisations. Moreover, interviewees suggested that many Kazak employers struggled to understand why a woman had chosen to go abroad for higher education given strong societal expectations about women remaining in the home to care for families. The significance of ethnicity has also been highlighted in a growing number of studies, and particularly in those that have focused on outward migration from Malaysia. Sin (2016), for example, contends that in the context of her research with young people who moved from Malaysia to the UK for higher education, ‘class has to be considered in conjunction with ethnicity, given that they are the two main divisions which cut across

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Malaysian society and which are especially prevalent in higher education and employment’ (p. 2). Specifically, she maintains that the cultural capital that is typically enhanced through study abroad does not produce equal outcomes for all students, as its value is mediated by the ethnicity of an individual. While a UK degree held by a Malaysian of Chinese origin (an ethnic minority) is likely to be viewed positively within private sector organisations in Malaysia, it may be valued much less highly within public sector organisations—because of both the ethnic composition of the workforce (largely ethnic majority) and the greater priority assigned to local cultural capital. Koh (2017) develops somewhat similar arguments, underlining the close relationship between racial divides within Malaysian society and distinct education-migration pathways—both of which, she argues, can be linked to the British colonial legacy (see Chaps. 4 and 7). She contends that the British colonial government ‘planted the seed of race-stratified government sponsorship for overseas education … which was linked to civil service jobs’ (p. 84), which was then exacerbated by the post-colonial Malaysian government through a series of interventions under its affirmative action policies. The latter involved the introduction of quotas for bumiputera (Malay origin) students within public universities, which caused non-bumiputera students (the majority of Chinese or Indian origin) to look elsewhere for higher education, including overseas. (This example is discussed in detail in Chap. 4.) Ethnicity can also affect experiences within the destination country, as we explore further in Chap. 6.

Conclusions In this chapter we have heeded the call of some scholars (e.g. Lipura & Collins, 2020; Waters & Leung, 2013) to explore in more detail differences between groups of mobile students, and not to assume that they always share broadly similar motivations and life experiences. By focussing on social class, specifically, we have shown that, contrary to some of the claims within the literature that student mobility remains the preserve of the elite, there is now convincing evidence that studying abroad is being pursued by students from more ‘middling’ social backgrounds

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and, in some cases, by students from working class families. Our discussion in this chapter has highlighted the heterogeneity of the middle classes in many nations of the world and suggested that, often, different fractions of this class end up pursuing rather different types of mobility, not all of which is of equal ‘quality’. To some extent, this emphasis on middle class heterogeneity reflects broader debates within the sociology of education, which have increasingly emphasised a variety of outlook, experience and educational decision-making evidenced by students and their families located within this broad social category (e.g. Brooks, 2003; Davey, 2012). Moreover, the evidence we have provided about increasing stratification of mobility experiences, as access to such opportunities has been widened, represents precisely the kinds of social process that have been evident within higher education more generally under conditions of massification. As more young people have progressed to higher education, so those from elite groups have increasingly sought to colonise elite institutions and/or study for postgraduate qualifications in an attempt to secure their ‘distinction’ from less privileged peers. Indeed, student mobility itself has also, in the past, been theorised as part of such strategies. The arguments we have developed in this chapter extend work on international education—pursued in relation to the schools sector (Kim, 2010) and transnational provision (Waters & Leung, 2013)—that has suggested, in the ways we have outlined above, that as such opportunities are taken up by those from non-elite backgrounds, so increasing differentiation along class lines tends to emerge. This chapter raises wider questions about how such socio-economic differences will be played out in the future, and the extent to which action can be taken, both to open up opportunities to prospective mobile students, whatever their background, and to reduce the entrenchment of the types of stratification discussed in this chapter. With respect to credit mobility, there is has been some limited policy activity. In the UK, for example, a toolkit was published in 2017 to help universities promote more socially inclusive approaches to outward student mobility (UUKi, 2017). Moreover, the Turing scheme, announced by the UK government in late 2020 following its withdrawal from the Erasmus programme, aims specifically to increase the participation of students from more social disadvantaged backgrounds (UK Government, 2020). Within the

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European Union, a ‘learning group’ has been set up to widen participation in the Erasmus programme, and participants from disadvantaged backgrounds are entitled to a higher level of grant. There has been virtually no policy attention, however, to the potential stratification of credit mobility opportunities outlined above. There has also been very little discussion of how to make degree mobility more socially inclusive. This is clearly a more challenging proposition given that, in many countries, such mobility is often seen primarily as an income-generating activity, rather than an ethical endeavour and, as we will discuss in more detail in Chap. 7, it is easy for politicians to ignore social inequalities in this area as they face no pressure from domestic electorates to widen access. Moreover, while various national governments offer scholarships to international students, these are almost always merit-based and can thus often reinforce existing  social inequalities (Charles et  al., 2020). Indeed, the evidence we have presented in this chapter suggests that it is only in China where working class students are taking up opportunities to pursue a degree abroad on any scale—because of the unusual extent to which international student mobility has been normalised in this country. Elsewhere, where diversification has occurred, it has largely been with respect to the lower and/or recently-established middle classes. We return to these issues in Chap. 7, when we explore in more detail the ethics of international student mobility.

References Baas, M. (2010). Imagined mobility. Migration and transnationalism among Indian students in Australia. Anthem Press. Ball, S., Reay, D., & David, M. (2002). ‘Ethnic choosing’: Minority ethnic students, social class and higher education choice. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 5(4), 333–357. Beech, S. (2018). Adapting to change in the higher education system: International student mobility as a migration industry. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(4), 610–625. Bracht, O., Engel, C., Janson, K., Over, A., Schomburg, H., & Teichler, U. (2006). The professional value of Erasmus mobility. Final report presented to the European Commission, Directorate-General Education and Culture.

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Brooks, R. (2003). Young people’s higher education choices: The role of family and friends. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(3), 283–297. Brooks, R. (2009). Young graduates and lifelong learning: The impact of institutional stratification. Sociology, 40(6), 1019–1037. Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2009). A second chance at ‘success’: UK students and global circuits of higher education. Sociology, 43(6), 1085–1102. Calvo, D. (2018). Understanding international students beyond studentification: A new class of transnational urban consumers. The example of Erasmus students in Lisbon (Portugal). Urban Studies, 55(10), 2142–2158. Charles, C., Black, R., & Keddie, A. (2020). ‘Doing great things for the world’: Merit and the justice politics of young people receiving an elite educational scholarship. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. (Advance online access) Choudaha, R., Orosz, K., & Chang, L. (2012). Not all international students are the same: Understanding segments, mapping behaviour. World Education Services. Collins, F. (2013). Regional pathways: Transnational imaginaries, infrastructures and implications of student mobility within Asia. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 22(4), 475–500. Courtois, A. (2018). ‘It doesn’t really matter which university you attend or which subject you study while abroad.’ The massification of student mobility programmes and its implications for equality in higher education. European Journal of Higher Education, 8(1), 99–114. Courtois, A. (2020). Study abroad as governmentality: The construction of hypermobile subjectivities in higher education. Journal of Education Policy, 35(2), 237–257. Cranston, S., Pimlott-Wilson, H., & Bates, E. (2020). International work placements and hierarchies of distinction. Geoforum, 108, 139–147. Davey, G. (2012). Beyond a binary model of students’ educational decision-­ making. Sociological Research Online, 17(3), 4. Deakin, H. (2014). The drivers to Erasmus work placement mobility for UK students. Children’s Geographies, 12(1), 25–39. Del Sordi, A. (2018). Sponsoring student mobility for development and authoritarian stability: Kazakhstan’s Bolashak programme. Globalizations, 15(2), 215–231. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2015). South-South educational migration, humanitarianism and development. Views from the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East. Routledge.

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Findlay, A., McCollum, D., & Packwood, H. (2017). Marketisation, marketing and the production of international student migration. International Migration, 55(3), 139–155. Fong, V. (2011). Paradise redefined. transnational Chinese students and the quest for flexible citizenship in the developed world. Stanford University Press. Gaulter, J., & Mountford-Zimdars, A. (2018). The power of ‘unrecognizable habitus’: Inclusion and exclusion among 10 British low-socio-economic status students abroad. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39(6), 876–890. Holloway, S., O’Hara, H., & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2012). Educational mobility and the gendered geography of cultural capital: The case of international student flows between Central Asia and the UK. Environment and Planning A, 44, 2278–2294. Jayadeva, S. (2020). Keep calm and apply to Germany: How online communities mediate transnational student mobility from India to Germany. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 2240–2257. Kim, J. (2010). ‘Downed’ and stuck in Singapore: Lower/middle class South Korean wild geese (kirogi) children in Singapore. Research in Sociology of Education, 17, 271–311. Kim, S. (2018). Voluntarily exiled? Korean state’s cultural politics of young adults’ social belonging and Korean students’ exile to a US community college. Higher Education, 76, 353–367. Koh, S.  Y. (2017). Race, education and citizenship. mobile Malaysians, British colonial legacies and a culture of migration. Palgrave Macmillan. Kondakci, Y., Bedenlier, S., & Zawacki-Richter, O. (2018). Social network analysis of international student mobility: Uncovering the rise of regional hubs. Higher Education, 75, 517–535. Kratz, F., & Netz, N. (2018). Which mechanisms explain monetary returns to international student mobility? Studies in Higher Education, 43(2), 375–400. Lee, M., & Wright, E. (2016). Moving from elite international schools to the world’s elite universities: A critical perspective. International Journal of Comparative Education and Development, 18(2), 120–136. Leung, M. (2017). Social mobility via academic mobility: Reconfigurations in class and gender identities among Asian scholars in the global north. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43(16), 2704–2719. Lipura, S., & Collins, F. (2020). Towards an integrative understanding of contemporary educational mobilities: A critical agenda for international student mobilities research. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(3), 343–359.

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Luthra, R., & Platt, L. (2016). Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification. Ethnicities, 16(2), 316–344. Ma, Y. (2020). Ambitious and anxious. How Chinese college students succeed and struggle in American higher education. Columbia University Press. O’Connor, S. (2018). Problematising strategic internationalisation: Tensions and conflicts between international student recruitment and integration policy in Ireland. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 339–352. OECD. (2020). Education at a glance. OECD. Ong, A. (1999). Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Duke University Press. Pe-Pua, R., Mitchell, C., Iredale, R., & Castles, S. (1996). Astronaut families and parachute children: The cycle of migration between Hong Kong and Australia. Centre for Multicultural Studies, University of Wollongong. Prazeres, L., Findlay, A., McCollum, S., Musil, E., Krisjane, Z., & Apsite-Bernia, A. (2017). Distinctive and comparative places: Alternative narratives of distinction. Geoforum, 80, 114–122. Raghuram, P., Breines, M., & Gunter, A. (2020). Beyond #FeesMustFall: International students, fees and everyday agency in the era of decolonisation. Geoforum, 109, 95–105. Reay, D., David, M., & Ball, S. (2005). Degrees of choice. Social class, race and gender in higher education. Trentham Books. Robertson, S. (2013). Transnational student-migrants and the state. The education-­ migration nexus. Palgrave Macmillan. Robertson, S., & Runganaikaloo, A. (2014). Lives in limbo: Migration experiences in Australia’s education–migration nexus. Ethnicities, 14(2), 208–226. Sancho, D. (2017). Escaping India’s culture of education: Migration desires among aspiring middle-class young men. Ethnography, 18(4), 515–534. Sin, I. L. (2016). Ethnicity and (dis)advantage: Exchanging cultural capital in UK international education and graduate employment. Sociological Research Online, 21(4), 3. Singh, S., & Cabraal, A. (2010). Indian student migrants in Australia: Issues of community sustainability. People and Place, 18(1), 19–30. Souto-Otero, M. (2008). The socio-economic background of Erasmus students: A trend towards wider inclusion? International Review of Education, 54(2), 135–154. Tannock, S. (2018). Educational equality and international students. Justice across borders. Palgrave Macmillan. Tight, M. (2019). Mass higher education and massification. Higher Education Policy, 32, 93–108.

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UK Government. (2020). New turing scheme to support thousands of students to study and work abroad. Retrieved January 30, 2021, from https://www.gov. uk/government/news/new-­t uring-­s cheme-­t o-­s upport-­t housands-­o f-­ students-­to-­study-­and-­work-­abroad Universities UK International (UUKi). (2017). Widening participation in outward student mobility. A toolkit to support inclusive approaches. Universities UK International. Valentin, K. (2015). Transnational education and the remaking of social identity: Nepalese student migration to Denmark. Identities, 22(3), 318–332. Van Mol, C. (2014). Intra-European student mobility in international higher education circuits. Europe on the move. Palgrave Macmillan. Vertovec, S. (2004). Cheap calls. The social glue of migrant transnationalism. Global Networks, 4(2), 219–224. Waters, J., & Leung, M. (2013). Immobile transnationalisms? Young people and their in situ experiences of ‘international’ education in Hong Kong. Urban Studies, 50(3), 606–620. Waters, J. L. (2005). Transnational family strategies and education in the contemporary Chinese diaspora. Global Networks, 5, 359–377. Waters, J. L. (2006). Geographies of cultural capital: Education, international migration and family strategies between Hong Kong and Canada. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(2), 179–192. Waters, J. L. (2009). In pursuit of scarcity: Transnational students, ‘employability’, and the MBA. Environment and Planning A, 41, 1865–1883. Xiang, B., & Shen, W. (2009). International student migration and social stratification in China. International Journal of Educational Development, 29, 513–522. Yang, P. (2016). International mobility and educational desire. Chinese foreign talent students in Singapore. Palgrave Macmillan. Yang, P. (2018). Understanding youth educational mobilities in Asia: A comparison of Chinese ‘foreign talent’ students in Singapore and Indian MBBS students in China. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 39(6), 722–738.

4 The Value of International Higher Education

Introduction The extensive use of terms such as capital, value, services, and goods, and a prevailing instrumental logic are indicative of the tenacious hold of the language of the market on the academic imagination. (Sidhu, 2006, p. 15; emphasis in original)

It is axiomatic to suggest that an international higher education is considered of value. This assumption underpins much of the academic literature: international mobility provides students with a ‘valuable’ experience, whilst countries, cities and institutions also benefit, in various ways, from the value (habitually described in relation to finances) that international education generates. Often, however, the exact nature of this value (to whom an international education is valuable and, significantly, why) is left  unscrutinised. What does it actually mean that an international education proffers a ‘valuable’ experience? How is value being ascertained? How might it differ in different contexts? How might the ‘objective’ evaluation of international credentials be impinged upon? And what ethical questions emerge from  engaging with education primarily as © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Waters, R. Brooks, Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78295-5_4

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‘value’ (framed within a sometimes-dehumanising discourse of neoliberalism)? As these questions suggest, ‘value’ is a complex term with diverse meanings and is yet of great significance to an understanding of ISM. This chapter starts from the assumption that international student mobilities indicate, in different contexts, differing value to individuals, households and groups. At the same time (and as widely discussed within the grey/policy literature), international students are an extremely valuable source of revenue for higher education institutions. Increasingly, research is also pointing to the benefits that cities, regions and even nation-states garner from capitalising on international student mobility (Sidhu, 2006). Lipura and Collins (2020) recently described international student mobility as ‘a broad strategy for enhancing national and individual competitiveness’ (p.  346). One of the aims of this chapter, therefore, is to uncover what the value of an international higher education means, from these different perspectives, and for different actors and agencies: for individuals and groups on the one hand, and for institutions, places and countries on the other. Underpinning this discussion is the recognition that value varies geographically and by social context— there is a social geography to the value attached to international student mobility and migration (Waters, 2006; Brooks & Waters, 2011). Interestingly, as indicated above, the suggestion has recently emerged that positioning international education ‘as of value’ is also in some ways unethical. Sidhu et al. (2019), for example, call upon us to ‘imagine generous, ethical and responsible futures beyond those celebrating “high value” human capital’ (p. 5; see Sidhu, 2006, for an early discussion of this point). Yang (2018) in his study of Indian doctors in China, cautions against researchers deploying an overly ‘capitalistic’ interpretation of the value inherent in international education, providing a more nuanced (and ethical) discussion of the worth and benefits that students acquire from study abroad. And, indeed, in our own earlier work (Waters et al., 2011), drawing upon a project on British students going overseas for higher education, we have argued that for many more privileged individuals, the strategic pursuit of ‘capital’ (or other overt forms of value) is superseded by the need to ‘escape’ or seek out fun or adventure. These pursuits are, we argued, nevertheless valuable, but are framed differently; the reproduction of class status occurring at a less conscious and strategic

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level for some (already more privileged) international students. This extended quotation from Yang (2020a) captures well some of the ethical dimensions of discussions of ISM (which prioritise neoliberal conceptions of ‘capital accumulation’): This neoliberal positioning of higher education as a profit-driven industry and… of international students as a source of profit has various ethical and political implications. At best, under the neoliberal ethos, both international students and their host HEIs begin to view their relationship as one between customer/consumer on one hand and service-provider on the other. This arguably impoverishes the educational/pedagogical relationship by reducing it to a transactional relation…At its worst, the neoliberalization of ISM could bring up controversial questions that unsettle some of the social ideals about education as well as political values said to be fundamental to liberal democratic societies. (p. 5)

Yang (2020a) goes on to provide examples of such unsettling ‘questions’: does the desire for international students (as a source of revenue) mean that institutions should apply lower admissions standards for international students, for example, to maximise recruitment numbers? Is it ethical that international students’ fees in effect subsidise university courses for domestic students? And what about the relationship between international students and the possibility for acquiring citizenship— should they be denied this opportunity (once their status as full fee-­ paying international students has ended)? Aspects of these questions are addressed at different points throughout the book. Many of these questions touch upon issues of ‘care’ and ‘responsibility’, which have also been raised in relation to students more broadly (Cheng, 2016) and international students in particular (Madge et al., 2009; Waters, 2018), along with the suggestion that a propensity to frame international students as primary sources of income (‘cash cows’) means their needs are often marginalised. We take up the significance of ethics, specifically, in Chap. 7. Here, we simply seek to highlight the assumption, within the emerging literature, that an uneasy relationship between neoliberal market principles, value within international HE, and ethical practices exists, and the need, therein, to scrutinise value in this book.

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In what follows in this chapter, we unpack and problematise the notion of inherent value within international education, building upon the arguments made in Chap. 3 where we demonstrated the complex nature of social inequalities in relation to student mobilities. We begin by exploring how colonial and imperial legacies underpin the value of much international higher education today. We then turn to discuss concepts of value and education, which includes the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu as the preeminent theorist of educational value. Next, we consider how these concepts might be applied to understanding the ways in which international education may be valued by individuals, by groups (in relational terms) and finally by institutions.

 olonial Legacies in International C Higher Education When I was a child growing up in Malaysia, it seemed as though we were always trying to catch up with the West, which was represented first by Great Britain and later by the United States. Although Malaya gained independence from the British in 1957 (and became Malaysia in 1962), British-­ type education and the mass media continued to construct our world as a failed replica of the modern West. (Ong, 1999, p. 29)

As Ong (1999) intimates in the above quotation, colonial and imperial legacies are fundamentally important for understanding how and why credentials are differentially valued today. Such  perceived differential worth drives international student mobility and migration. It is a truism that certain international credentials (attached to particular countries) are deemed more valuable by international students than other, ‘domestic’ alternatives (Findlay et  al., 2012). These geographies were outlined in Chap. 2. Here, we discuss the notion that this value is at least partially generated through colonial legacies—what Madge et al. (2009) described as ‘the complex spatialities that are inherited…both from the history of colonialism and the implications of these historical connections for present-­day transnational relationships’ (p. 35). A useful starting point for this discussion is Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism. Described by

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many as a foundational postcolonial text (Jazeel, 2019), it is not insignificant that Said himself was born in Jerusalem but then educated internationally—first in Egypt and then the United States of America. He remained in the United States as a Professor of English and Comparative Literature until his death in 2003 (Jazeel, 2019). His book is concerned primarily with the production of East and West (termed Orient and Occident) in the geographical imagination (Gregory, 1994). And this geographical imaginary is important for understanding contemporary international student mobilities. The construction, outlined by Said (1978), of the West as ‘superior’ and ‘intellectually progressive’ and the East as ‘mysterious’ and somehow ‘lacking’ is the origin of the perceived value of Western educational qualifications in the contemporary era (Ong, 1999). If postcolonialism is working ‘against definitive categorizations, taxonomies and concrete assumptions’, then one look at the geographies of international student mobility quite clearly tell us that ‘the legacies of colonialism and imperialism are still with us, that they have indelibly shaped the world as we know and experience it’ (Jazeel, 2019, p.  1) and continue to do so— hence a postcolonial perspective on ISM is sorely needed. Of course, there were many colonialisms (and colonisations by different countries of different territories at different times). Nevertheless, the dominance of the British Empire and British imperial history is evident in the contemporary map of international student mobilities. These mobilities emerged, largely, not because of territorial occupation per se, but because of the structures (educational, linguistic, racial and social-­ hierarchical) that colonialism imposed on these territories, which in many cases have endured. This has implications for how different qualifications are valued. As Collins et al. (2017) have observed: ‘While qualifications from regional institutions may become portable through certain social and economic networks, they rarely carry the same levels of recognition as credentials from hegemonic knowledge centres in the Anglophone world’ (p. 8). Hegemonic knowledge centres, and the value attached to them, are built on the foundations laid down by eighteenthand nineteenth-century colonial and imperial practices.

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One of the most intricate discussions of the relationship between British colonial legacies, migration and (international) education is provided by Koh (2017) in her work on Malaysia (which we introduced briefly in Chap. 3). Koh was initially interested in understanding contemporary emigration of young people and was aware that much of this mobility was occurring within population groups—the non-bumiputera Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians. Since the late 1960s, Koh observes, Malaysia has implemented a practice of bumiputera-­ differentiated citizenship and affirmative action policies that have, in effect, resulted in discrimination against the non-bumiputera population. She argues that ‘Malaysia’s contemporary migration can be understood as an outcome and consequence of British colonial legacies of race, education, and citizenship/nationality’ (p. 2), and connects three ‘colonial legacies’ in her argument: race and ethnic indigeneity, education, and citizenship. Between 1824 and 1957, the territory of Malaysia was under British colonial rule. The British colonial administration deployed a strategy of ‘divide-and-rule’ (as they did elsewhere) as a way of ‘managing’ the territory’s multi-ethnic, multi-racial populations, which included the creation of a ‘real’, indigenous Malay population (designated bumiputeras). Non-Malays were seen by the Malay elite as ‘immigrants’ and the idea that they, too, should be able to acquire Malaysian citizenship on an equal footing to the indigenous population was opposed. In 1947, around 49.5 per cent of the population were bumiputera, with Chinese making up 38.4 per cent (Koh, 2017). Race-based affirmative action policies, which have persisted to this day, have meant that many Chinese-­ Malaysians have come to see themselves as ‘second-class citizens’ and, significant for this story, ‘have sought migration, especially for education, as an exit strategy’ (Koh, 2017, p. 6, emphasis added). International education has been valued by Chinese-Malaysians as a means of emigration and a way of building their future lives. As Koh (2017) writes: Indeed, growing up, I frequently heard stories of relatives, or someone else’s relatives leaving for overseas studies or emigrating. During my stay in Singapore, I came across many non-bumiputera Malaysians who had flocked to Singapore for education and subsequently stayed on for a career. (p. 6)

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Malaysia’s post-colonial government implemented a series of policies relating to education which had, consequently, a direct effect on the numbers of students seeking education overseas. One was the quotas introduced for public university places (initially 75:25 in favour of bumiputera students). Bumiputera-only residential schools and technical institutes were also introduced, ostensibly to aid their ‘social mobility’ (Koh, 2017). Koh’s (2017) nuanced and sophisticated account makes the following points, with which we concur: British colonialism was a transformative force in the making of Malay(si)a (especially as it pertains to race, education, citizenship, and the nation-­ state), and, secondly, British colonial policies, with their underlying ethos and assumptions, have set in place certain structures, beliefs, and practices that have continued to circumscribe, legitimise, and enable policymaking by the post-colonial Malaysian state. (p. 89, emphasis in original)

Such policies have also ensured that an overseas education, in an English-speaking postcolonial destination, remains an attractive and valuable proposition for many young people who find themselves within the minority group. Many other former colonies of the British imperial project display related traits and evince a similar connection between colonial legacies and a tendency to value overseas education. It is instructive to look beyond the British Empire to other instances of this relationship, underpinning the value attached to an overseas education. França et al. (2018), for example, have discussed policies directed towards fostering international student mobility in Portugal and ask whether these reflect the legacy of (Portuguese) colonialism or some sort of ‘new strategy’. We mentioned this paper’s contributions to an understanding of alternative geographies of international student mobilities in Chap. 2. Here, we focus on the significance of colonial and postcolonial relations in explaining student mobility patterns. França et  al. (2018) describe the relevance of ‘Lusophone space’ to student mobility flows to Portugal from Brazil, Cape Verde and Angola. These Lusophone countries ‘have long-standing historical and cultural ties grounded in the colonial past, Portugal as the metropolis, the other countries as colonised countries’ (p.  344). Slavery and labour exploitation underpinned the

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model of economic developed pursued by Portugal between the sixteenth- and twentieth- centuries. Cultural domination of the colonies included language, religion (Catholicism) and the way in which public administration was organised. After the colonies gained independence, Portugal maintained various ties and has, the authors note, recently attempted to strengthen economic and geopolitical relations with these countries (França et  al., 2018). This has included policies that relate directly to international student mobility between former colonies and Portugal. Historically (from around 1500 to 1815), Portugal habitually received (higher education) students from its colonial territories, who valued its educational opportunities (rather than developing degree awarding universities within these overseas locations). More recently, Portugal has actively attempted to recruit international students, targeting Lusophone countries in particular. Such policies have included bilateral agreements in relation to international student mobility from Lusophone states, admission criteria that specifically apply to students from these countries, the development of a ‘Mobility Programme’ and a ‘Lusophone Area of Higher Education’ (p. 334). Portugal has mobilised discourses around the value of a shared history, language and culture—a direct reflection of its colonial history—in its attempts to attract students. Colonial relationships have underpinned the value attached to obtaining an education from a former colonial power. Whilst colonial histories tell part of the story of how and why particular destinations (and languages) are deemed valuable by contemporary international students this, of course, is not the whole picture. New, ostensibly neo-colonial relations are emerging centred on Asia (whilst decentring prominent representations of ISM), and it is to these emergent patterns that we now turn.

 he Emergent Geopolitics of (Non-Western) T Cultural Knowledges In their book on student mobilities in Asia, Sidhu et al. (2019) are keen to challenge what they describe as a dominant narrative of the ‘rational, utility-seeking Asian [international] student’ (p. 115). They also seek to

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push back against the ways in which Asia has been ‘othered’ by Eurocentric discourses (as outlined by Said, 1978). This othering has framed Asia as ‘periphery’, with consequences for how it is imagined by international students. In response, former colonial societies are seen to be articulating a ‘different vision of the future…an alternative definition of modernity that is morally and politically differentiated from the West’ (Ong, 1999, p. 29). This vision rests upon, for example, a revival of Confucianist discourses (ibid.) and an attempt to build and develop ethnic and historical connections between Mainland Chinese and their expansive overseas diaspora (Ho, 2018). This different vision also involves the building of knowledge spaces, independent from the West. Sidhu et  al. (2019) describe the ways in which ‘interventionist’ East Asian states are attempting this, in a bid both to drive economic growth and to secure ‘(geo) political legitimacy’ (p. 31). They note that universities have had a special role to play in these spaces and that the focus of this development has been science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects (and the desire to become ‘globally competitive’ in relation to STEM fields). However, they also observe that ‘The worldwide share of international students entering into science fields for East Asia remains miniscule compared to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States…Thus while Asia’s universities are responding to global higher education pressures of building reputation, strengthening research and increasing international student enrolment, they still lag behind when compared to major higher education markets in North America, Europe and Australia’ (p. 43). This raises the questions: how valuable are these emergent knowledge spaces (e.g. East Asia) for  international students (Yang, 2020b)? And is their value regionally generated or increasingly global in nature? The value inherent in international higher education is in part related to what Ong (1999) has called the ‘geopolitics of cultural knowledge’. Over the past two to three decades, a shift in the centres of knowledge production has been observed—away from Europe and North America and towards East and South East Asia (including China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan). This is what Sidhu et al. (2019) were referring to when they discussed the ‘demise’ of the West. Cultural knowledge refers to the historical tendency, tied to imperialism, to revere knowledges

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produced within the Global North. Shifts in the geographies of international student mobilities, discussed in Chap. 2, are in part related to these broader geopolitical shifts (such as the ‘rise’ of China) as well as more grounded changes in the everyday ways people talk about knowledge and power. When it comes to international education, however, and the drivers behind international student mobility (particularly to China), and the extent to which Chinese higher education is deemed valuable on a global stage, are unclear. It is evidently the case that students are attracted to China, whether through generous scholarship provision (Mulvey, 2020), or through attaining some ‘alternative’ (and rarer) forms of cultural capital, or simply because studying in China (or elsewhere in East Asia) is far less expensive and more attainable for many students in the wider Asian region than accessing a Western higher education (Yang, 2018, 2020a; Sidhu et al., 2019). China has been able to channel many international students through its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ and Confucius Institutes.1 And yet, the extant literature would suggest that the value attributed to Chinese higher education is not equivalent to the value one might associate with Western credentials. As discussed below, some students are attracted to China because of their ethnic (Chinese) heritage and a sense that they wish to ‘reconnect’ with their cultural past. Yang (2020a), on the other hand, is clear that ‘significantly lower tuition fees in China is often the main attraction’ (p. 10) for potential international students. He continues: ‘existing evidence seems to suggest that China has not been successful in accruing symbolic capital through hosting international students’ (p. 11). Students often report being ‘disappointed’ with their experience of study in China (see Haugen, 2013). Yang (2020a) concludes: while China may be more successful at attracting ‘educational tourists’ (see Lee, 2020a) on account of language and culture, for students who seek academic credentials in other disciplines, the country does not offer a high quality experience’ (p. 11). It will be interesting to observe, in the near future, the outcomes of research on the employment and lifestyle outcomes for individuals who studied in China—the extent to which they deem it a valuable experience.  Confucius Institutes are overseas teaching initiatives funded by the Chinese state to provide language and cultural instruction abroad. 1

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With these examples in mind, in what follows we turn to discuss how value has been theorised within the literature on (international) higher education.

Theories of Value and International Education Much of the literature on international higher education and the international mobility of students frames these discussions in terms of ‘capital’ (Yang, 2018; Lipura & Collins, 2020). International students are seen to be primarily concerned with accumulating cultural capital through credentials and other markers of distinction, giving them a ‘positional advantage’ in the labour market following graduation. They are also seen to be already in possession of sizable amounts of capital (cultural, social and economic) which is understood to facilitate their mobility in the first place. International study therefore has the effect of reproducing capital (and, thereby privilege and class status) within the international student body, raising ethical questions around equality and the potential for social mobility (see Chaps. 3 and 7). In the next section, notwithstanding the critiques of such perspectives (e.g. Yang, 2018; Holloway et al., 2012), we discuss these ideas (relating ISM to capital and capital accumulation) in more depth.

Higher Education and Capital Over the past two decades, international education has habitually been described, in the academic literature, as a form of (cultural) capital. These debates draw heavily on the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, who has delineated the role capital plays in social class reproduction, linking capital explicitly to education. Capital, in these various forms, is integral to stratification within society. Bourdieu writes:

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the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at any given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e., the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices. (1986, p. 242)

Access to forms of capital, Bourdieu suggests, determines the life chances of social groups, whilst the consequent distribution of life chances tends to be fixed and self-perpetuating. Capital has the propensity ‘to reproduce itself in identical or expanded form […] to persist in its being’ (1986, pp. 241–242). In the following definition, Bourdieu describes the relations between ‘capital’, the structure of society, and individual opportunity. Capital, he writes: is what makes the games of society—not least, the economic game—something other than simple games of chance […] Roulette, which holds out the opportunity of winning a lot of money in a short space of time, and therefore of changing one’s social status quasi-instantaneously […] gives a fairly accurate image of this imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without hereditary or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one […] so that at each moment anyone can become anything. Capital, which in its objectified or embodied forms, takes time to accumulate and which, as a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in identical or expanded form, contains the tendency to persist in its being, is a force inscribed in the objectivity of things so that everything is not equally possible or impossible. (Bourdieu, 1986, pp. 241–242)

From this definition, several related points emerge. First, Bourdieu suggests that the life chances attributable to different social groups are determined by the distribution of capital in society. Social class is defined in relation to the possession of different forms of capital. It follows, as a second point, that possession of capital determines opportunities for further accumulation, thereby reproducing the existing social structure and the position of families within this structure. Third, accumulation is achieved by way of a variety of different strategies or ‘practices’; Bourdieu

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defines social reproduction as ‘the set of outwardly very different practices whereby individuals or families tend, unconsciously and consciously, to maintain or increase their assets and consequently to maintain or improve their position in the class structure’ (p. 125). And finally, it should be noted that capital does not only indicate financial wealth and material possessions (although it does include these). According to Bourdieu, it can take three principal forms: economic capital, ‘which is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalized in the form of property rights,’ cultural capital, ‘which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications,’ and social capital, ‘made up of social obligations (“connections”), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital’ (1986, p. 243). Bourdieu argues that cultural capital itself exists in three states: the ‘institutionalised’ state, the ‘embodied’ state, and the ‘objectified’ state. Cultural capital in the institutionalised state is represented by academic qualifications or credentials: By conferring institutional recognition on the cultural capital possessed by any given agent, the academic qualification makes it possible to compare qualification holders and even to exchange them… Furthermore, it makes it possible to establish conversion rates between cultural capital and economic capital by guaranteeing the monetary value of a given academic capital. This product of the conversion of economic capital into cultural capital establishes the value, in terms of cultural capital, of the holder of a given qualification relative to other qualification holders and, by the same token, the monetary value for which it can be exchanged on the labour market. (1986, p. 248)

The implication of this statement is that academic qualifications may be compared and convert relatively directly into economic capital in the labour market. Not all qualifications are treated equally when it comes to finding employment and gaining promotions. At the same time, recent work has shown that even the ‘right’ institutionalised cultural capital can be differentially valued, dependent on the social positioning of the holder,

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suggesting a more complex picture than Bourdieu paints here exists in reality (Holloway et al., 2012; Forsberg, 2017; Yang, 2018).2 Recent scholarship on the contemporary Chinese diaspora draws on these notions of capital, discussing the educational strategies of middle class families as they endeavour to maintain or increase their assets through migration (Leung, 2013) and, thereby, their position in the class structure. Bourdieu’s ideas (perhaps unexpectedly) would seem to be particularly apposite for understanding their migration, given that they interweave so closely elements of education (cultural capital) and the accumulation of other forms of capital (social and economic). As Ong (1999) has written: ‘Chinese entrepreneurs are not merely engaged in profit making; they are also acquiring a range of symbolic capitals that will facilitate their positioning, economic negotiation, and cultural acceptance in different geographical sites’ (pp. 18–19). In a similar vein, Sancho (2017) has considered the role of international education in class reproduction in India, where ‘a highly competitive and exclusionary middle-­ class culture of education drives many to consider migrating as an alternative path to social mobility’ (p. 530). Families were able to use the possibility of study abroad in order to secure middle class status: ‘as a way to acquire forms of cultural capital central to becoming “middle class” (primarily, English fluency), which they failed to obtain during their school years’ (Sancho, 2017, p. 517). Other examples of work documenting such strategic accumulation of capitals include Waters and Brooks (2010) on UK students in North America and mainland Europe, Indian students in China (Yang, 2018), and Kazak students in the UK (Holloway et al., 2012). In a very different context, Katz’s work on ‘childhood as spectacle’ (2008, 2011, 2017) considers the ways in which children might be seen as ‘accumulation strategy, as commodity, as ornament and as waste’ (2017, p.  3). She writes: ‘These kinds of practices [associated with the accumulation of capital in and through the child] smuggle with them an almost magical ‘investment’ in the child as oneself, one’s future, and the  A brief mention of Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ as a ‘structured social space’ within which all social exchanges and experiences happen is relevant here, in relation to how qualification holders are differently positioned, socially. 2

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future’ (Katz, 2017, p. 4). Here Katz draws on Foucault, also, to explain the ‘concerted cultivation’  (Lareau, 2003), and its disciplining effects, that go along with the accumulation of cultural capital through the child : The social reproductive practices associated with the concerted cultivation of children are labors of love, but they are also a means of cultivating parents in a Foucauldian sense. These cultural forms and practices of class formation make a space of conformity and competition, a realm of social life that parents often feel compelled to participate in so their children ‘stay in the game’. (Katz, 2017, p. 5)

International education can be envisaged as the next step in these ‘reproduction practices’ for middle class families aspiring to keep their children ‘in the game’ (Waters, 2006). As a form of cultural capital, education is more than just an institutionalised credential, however. Cultural capital also ‘presupposes embodiment’ (p. 244), involving a process of incorporation that, ‘insofar as it implies a labour of inculcation and assimilation, costs time, time which must be invested personally by the investor’ (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 244). Education and credentials are, therefore, also assumed to reflect embodied competences. Recent scholarship on the spatial strategies of migrant families has made reference to the deliberate and self-conscious fostering of cultural competences through education; Ong (1999) has argued that the ‘would-be immigrant often acquires an intensified sense of him- or herself as “body capital” [equivalent to embodied cultural capital—viewing one’s body as capital to be invested in] that can be constantly improved to meet new and shifting criteria of symbolic power’ (p. 91). International students, it has been shown in some contexts, exude embodied capital. They do this through the way they speak (linguistic skills and accent), what they say (understanding the nuance attached to different languages), how they dress and use make-up (or not). Zhang and Xu (2020) explored how a group of Chinese women attending higher education in the UK acquired ‘transnational distinction’. For their research participants, embodied cultural capital equated to a ‘gendered Western style of practice’. This included wearing certain clothes and make-up in a way that was deemed both feminine and academic. Their embodiment of

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distinction also extended to how they would spend their spare time: ‘frequenting exhibitions, museums and galleries’ (Zhang & Xu, 2020, p. 11). As most of the students interviewed were planning to return to China following graduation, however, it was unclear to what extent such embodied cultural capital would in fact prove valuable. The other, pernicious, side to students’ embodiment, however, has been their experience of racism, both during their studies and following graduation. Some examples of this research include Baas’s (2014) research on Indian students in Australia, Park (2010) on South Korean students in Canada and Brown and Jones (2013) who documented a variety of different student groups’ experience of racism at university in England (see discussion in Chap. 7). We touch upon students’ experiences of racism following the COVID-19 pandemic in the Conclusion to this book. The meanings and value attached to institutionalised cultural capital are also worth reflecting on. According to Bourdieu (1986, 1996), institutionalised cultural capital describes the value attributed to holding a qualification from a particular academic institution. As considered below, institutional value is problematic to define and often relies in part on limited ‘global’ university rankings (that are anything but global). More broadly and historically, institutional prestige has been tied to imperial and colonial histories and centres of knowledge production (Jöns, 2008) (discussed in this chapter, above). Particular universities in Europe (and later the United States) were ascendant during the period of colonial rule and, consequently, have become the focus for much international student mobility. Institutional cultural capital concerns the symbolism attached to the university but tell us little about the experiences of students nor their subsequent ‘outcomes’. In summary, whilst Bourdieu did not develop his arguments about capital and social reproduction in relation to international forms of education (focussing instead on national education systems), many researchers subsequently have drawn these conceptual links (e.g. Findlay et al., 2012; Forsberg, 2017; Holloway et  al., 2012; Kim, 2011; Marginson, 2008; Waters, 2006, 2008; Xu, 2020). In general, these arguments have asserted that an international education is a particularly valuable form of cultural capital: embodied through individual experience and institutionalised through the credential conferred by the institution of

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study. Collective recognition is a principal way in which the value of an international higher education is conferred and maintained. It operates as a form of ‘old boys’ network’3—where internationally educated graduates reward and recognise internationally educated graduates. As Bourdieu has shown, this type of recognition has a fundamentally classed dimension: international education is frequently intimately connected to class formation in students’ ‘home’ societies (Findlay et  al., 2012; Sancho, 2017; Waters, 2006). As a form of cultural capital, education is a central feature of social class reproduction (Bourdieu, 1984 ). Around the world, the middle classes feel increasing anxiety relating to the reproduction of their lifestyle and social standing across the generations and international student mobility has been seen to play a key role in middle class social reproduction. As discussed in Chap. 3, however, international student mobility is ‘diversifying’ along class lines. As a wider range of students (including what could be considered less privileged individuals) are gaining access to international higher education, questions about its value being sustained over time are raised (see, for example, the study by Bracht et al. (2006), mentioned in Chap. 3, which suggests that higher levels of participation in the Erasmus scheme has reduced its overall value to the individual).

Alternative Perspectives on Capital and Value Some authors have taken Bourdieu’s ideas and attempted to expand the number and type of ‘capitals’ used to describe and explain international student mobility. We outline a few of these alternatives here and discuss the extent to which they relate to Bourdieu’s original formulation.

Ethnic-Identity Capital Bamberger (2020) has explored the importance of what she describes as an alternative type of capital in motivating international student mobility,  The term ‘old boys’ network’ refers to the fact that men with the same schooling history have tended to recognise and reward that collective identity within wider society. 3

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namely ‘ethnic-identity capital’. This refers to when a student’s international mobility is, in part, motivated by a desire to pursue understanding of their ethnic identity, which in turn provides them with greater self-­confidence, resourcefulness and fulfilment. Bamberger (2020) defines ethnic identity capital as: a subset of…capital which focuses on the cultural capital and social connections which deepen an individual’s ethnic identity and serve to bind that person to a particular ethnic group; it works in coordination with other forms of identity capital (such as mainstream forms of identity) and operates as a source of power to promote an individual’s purpose in life, self-esteem and sense of control leading to increased agency. (p. 1370)

The value of ethnic-identity capital, therefore, is found in the way in which it promotes identity, and consequently, empowers individuals as they find greater purpose and direction. Bamberger focuses on one group: Jewish students, from France, studying for higher education in Israel. She describes the importance of what she calls ‘Jewish identity capital’ (a specific form of ethnic identity capital), based on an assumption that individuals share both an ethnicity and a religion and possess a common knowledge of cultural traditions, language and customs. She compares identity capital to ‘cosmopolitan capital’, where cosmopolitan capital refers to the idea that students seek an ‘international’ identity, giving them career advantage, through their mobility. Bamberger (2020) concludes that international students’ mobility is likely to be motivated by a mix of both cosmopolitan and identity capital accumulation, but that the ‘ethnic’ nature of identity capital is often overlooked in discussions of the motivations of international students to pursue learning in particular locations (there are parallels, here, with the discussions below of how ‘value’ resides in particular places). Other examples of ethnicity as a mediator in international student mobility include: Jiani’s (2017) work on international students (of Chinese heritage) in China; Rubin’s (2014) study of American students (of Korean heritage) in South Korea; and Koh’s (2017) project describing Malaysian Chinese students in Singapore—and the significance, therein, of Chinese ethnic identity. Ethnic identification undoubtedly represents

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a form of ‘value’ to the student (in the sense of bringing value to one’s life) and has an impact on the decision making of some international students to study abroad.

Transnational Capital Another example of how the notion of capital has been redeployed in relation to (international) education is found in work on middle class students in Kerala, India, by Forsberg (2017). She argues that: ‘To go abroad to study or work as a way to maintain or improve their social status is a strategy used by middle class youth and their families in India, indeed around the world, to build a CV and stand out in competitive national and international labour markets’ (Forsberg, 2017, p.  2100). One in four households in Kerala has a member living overseas, shaping young people’s aspirations for mobility and making migration for education a distinct possibility. Students in her study were concerned with attaining ‘transnational capital’, invoking ideas of capital accumulation across space. Such accumulation involved language skills, cultural knowledge (of India and overseas), transnational social networks and an understanding of how educational systems work in different places. Clearly, other writers have made similar arguments to this, using transnationalism alongside Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital accumulation (e.g. Waters, 2006; Xu, 2020; Zhang & Xu, 2020), without invoking the term transnational capital.

Mobility Capital Widely attributed to Murphy-Lejeune’s (2003) discussion in her book on European student migration, several authors have deployed the term ‘mobility capital’ as a way of understanding either mobile students’ preexisting capital (facilitating mobility) or the advantages that accrue (to students) from attaining cultural capital overseas, in a different location. Hu and Cairns (2017), for example, focus on the experiences of Chinese student migrants and the role played by ‘mobility capital’ acquired in

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Norway in their subsequent career outcomes. This work specifically aims to ‘adapt’ Bourdieu’s theories of capital and deploy his terminology. There are two key aspects to the ‘mobility capital’ they describe. First, mobility capital can be associated with a ‘dynamic range of….resources’ (p.  3) which might include ‘expanded social networks’, ‘higher earning potential’ and a ‘better understanding of other societies’ (p. 3), compared to, we assume, graduates who do not have an internationally acquired qualification. Thus, there is value attributed to the experiences that relate directly to mobility (beyond the qualification itself ). The paper also describes, however, the geographies of cultural capital (rather than proposing anything distinctive about the term mobility capital). It explores the portability (or not) of credentials acquired abroad and the fact that qualifications from one country will not always be valued somewhere else. Prazeres et al. (2017) also discuss the importance of mobility capital in a way that more closely aligns with Murphy-Lejeune’s (2003) interpretation, relating it to a student’s (and their family’s) prior experiences of travel or living abroad, which has a direct bearing on the desire to study overseas. According to Murphy-Lejeune (2003), mobility capital describes ‘how wandering potentialities are etched in a life story and feed on family experience, on previous experiences and on personality’ (p. 9). In other words, students’ mobility is rooted in family histories of movement—it is something they have been brought up with and, consequently, brings various advantages with it. The social advantages attendant with mobility (for education) have been well documented, such as in Savage’s (1988) account of the relationship between social mobility and geographical mobility and Ball et al.’s (1995) discussion of ‘circuits of schooling’.

Human Capital and Public Good Finally, the concept of human capital4 has been widely discussed in relation to education (debated  by Brown et  al., 2020, and many others). Yang (2020b) offers a distinct critique of the application of Bourdieu’s  Human capital relates to the components of ‘labour’ (in Marxist terms) that produce value. In his discussion of ‘forms of capital’, Bourdieu (1986) is very critical of the economistic focus of human capital theorisations of education and skills. 4

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forms of capital to discussions of international student mobility. He argues that this Bourdieusian approach over-emphasises the ‘private’ nature of capital (as a resource)—invested and realised by individuals and their families. Instead, he shifts the analytical focus ‘from micro-level individual private actors to macro-level actors such as the nation-states’, thereby emphasising ‘how nation-states engage in the global field of ISM in order to (re)produce, extract, or accrue certain desirable ‘capitals’ that have public and political significances’ (p. 4). Human capital (i.e. skilled labour), Yang (2020b) argues, remains a key means by which states transfer and accumulate capital through international student mobility. In another example of the application of ‘human capital theory’ to understanding international student mobility, Bijwaard and Wang (2016) deploy quantitative research techniques (administrative panel data) to explore the return migration of foreign students in the Netherlands. Here, student migration is regarded as an ‘investment in human capital’: ‘people move when the discounted value of their expected net returns to individual capital and larger in the host country than in their country of origin’ (p. 4). Their study concludes that international graduates use their experience (and human capital) acquired in the host country to find a job elsewhere. There is one additional perspective on value that is rarely explored with respect to international students, and that concerns the ‘public good’ function of (international) higher education (see Marginson, 2011). Whilst domestic forms of education have long been subsidised by the public purse and seen to have significant wider benefits to society, the educating of international students has been divorced from these debates. In many countries, international students are charged the ‘market rate’ for their education and so their relationship with their host institution and with the wider host society is primarily conceived as a commercial one.

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Value to Individuals In much of the literature exploring international student mobilities across the disciplines of sociology, geography and education, the strategic importance of international education to the individual has been emphasised. In her recent book, Beech (2019) discusses the ways in which international students may be seen as ‘highly rational and focussed’ individuals (p. 79)—although governed by the ‘opportunities for mobility’ that various policies with respect of student mobilities provides, they nevertheless ‘express a high degree of agency within their mobilities and their choices’ (p. 80). And there is, indeed, much evidence in the literature to suggest that: students’ mobility is a strategic choice and a mark of relative empowerment; and for many student groups, international mobility is a means of accumulating cultural capital and, down the line, securing improved job prospects (Brooks & Waters, 2011). In what follows, we consider how value to the individual has been conceptualised within the extant literature (before moving on to consider individuals in relation to groups).

International Education as ‘Becoming’ The value of international higher education is sometimes framed in terms of individual students developing embodied competences or, more broadly, students’ becoming or a process of self-transformation and development. In Fong’s (2011) research, ‘going abroad’ is discussed in terms of individual ‘transformation’: ‘Chinese citizens in my study hoped that, by going abroad, they would transform themselves from citizens of the developing world into citizens of the developed world’ (p. 23). The form of citizenship to which Fong refers is also known as ‘global citizenship’ or ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’. This ‘non-positional’ type of ‘investment’ (Lipura & Collins, 2020) ‘is grounded on the transformative potential of study abroad experience’ (p. 347), which includes a heightened cultural sensitivity and a cosmopolitan outlook (ibid.).5 Tran (2016) draws  It should also be noted that these types of citizenship can also be linked to neo-liberal imperatives—see arguments in Chap. 6 and Cheng (2016) on biopolitics and citizenship in Singapore. 5

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directly on Bourdieu’s ideas again, but this time to discuss how and why the accumulation of cultural capital might be seen as a process of ‘becoming’, encompassing student’s aspirations toward their educational, social, personal and professional development. Marginson’s (2014) discussion of self-formation positions students as more in control of the process; for him, the process is less about a form of ‘assimilation’ to a host country norm and more about a negotiation between competing identities. He writes: ‘International students form their self-trajectories somewhere between home country identity (which continues to evolve in the country of education), host country identity, and a larger set of cosmopolitan options’ (p. 6), stressing the dynamic nature of students’ identities. This sense that international study is transformational is a common trope throughout the literature on ISM and includes credit-mobile as well as degree-mobile students. As discussed in Chap. 6, students also value the potential of certain pedagogical styles to transform them and their learning; styles that are accessible overseas but not so easily at home, such as the appeal of a liberal arts education in the US (Ma, 2020). Interestingly, as Cheng (2018) has noted, the value of alternative pedagogical styles is increasingly apparent and these are being increasingly offered by HEIs to attract international students within Asia.

The Enduring Value of English (as Global Language) Most published work on the ‘drivers’ of international student mobility will somewhere mention the importance of the English language. English medium instruction (EMI) within higher education is on the increase, as noted in a report by Macaro et al. (2018): EMI is growing in ‘all phases’ of education and in all educational settings, but has been particularly significant in relation to higher education. Macaro et al. (2018) note that globally, universities have been ‘caught up in the rush’ to deliver programmes through the medium of English, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels (p.  37). The reasons, they claim, can be seen to include: ‘a perceived need to internationalise the university…in order to render it more prestigious; needing to attract foreign students because of falling enrolment numbers of home students through changing

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demographics, national cuts in HE investment; the need of the state sector to compete with the private sector; and the status of English as an international language, particularly in the domain of research publications.’ (p. 37) English has become the global language (or ‘lingua franca’) as a consequence of colonial histories and geographies. Choi (2010) describes the impact of a new language policy implemented in Hong Kong after 1997, where a small selection of elite students was chosen for English-only education within the territory, helping to perpetuate a form of ‘linguistic imperialism’. This, in turn, has had a direct impact on the ability of a certain group of students to travel to English speaking destination countries for their higher education. Other interesting examples of colonial histories impacting upon the medium of instruction, and the value attached to that instruction, include the use of English in teaching within Trinidad and Tobago (as discussed by London, 2003) and Pakistan (Shamim, 2008). In their review of scholarship on international student mobility, King et al. (2010) repeatedly note the importance of English usage within the education system as a measure of a country or institution’s success in attracting students from abroad. English language instruction (amongst other things) accounts for the high number of Indian students seeking medical qualifications in China (Yang, 2018). Tran (2016) cites one of her research respondents, who explained the importance of English in their decision making about study abroad: I have some working experience in China … and when I was working I found out that accounting knowledge is very useful to whichever department you work … so I chose the accounting course in Australia. In China, English is very important nowadays because a lot of multicultural companies will come to Beijing or Shanghai and their headquarters there so if you are very good at English, it is kind of a chance … So the best way to study language is to come to the country where they speak English. (Tran, 2016, p. 1277)

In a study of students of Jewish heritage, from France, studying in Israel, Bamberger (2020) observes ‘English language proficiency was

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noted by all students as an advantage and a skill that they hoped to gain from their studies’. She goes on to quote from her qualitative interviews, where research participants extolled the virtue of a degree delivered in the English language: If there is one thing that really made the difference for me, it’s the English. I really wanted to learn in English. I mean, it’s the key today. (Jacques) (p. 1372) English is the universal language, its everywhere … I see my mother and how she works in English all the time even in France … so studying in English is really advantageous. Particularly since I want to do international business. (Monique) (p. 1372)

The role of English was deemed vital in students’ decision making— they all claimed that they would not have studied in Israel if the programme had been taught in Hebrew. English was, Bamberger concludes, of significant ‘value’ to the students on these programmes. It is hard to overstate the value attached to the English language in driving international student mobility (Findlay et al., 2012). And yet, it is not just about English per se, but can also include issues around accent, as noted in a paper by Ennser-Kananen et  al. (2021), exploring accent modification courses offered to international students at US universities. More discussion is certainly needed around the value attached to different types of English.6

 voidance of ‘Failure’, a Means of ‘Escape’ A and a Second Chance Several studies have pointed to the fact that young people’s aspirations to study abroad may also be closely tied to conceptions of actual or anticipated individual ‘failure’ at home (Brooks & Waters, 2009; Forsberg, 2017; Sancho, 2017; Waters, 2006; Xiang & Shen, 2009). The expansion  This is one of the goals of the Geographies of Internationalisation project (see Adriansen et al., 2019). 6

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of access to higher education opportunities globally have meant that many ‘middle class’ families find themselves in competition for university places. Some countries, such as China, Japan and South Korea have notoriously competitive university entrance exams and high levels of competition for the most prestigious university places. Unsuccessful students (however they self-define success) may consider going overseas as an alternative to accepting a ‘sub-standard’ university place (or no place at all). Others may ‘pre-empt’ failure and move at a younger age, thereby also avoiding the stress of university entrance exams in the home country (Waters, 2008). The limited number of places available on desirable courses at prestigious universities in India (an aspiration of the middle classes) as a driver of international student mobility is discussed by Forsberg (2017) (see also Sancho, 2017). As this example attests, often it is not a lack of higher education per se that drives young people overseas, but a lack of a certain type of higher education—at a particular institution or a particular course: one that is imbued with sufficient value and distinction (that is, institutionalised cultural capital) to appeal to middle class aspirations. In a different example, in the context of China, Fong (2011) discusses the interesting case of Wang Jun—‘an academic underachiever who sat at the back of the classroom and often slept or chatted with friends instead of studying….He scored near the bottom of his class in practice exams’ (p.  85). His parents were factory workers who were extremely anxious about their son’s academic performance as they did not have the financial resources to provide him with a ‘safety net’ should he fail to progress to college. When he took the college entrance exam, his scores were far too low, much to the upset of his parents. One of his best friends, Liu Peng, who had also failed to get a college place in China had left for the UK and was studying English with the hope of getting into university there. ‘Liu Peng often talked to Wang Jun by phone and email and told him about how carefree his life was in Britain, away from parental supervision and the judgements of peers and relatives in China’ (Fong, 2011, p.  86). Wang Jun applied for a UK visa, which was subsequently granted. He said: ‘after I failed…going abroad was the only way out’ (p. 87). Such stories are common within the literature on international student

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mobility—going abroad for education is seen as the ‘only option’ for students for whom accessing higher education is considered vital. Failure is, of course, relative: one person’s account of failure is another person’s success story. For the young and relatively privileged cohort we talked to from the UK, failing to secure a place at Oxbridge was the key driver behind their international mobility. Ivy League institutions in the US offered these students a second chance at success (Brooks & Waters, 2009). Nothing else would ‘do’. Similarly, Yang (2018) noted that Indian medical students in China were often unable to get places on highly competitive degree programmes at home and therefore travel overseas allowed them to attain a qualification otherwise shut off from them. Moreover, Wiers-Jenssen (2008) argues that in Norway, those who fail to gain access to very competitive medical courses often choose to pursue a medical degree in another European country rather than follow an alternative course in a Norwegian institution. International education can also offer a means of ‘escape’ for some young people—escape from conflict or from the constraining expectations and pressures related to gender or sexuality. In relation to gender, Holloway et  al. (2012) describe the pressure on young women in Kazakhstan to get married in their early twenties, sustain ‘high’ fertility levels, with their employment seen as nothing more than a ‘hobby’. An overseas education offers an escape, for a short time, from these expectations and having an overseas degree is likely to shape a woman’s aspirations for marriage on her return. In contrast, Walton-Roberts (2015) considered the experiences of Indian nursing students in Canada, looking specifically at whether their migration was ‘independent’ and/or determined by gender norms and expectations at home. The results for this cohort suggested that families were heavily involved in both decision-­ making about education abroad and policing young women’s behaviour when overseas. Their (overseas) education was often framed in terms of potential advances it could bring to the family (as opposed to the individual). Consequently, the ‘promise’ of international education as a potential escape from gendered norms and expectations was not, in actuality, realised. Sexuality has been another consideration for international students needing a way to ‘escape’ the confines of social expectations at home.

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Discussing young people’s educational mobilities between European destination countries, Favell (2011) noted that some students made their location-decisions on the basis of where they felt ‘safest’ or most comfortable being gay. Yu (2020) carried out extensive research with Chinese-­ Malaysian international students in Taiwan. What he describes is rather more complicated that a simple narrative of escape: some of his informants discussed Taiwan’s ‘progressive human rights’ and ‘friendly public attitudes towards queer people’. Others made the point that they intended to return to Malaysia prior following graduation to ‘contribute to elevating the status of queer people at home, especially within the Chinese community’ (n.p.). Finally, Kirkegaard and Nat-George (2016) looked at the role played by violence and conflict in precipitating international student migration. They argue that whilst a prevailing narrative of ISM concerns ‘enhancement’ and self-improvement, for a minority of student migrations their mobility (in this case, to Sweden from South Asia, Europe, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East) may have life or death consequences. For such students, ‘education holds additional promises; it becomes their exit out of communities struck by conflict and violence, a ticket not only to better education and different experiences, but to life itself ’ and ‘a strategy to exit life-threatening situations of organised violence and conflict’ (p. 391). Certainly, such a view highlights the complexities of ISM and the various senses in which international education may be considered ‘valuable’.

Employability and ‘After-Study Lives’ In this next section, we consider some of the literature that has discussed outcomes for international students following graduation. As Collins et al. (2017) have argued, relatively little research has examined specifically what they call the ‘after study lives’ of international students. In their work, they focus on the ‘situated learning’ that university education provides. They draw on interviews with 58 alumni from three high ranking universities in East Asia (in Japan, Taiwan and Singapore). Their findings highlight the fact that the ability of alumni to ‘use’ their international

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credentials shows significant variation, with some individuals seeing ‘new opportunities’ arise as a consequence of their international credentials and others finding that their overseas degree may ‘hinder access to locally embedded networks’ (p. 2). This lack of portability related to an absence of official recognition of their degrees, a poor understanding (vis-à-vis local graduates) of local business cultures and a general lack of societal value granted to their particular overseas qualifications. Interestingly, and chiming  directly  with the discussion of social capital in this chapter (below), they note the ‘portability’ of international qualifications rests on the way in which overseas credentials are recognised in particular contexts, highlighting the important role that social capital plays in the valuation of cultural capital (see also Waters, 2006). With clear links to the literature on social capital, international education is widely thought to enhance a student’s future employability. In Australia, employing international students upon graduation has been articulated as a ‘strategy to meet the demands for high skilled labour’ (Pham et al., 2019) (see discussion in Chap. 5 on the role of the state in ISM). However, as Pham et al. (2019) also note, the employment outcomes for international students-turned-graduates within the host country can be ‘alarmingly poor’7 (although other reports on the UK and Australia might suggest otherwise). In our own project on satellite university campuses in London, set up primarily to attract an international student market, we found that this relationship between international education and future employment is often strongly implied (but rarely, if ever, guaranteed) within the marketing materials of HEIs, in relation to, for example, students’ potential proximity and exposure to potential employers (Brooks & Waters, 2018) (see discussion in Chap. 2). The value of an international education is often found not in the country where it is attained, but elsewhere—either back home or in a third country. There are several potential reasons for this. First, there is the fact that international students-turned-graduates may face discrimination within the host country labour market (Chacko, 2020; Scott et al., 2015; Williams & Baláž, 2008)—whether that is more direct racism or a subtler ‘glass ceiling’ effect. Second, there is a ‘scarcity value’ attached to  We were unable to find statistics to support this claim, however.

7

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international qualifications in some labour markets, particularly those that have seen a large expansion in access to higher education in the recent past and the market in domestic graduates has become saturated. Having an international qualification allows students to ‘stand out’ from the crowd. Third, a concentration (or clustering) of employers with the same international qualifications as graduates located in some cities and industries can function as social capital and facilitate access to particular jobs. Often, graduates with international qualifications may benefit from a combination of these factors: to draw upon one example from Waters (2008)—a young graduate with a higher education degree from a Canadian university was able to return to Hong Kong to seek work in an American banking firm populated by individuals with similar Canadian qualifications. Employers there required fluency and confidence in English (clients are invariably English speaking) and ‘local’ graduates were seen to lack these qualities. Students’ mobility intentions following graduation also give some insight into the perceived individual value of an overseas degree. Findlay et al. (2012) have looked specifically at the links between mobility as a student and students’ intentions and outcomes post-graduation. They argue that many students have an eventual destination in mind, and that study abroad is seen as a stepping-stone towards reaching that destination—what their research participants described as an ‘international career’ (see Lee (2021), and Xu, 2020 on the temporal dimensions of study abroad and work transitions).

Understanding Group-Based Value Despite an overwhelming focus, within the literature, on students’ individual goals and strategies, it has been widely shown that cultural capital requires a degree of recognition from others. Often this is seen in the form of in-group self-recognition and self-affirmation: not unlike what Waters (2007) found in her project on transnational ‘overseas-educated’ professionals working in Hong Kong, where employment opportunities tended to rely on networks forged through international education. International education in this context is seen to produce ‘a type of marking that creates

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a magical boundary between insiders and outsiders’ (Bourdieu, 1996, p.  104); an ‘esprit de corps’. Such esprit de corps was evident among ‘overseas-­educated’ graduates in Hong Kong’s international financial district and was significant in terms of the creation of a distinguishing group identity (Waters, 2007). Individualistic pursuit of capital, we consequently assert, is inextricably linked to group identities and forms of wider social recognition.

Value of Social Interactions Social relations will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 6 in relation to ‘learning’ (and was also covered in Chap. 2). Here, suffice it to say that international students find value in the social interactions they experience through study abroad. Often invoking Bourdieu (1984), the literature claims that international education can result in the development and consolidation of vital (and valuable) ‘social capital’. Rienties et al. (2015) have explored the nature of social capital among international students in the UK. Specifically, they set out to consider whether, after three years of study abroad, students were building ‘multinational and host social capital links.’ They concluded that the social capital students developed is linked to a potential (economic) ‘return’ on educational investments in the following ways: First, embedded resources facilitate information flows between people, which consequently reduce the transaction costs, such as sharing of ideas, tasks or lessons learned. Second, social ties have a substantial influence upon how students deal with academic life and change…Third, social ties may be conceived as certification of social credentials, as it reflects a student’s ability to access resources through social networks and relations. If a student is successful in building new relations and solving various educational tasks, his/her direct student colleagues may provide (in) formal recognition, which may also strengthen the credentials amongst students to whom he/she is indirectly connected to. (p. 1214)

Social networks are also said to provide psychological support to students along with a sense of belonging, whilst simultaneously reinforcing

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their identities and sense of recognition (akin to the ethnic-identity capital discussed by Bamberger (2020), above). Other types of social capital have been explored: for example, Moon and Shin (2019) have described the value of ‘transnational social capital’, which they equate to a form of ‘bridging social capital’ (i.e. capital which builds ties ‘with outsiders’ (from outside one’s group (Putnam, 2001)) in the post-graduation plans and outcomes of international students in Japan. They focus on the social ties developed between home students in the host nation and also those between international students originating from different countries (so-called non-conational multinational ties). Many of their research participants found it difficult to form close friendships or ties with Japanese students, leading to frustration on the part of some international students. Perceived barriers between individuals seemed to be attributed, they argued, to prohibiting and stereotypical ‘cultural factors’. For example, Japanese students were viewed by international students as ‘exclusionary’, discriminatory towards other Asian nationalities, maintaining shallow personal relationships and presenting very different (sometimes contradictory) public and private selves (suggesting a degree of insincerity). This was apparent across a range of students from different home countries (including China, Vietnam, Mongolia and Thailand). Barriers were also seen to be ‘institutional’; most international students found themselves isolated within particular (usually English-medium) programmes, unable to mix with Japanese students through the course. However, one consequence of this arrangement, the researchers found, was that students did spend a lot of time forming bonds with other international students, many of whom were not co-nationals. A majority of those interviewed found great satisfaction in this opportunity for relationships with other international students from diverse locations. Important for this chapter, however, is the way in which students framed such interactions: ‘Students also articulated that such ties/bridges embodied access to valuable resources, or what could be considered forms of bridging social capital’ (p.  566; emphasis added). They were perceived to be inherently valuable and were discussed in such terms. Value included ‘enhanced learning outcomes, diverse perspectives, ideas and information’ (Moon & Shin, 2019, p. 567). Their argument also suggests that this social capital has a meaningful impact on

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post-­graduation career plans. Friendships with individuals from international locations introduces to students the possibility of a transnational career trajectory (Findlay et al., 2012; Lee, 2021). Arguments relating to social interactions amongst international students, and between international and home students (in the classroom environment), are developed further in Chap. 6. Having considered how an international higher education might be deemed valuable to individuals and (relationally) with respect to groups (what Findlay, 2011, has described as the ‘demand-side’), we now examine a different perspective. Narratives around ISM frequently refer to a ‘market’ in international HE and the value of international students to both countries and institutions has been widely debated.

Value to Institutions, States and ‘the Market’ As noted by Sidhu (2006), discussions in relation to  higher education (and student mobility) are to a certain extent circumscribed by the language deployed around markets, services and capital (within which, a notion of value is central). Sidhu’s reflections on the ways in which higher education has come to be equated with ‘value’ (and little else) have highlighted the importance of ‘exchange values’ and the ‘normalization of education as a private good, paid for by the individual procurer, who is anticipated to reap extraordinary benefits from their investment’ (2006, p.  17). She also emphasised ‘a discursive logic that distils human relationships, dreams, visions, and aspirations into the language of value’ and how this could be seen to be ‘indicative of the tenacious hold of a market-based instrumentalism on the intellectual imagination’ (pp.  17–18). Here, she alights squarely on how international student mobility is habitually discussed within higher education—as a financial transaction between full fee-paying international students and institutions. The financial implications of the growth in international higher education over the past 30 or so years, and the predicted ‘dire’ consequences of restricted student mobility following the COVID-19 pandemic, are clearly immense. In many countries (such as the UK and Australia), fees from international students are vital to the continuation of universities as

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we know them. The net revenue generated from international student tuition fees in the UK for the 2015–2016 cohort was around £20.3 billion. According to Universities UK (2019), international students comprise nearly 20 per cent of the total student population and 36 per cent of all postgraduate students in the UK. In these broad financial terms, then, the economic impact of international student mobility for the UK is clear to see. QS (a large private provider of HE services, globally) has described the financial benefits of international higher education at different ‘levels’ for the UK: The benefits filter down to a local level too. ‘The university commissioned Oxford Economics to launch a report in 2012 that highlighted the scale of the economic benefit international students bring to the city,’ reflects Claire Prendergast, a senior international officer at the University of Sheffield. ‘The research showed that international students at Sheffield-based universities in 2012/2013 would pump £120 million into the local economy, with 8.9 per cent boosting local labour supplies by utilising their skills directly in the Yorkshire and Humber region. This impact is felt outside the city’s boundaries too, with a further 10.7 per cent employed in the rest of the UK, supporting our national workforce with fresh skills and talent.’ It is not just local and national economies that benefit; the contribution to university facilities and research budgets at a time when centralised investment is on the decline cannot be understated. ‘Approximately 30 per cent of QMUL’s student body is comprised of international students, so as a cohort they play a hugely significant role at the university,’ says Siân Halkyard, head of PR at Queen Mary University of London. ‘International students bring in substantial tuition fee income to UK universities, which allows institutions to invest significantly in new facilities, such as QMUL’s new Graduate Centre which is due to open in 2016.’ (QS.com, 2016, n.p.)

The impact of restrictions on student mobility as a consequence of COVID-19 in Australia have been notably dire—in terms of the devastating revenue shortfalls and mass staff layoffs that have beset universities there (Doidge & Doyle, 2020). Doidge and Doyle (2020) argue that problematic funding and policy directions had been ‘papered over’ by the ‘huge growth’ in numbers of international students. COVID-19 and the near cessation of incoming students has left Australian higher education

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woefully exposed to the impacts of market reforms. These economic arguments often dominate policy or grey literature around international HE more generally. Attracting international students is viewed simply as a financial investment. We discuss, in Chap. 7, the ethical implications of representing international and mobile students in this way.

Rankings in the creation of value University rankings ascribe value to qualifications and higher education institutions, and it has long been assumed that international students pay heed to universities’ positions in rankings and league tables. This was evidenced in Beech’s (2019) study, where she gives numerous examples from her international student informants about just how important university rankings had been in determining the choice of study destination. Rankings chime closely with the issue of ‘reputation’—an amorphous term generally used far too uncritically in relation to international higher education. As Beech (2019) has noted, ‘reputation and quality could […] be based on two different factors, either the university’s performance in contrast to others or alternatively a more generally accepted belief that the UK as a whole could offer a superior degree to what they would find elsewhere’ (p. 139, emphasis added). This, of course, harks back to the discussion, above, around postcolonial geographical imaginaries and the tendency to valorise particular countries and regions of the world (‘the West’) above all else. We have also observed that some government scholarships supporting overseas study will only approve institutions highly ‘ranked’—for example, Kazakhstan’s Bolashak scholarship provides a list of approved institutions, whilst the Singapore Government Scholarship supports only undergraduates studying at ‘top’ overseas universities. These rankings have discernible, material effects on ISM, directing students to particular countries and institutions. Rankings, however, have been shown to be problematic on many different levels, reinforcing (and, indeed, producing) entrenched global geographies of valued ‘knowledge production’ in favour of former imperial and colonial powers (Jöns & Hoyler, 2013) (discussed in Chap. 2). They entrench the idea of the ‘world class university’ and market-oriented

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student identities (Lim & Ørberg, 2016). Olds (2013) makes the following important observation: My concern about the term ‘World University Rankings’ relates to the very small number of universities that are ranked relative to the total number of universities around the world that have combined research and teaching mandates. World University Rankings is a term that implies there is a unified field of universities that can be legitimately compared and ranked in an ordinal hierarchical fashion on the basis of some common metrics. (n.p.)

In other words, as so many universities are de facto excluded (not to mention the impossibility of ranking all the universities in the world), the term ‘world university rankings’ is wholly misleading and potentially damaging to the reputations of institutions left out of these discourses (see Shahjahan et al., 2017).

Conclusions It is not enough to claim, or assume, that international student mobility is ‘valuable’ for certain individuals, groups, institutions or countries. This value needs to be scrutinised for the role it plays in ISM. As we have discussed in this chapter, defining the value of an international education is complex: it is both multifaceted and geographically-embedded. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify some common and widely agreed aspects to the ‘value’ of overseas study. First, we considered the undoubted importance of colonial and imperial histories in framing contemporary mobility discourses and patterns. We discussed how colonialism has produced and constructed particular notions of value in relation to knowledge production and, subsequently, international higher education. We considered how these legacies are manifest contemporaneously and how, also, they can be seen to be both reflected in and challenged by postcolonial societies today. Following from this discussion, we explored the notion of alternative (non-Western) visions of modernity to ‘counter’ the hegemonic and presumed value attached to a Western education. The rise

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of China as a ‘superpower’ within international higher education is just one example of this. We then discussed theories of value in education, drawing on Bourdieu’s notions of capital and other, related ideas developed from his initial writings. These theories emerge across the vast literature on ISM—education is conceptualised as a form of cultural capital (both embodied and institutionalised) and, as such, has a role to play in reproducing inequalities in social privilege across multiple societies where internationally educated graduates can be found. More recently, the literature has sought to complicate the value assumed to attach to an international education as cultural capital—for some students it might not represent a straightforward process of privileged reproduction; for others, the value of their cultural capital can be impacted by, for example, discrimination on the basis of race. The theoretical discussion was followed by a more specific look at aspects of value related to international student mobility—how ISM can be seen to function as value for individuals (for example, through individual job prospects) and how this relates to groups (its role in group formation and maintenance and mutual recognition). We also discussed the perceived value of ISM for institutions, states and markets, primarily framed in neo-liberal terms of profit and finance. This value has been bolstered and underpinned by the proliferation of metrics such as university rankings. This focus on value has wider significance. An overarching concern with value implies a rather impoverished view of the meanings of international student mobility. As noted above, rarely has ISM been discussed in terms of the value it brings to society at large (the public good dimensions of education). Instead, framings of ISM have been dominated by a neoliberal concern with wealth and status generation as a primary motive and outcome—whether that is wealth for the individual (gaining a better paid job), for groups (reproducing their superior status in the social order), for institutions (the monetary dimensions of ISM are represented in stark and unforgiving terms) and countries (concerned with GDP and their global standing). The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the precarity of both the international student and the institutions that rely on them—many students are not, in fact, wealthy and footloose individuals,

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but are bound by familial obligations, visa status, border restrictions, scholarship terms and conditions, and the income provided by part-time working that alleviates, in the short term, impoverishment (see Chacko, 2020). For higher education institutions, the reliance on international student fees has become fundamental, as the withdrawal of some of these fees during the pandemic has revealed. We need, therefore, a broader, more ethical, social view of what value within ISM can and should entail. One that recognises the value of international students not for their fees; one that sees the value of studying overseas not solely for the job prospects it provides but also for its socially enriching aspects.

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Rubin, K. (2014). The changing tide of South Korean Student Flows. International Educator, 23(2), 28–34. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage. Sancho, D. (2017). Escaping India’s culture of education: Migration desires among aspiring middle-class young men. Ethnography, 18(4), 515–534. Savage, M. (1988). The missing link? The relationship between spatial mobility and social mobility. British Journal of Sociology, 39, 554–577. Scott, C., Safdar, S., Desai Trilokekar, R., & El Masri, A. (2015). International Students as ‘Ideal Immigrants’ in Canada: A disconnect between policy makers’ assumptions and the lived experiences of international students. Comparative and International Education/Éducation comparée et internationale, 43(3), 5. Shahjahan, R. A., Blanco Ramirez, G., & Andreotti, V. D. O. (2017). Attempting to imagine the unimaginable: A decolonial reading of global university rankings. Comparative Education Review, 61(1), 51–73. Shamim, F. (2008). Trends, issues and challenges in English language education in Pakistan. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 28(3), 235–249. Sidhu, R.  K. (2006). Universities and globalization: To market, to market. Routledge. Sidhu, R. K., Chong, H. K., & Yeoh, B. S. (2019). Student mobilities and international education in Asia: Emotional geographies of knowledge spaces. Springer Nature. Tran, L. T. (2016). Mobility as ‘becoming’: A Bourdieuian analysis of the factors shaping international student mobility. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(8), 1268–1289. Walton-Roberts, M. (2015). Femininity, mobility and family fears: Indian international student migration and transnational parental control. Journal of Cultural Geography, 32(1), 68–82. Waters, J., & Brooks, R. (2010). Accidental achievers? International higher education, class reproduction and privilege in the experiences of UK students overseas. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(2), 217–228. Waters, J., Brooks, R., & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2011). Youthful escapes? British students, overseas education and the pursuit of happiness. Social & Cultural Geography, 12(5), 455–469. Waters, J. L. (2006). Geographies of cultural capital: Education, international migration and family strategies between Hong Kong and Canada. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(2), 179–192.

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Waters, J.  L. (2007). ‘Roundabout routes and sanctuary schools’: The role of situated educational practices and habitus in the creation of transnational professionals. Global Networks, 7(4), 477–497. Waters, J.  L. (2008). Education, migration, and cultural capital in the Chinese diaspora. Cambria Press. Waters, J. L. (2018). International education is political! Exploring the politics of international student mobilities. Journal of International Students, 8(3), 1459–1478. Wiers-Jenssen, J. (2008). Does higher education attained abroad lead to international jobs? Journal of Studies in Higher Education, 12(2), 101–130. Williams, A. M., & Baláž, V. (2008). International return mobility, learning and knowledge transfer: A case study of Slovak doctors. Social Science & Medicine, 67(11), 1924–1933. Xiang, B., & Shen, W. (2009). International student migration and social stratification in China. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(5), 513–522. Xu, C.  L. (2020). Time, class and privilege in career imagination: Exploring study-to-work transition of Chinese international students in UK universities through a Bourdieusian lens. Time & Society, 30(1), 5–29. https://doi. org/10.1177/0961463X20951333 Yang, P. (2018). Compromise and complicity in international student mobility: The ethnographic case of Indian medical students at a Chinese university. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39, 694–708. Yang, P. (2020a). Toward a framework for (re) thinking the ethics and politics of international student mobility. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(5), 518–534. Yang, P. (2020b). China in the global field of international student mobility: An analysis of economic, human and symbolic capitals. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1–19. (Advance online access) Yu, T. F. (2020). Queer migration across the Sinophone world: Queer Chinese Malaysian students’ educational mobility to Taiwan. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–15. (Advance online access). Zhang, S., & Xu, C. L. (2020). The making of transnational distinction: An embodied cultural capital perspective on Chinese women students’ mobility. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 41, 1–17.

5 Migration, State-Building and Citizenship Projects

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to render the complex relationship between states and international students (largely in relation to degree1 mobility) visible—to discuss work where the intersection of students and states is central to the argument being made, and to draw out the importance of states in research where these interrelations are more subtly represented. It is our contention that an understanding of international student mobilities needs to take account of the significant role played by states and state-­actors (at different levels), and that the relationship between international students and states requires further explication. International students are often implicated in what might be called ‘projects of the state’. Most obviously, this can be seen in the way in which international students are sometimes also immigrants. Students  On the whole, discussions concerning the propensity for international students to seek a longer-­ term relationship with their host nation tend to happen in relation to degree mobility (rather than credit mobility). However, it is clearly the case that some forms of credit mobility may also be tied up with ideas of citizenship, statehood and identity. A good example of this might be the ‘Europeanness’ and Europe-building agenda of the Erasmus programme (see Brooks & Waters, 2011). 1

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can become permanent residents and, eventually, citizens of the countries within which they are studying. They can contribute to a state’s overseas strategy towards its diaspora (Larner, 2015; Yang, 2016) or can be simultaneously engaged in two or more nation-states as transnational migrants (Liu-Farrer, 2011). Other examples of the relationship between states and international students might include: government scholarship programmes and the implementation of soft-power strategies (as in China, see Haugen, 2013); the active creation, by states, of citizen subjects (Mitchell, 2003; Cheng, 2016); competitive state strategies involving immigration policy and international students (Geddie, 2015); the surveillance and securitisation of borders and the rise of ‘hostile environments’ (Warren & Mavroudi, 2011); and garnering remittances from citizens overseas. In the case of Germany, for example, an analysis of policy texts revealed that the higher education of refugees was part of a constructive national response to an international refugee crisis (Brooks, 2018). As Yang (2016) has observed for Singapore, however, tensions and even conflicts can emerge between international students (framed as ‘talent’) and ‘locals’; or, in the context of Hong Kong, between overseas- and domestically-educated graduates (Waters, 2008), which then become played out more broadly within national-level (and nationalist) discourses. Returnee international students and their labour-market outcomes draw attention to and expose (in sometimes unfavourable ways) domestic education systems and the achievements of locally-educated young people. In the UK, in recent years, international students have found themselves drawn into debates around immigration policy and ‘Brexit’ and, more recently again, the role they will play in ‘propping up’ (or dismantling) struggling higher education institutions in a post-­ COVID-­19 environment. In all these ways, it is impossible to disentangle international student mobility from the concerns of nation-states. Our discussion here touches upon both host states, and students’ ‘home’ countries (bearing in mind that some students are likely to consider multiple countries as ‘home’). One notable (if nascent) development in the literature on student migration has been assertion that international education is inextricably linked to larger state projects. The chapter also observes, however, that state projects are ‘multi-level’ (or ‘multi-scalar’) and not always directly

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related to federal/national-level governance. Here, we highlight emergent work on the increasingly important role that municipal governments (at city level) are playing in enabling and directing international student mobility. Linked to this focus on city-level governance, we also consider the impact that international students are having upon urban structures, whether through their residential choices or consumption practices. As Collins and Ho (2014) have argued, international students are often ‘urban agents’ involved in the transformation of urban landscapes (see Chap. 2). Until recently, their impact has been significantly overlooked— the narrative regarding students’ transience and an overwhelming concern with students as ‘fee payers’ trumping all else. A final point we wish to make by way of introduction is this: not all mobile students will be officially classified as international students. Study abroad can be undertaken under other visa/immigration categories (for example, as ‘dependent’ or ‘worker’) (Butcher, 2004; Raghuram, 2013; Waters, 2008). As has been shown, other (non-educational) forms of immigration can be primarily motivated by education (Waters, 2008). This complexity in categorisation is captured in the debates, discussed below. We begin by considering what could be called the international student-immigration nexus. As part of a larger immigration agenda, international students find themselves directly implicated in projects of nation-building and boundary making.

The International Student-Immigration Nexus Policy has initially privileged students as the ideal neoliberal subjects, and then marginalised them as problematic intrusions into the state. (Robertson, 2011, p. 2193)

For Western liberal democracies, immigration is a profoundly political issue and one in which ‘the state’ is the most significant, looming actor. As Robertson (2011), above, implies however, there exists an ambiguous and somewhat contentious relationship between immigration and the state when it comes to international students. The official status of international students as temporary sojourners means that many states do not

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‘count’ them (both literally and metaphorically) as members of the body politic. In many countries, international students are not included in immigration statistics. Their role in ‘the state’, therefore, could be seen to be on a par with tourists and other short-stay visitors for whom a longer-­ term investment of resources is not required (see Chap. 7 for a discussion of how international students are often portrayed in the policy and related literature). There are ethical and related questions that emerge from this assumption around how international students are treated (perceived and constructed) by their host nations (Sidhu, 2006; Madge et  al., 2009; Stein & de Andreotti, 2016)). In other states (such as the UK, discussed below), international students are counted as immigrants, and they enter into public discourses in different ways. This complexity means that how states perceive incoming students can and does vary considerably, from a sense that they are welcomed and enticed to stay on following graduation (such as with Canada), to an openly ‘hostile environment’ (which has been the historical position of the UK towards all immigrants). As a vast literature has shown, immigrants invariably concentrate in particular regions and cities, interacting with municipal governments in different ways and transforming those spaces. International students are no exception to this. International students’ impacts upon their ‘host’ cities and regions (as, for example, consumers, or travellers) is frequently and fundamentally underestimated, although this role has been discussed in relation to work on ‘studentification’ (Sage et  al., 2013; Smith & Hubbard, 2014; Malet Calvo, 2018) and regional economic development (Sidhu et al., 2016; see Chap. 2). International students are playing a sizable role in the transformation of urban areas, and although many do consider themselves temporary visitors, some seek permanent residency and even citizenship, albeit on transnational terms (Waters & Brooks, 2012). As knowledge workers, international students can be actively sought by cities, potentially playing a role in bolstering national economies (Yang, 2016) and, as mobile graduates, they form part of what have been called ‘knowledge diasporas’, creating essential links between knowledge industries internationally (Larner, 2015). Consequently, as the emergent literature is beginning to indicate, international students are increasingly important multi-state actors (in relation to both their host

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and home nations) in their own right. We begin this discussion by focusing on the national scale and international students as immigrants.

International Students as Immigrants As discussed in more detail below, in some national contexts international students are classified as immigrants. The UK government, for example, justifies this decision temporally, by arguing that immigrants are generally resident in the country for at least a year, and international students studying for a whole degree meet this criterion. It has been customary within UK political and popular discourse to assume that most international students will want to stay in the UK after graduation, even when policy has not facilitated this. However, in the past few years it has come to light that the UK has been significantly overestimating the number of international students ‘overstaying’ their visas. In 2017, the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures describing a fall in net migration to the UK to the lowest level in three years. This was largely attributed to a greater number of EU nationals leaving the UK since the Brexit referendum of 2016. However, it was also found (as a consequence of new border checks implemented in 2016) that 97 per cent of incoming international students leave the UK after their studies are complete— coming as a ‘surprise’ to government commentators (Waters, 2017). International students have been misrepresented and stereotyped as intentional overstayers (and illegal migrants); part of the ‘hostile environment’ that has been created for prospective overseas students initiated during Theresa May’s time as Home Secretary (2010–2016). Reducing international student numbers has been a government strategy to bring down overall numbers of immigrants to the UK (Lomer, 2017b). A direct link is often made between international students and state-­ level immigration policy. In one study, Moskal (2017) focused on Asian international students within UK universities and sought to explore the different ‘levels’ at which international students engaged with ‘the state’. Her arguments focus on UK immigration policy and the ‘hostile environment’ discourse. ‘Visa issues’ are common amongst international students to the UK. She describes the difficulties that students from outside

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the EU have faced in their attempts to study in Britain, and the complex policy environment they must negotiate: Under the points-based scheme, non-EEA migrants who travel to the UK to study have been classified as Tier 42 applicants who need a valid confirmation of acceptance for studies and sufficient funds to attend to apply for a visa. Further, the recent development of restrictive immigration policy produces a hostile environment for these who require immigration permission to be in the UK but do not have it: the Tier 1 Post-study visa has been abolished as of April 2012. This visa enabled international students to remain in the UK for up to two years after obtaining a UK degree. Since April 2012, international graduates have only been able to remain in the UK by switching into Tier 2 of the system or if they have a strong business proposition, which now falls under the new provisions for student entrepreneurs (Devitt, 2014: 451). Finally, the Immigration Act of 2014 removed the right of appeal, introduced the migration health surcharge and residential landlord check. (p. 129)

These changes had a marked impact on international student mobility to the UK (Lomer, 2018), with some students (particularly those from India) being discouraged from applying and instead choosing to study elsewhere (Mavroudi & Warren, 2013, discuss the broader implications of UK immigration policy on international student mobility and highly skilled labour). In September 2019, the UK government announced a new two-year post-study work visa for international students. Home Secretary Priti Patel said: ‘The new Graduate Route will mean talented international students, whether in science and maths or technology and engineering, can study in the UK and then gain valuable work experience as they go on to build successful careers. It demonstrates our global outlook and will ensure that we continue to attract the best and brightest’ (British High Commission New Delhi, 2019, n.p.). Making reference to the UK’s

 A ‘Tier 4’ visa was issued by the government for HE studies in the UK and requires individuals to have been offered a place on a course and to be able to read, write and understand English. Tier 2 is a general work visa. 2

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so-called ‘bogus colleges’,3 the statement adds ‘However, unlike the route which closed in 2012, this new route will also include safeguards to ensure only genuine, credible students are eligible’ (ibid., n.p.) (see Chap. 7 for a further discussion of this distinction between putative ‘types’ of international student within policy). The longer-term consequences of this change for the relationship between international students, immigration and the state in the UK will not be known for several years to come but does suggest a possible and necessary shift in the UK government’s stance towards international students.

International Education, Permanent Residency and Citizenship A longstanding (and frequently erroneous) assumption of many nation-­ states, located in the Global North, has been that international students engaging in degree mobility are ultimately seeking permanent residency, and will eventually attempt  to change their status from temporary to permanent citizen. The literature suggests a mixed picture, both supporting and challenging this assumption, but ultimately indicates the heterogeneity of the international student body. Here, we will focus on arguments within the literature that draw this explicit link between ISM and the desire for more permanent relocation. It is interesting to note that whilst some international students may ultimately seek citizenship within the host country, for others a preferred objective might be permanent residency (PR). For most international students, who view international study as temporary, of course, such concerns do not apply. International students’ objectives are wide ranging and diverse. Some international students use ‘study abroad’ as a first step towards more-or-less permanent relocation to either the host country, or a third country following graduation. This has been documented in the literature from different perspectives, including in relation to students of particular origins—for example, students from India (Baas, 2006);  The term ‘bogus colleges’ was popularised in the UK in the early 2000s to describe educational institutions that were, effectively, ‘fake’—allowing individuals to falsely apply for a student visa and then to overstay, illegally, in the UK. 3

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Malaysian-Chinese students (Koh, 2017; Nonini, 1997); West African students (Neveu Kringelbach, 2015); and students from Norway (Wiers-­ Jenssen, 2003). There is also work focussing on migration policies and permanent relocation to certain ‘host’ countries: for example, to Canada (Scott et al., 2015; Geddie, 2015), Australia (Robertson, 2011), the UK (Lomer, 2017a; Geddie, 2015) and Denmark (Mosneaga & Winther, 2013; Valentin, 2012, 2015). Many studies, of course, combine these perspectives, exploring student groups’ experiences with migration and citizenship policy within specific host countries (e.g. Liu-Farrer (2011) on Chinese students in Japan or Baas (2006) on Indian students in Australia). An example of work emphasising students’ more permanent relocation is found in Scott et al. (2015), who have focussed on Canada and the perceived strategic role that international students have recently come to play in the country’s future economic and social development. International students, Scott et al. (2015) argue, are now seen as ‘ideal immigrants’, by virtue of their ‘Canadian credentials’, ‘language proficiency’ and ‘relevant work experience’. Liu-Farrer’s (2011) work, which discusses ‘visa overstaying as a social process,’ is particularly interesting in this regard. In her book on Chinese student-migrants in Japan, she argues that students are actively seeking permanent residency status, not citizenship. Permanent residency allows young people to access many of the opportunities afforded to citizens of that country whilst also being able to retain the benefits of their ‘home’ citizenship. In this example, Chinese citizens are unable, by law, to possess dual citizenship, so any new citizenship application would require relinquishing their old one. Permanent residency, on the other hand, allows student/graduate migrants to live and work in Japan unproblematically whilst also returning to China if and when they desire to do so. In this quintessential display of transnationalism, educational migrants are seeking the ‘best of both worlds.’ Robertson (2011) argues that since the late 1990s, Australia’s migration policies have shifted from perceiving international students as ‘transient consumers’ to envisaging them as ‘potential citizens’, with implications for how citizenship and rights are framed. Prior to the 1990s, students were required to ‘return home’ immediately upon completing their studies in Australia. However, since 1998, so called ‘student

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switching’ policies (McLaughlan and Salt, 2002) have been developed, which began to frame international students as skilled migrants. These policies provided additional points under a points-based migration system for those with Australian qualifications, and also introduced new visa categories that specifically enabled international students to ‘switch’ to immigrant status by applying for permanent residency (PR). Other insightful work in this area, that has considered international students in Australia and their desire for permanent residency (and subsequent citizenship), includes that of Baas (2006). He has focused on international students from India and argued that three-quarters of those in Australia sought PR following graduation: ‘studying in Australia was seen as a way to migrate there’ (p. 10). There is no doubt that for some international students, ‘study’ is not their primary motivation or goal. International study is seen as a legitimate and relatively easy ‘way in’ to relocate, more or less permanently, to a new a country. The implication of this shift in emphasis, of course, is that international students become seen as valuable potential workers (as well as permanent residents or citizens) (Brooks, 2018) and that their Australian qualifications should be given suitable recognition (see arguments in Chap. 4). One outcome of this shift in policy, Robertson notes, was the expansion of private colleges of variable quality, designed primarily to give individuals a quick and easy route to PR in Australia. This provided immigration options for less wealthy students, who nevertheless often struggled to integrate into the domestic labour market following graduation, leading to negative media attention and a public, media ‘back-lash’ (see Chap. 7 for further discussion). The blurring of boundaries between student and worker, student and immigrant and student and citizen is asserted by Robertson (2011). She argues that ‘The difficulties in naming the subjects studied by researchers in this area exemplify the multiple subjectivities at play, which tend to shift depending on the research focus’ (p. 2195). She cites Baas (2006), who describes international students as ‘students of migration’, as well as her own work on ‘student-migrants’, ‘students-turned-migrants’ and, more recently, ‘student switchers’. Nyland et al. (2009) discuss ‘international student-workers’ in relation to students’ experiences of the labour market. Taken together, this work

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unsettles any straightforward distinction between students, migrants and workers. This point about language is not incidental, but in fact represents something fundamental about how (and if ) international students are seen within their ‘host’ countries. In a neoliberal, capitalist society, students’ visibility is frequently tied to the perception of their value (as fee payers, consumers, workers and potential citizens) (see Chap. 2 and below). In Denmark, for example, the number of international students leaving the country post-study is relatively high—one piece of research noted that nearly 40 per cent had left within 21 months of securing their degree (ICEF Monitor, 2018). This has been viewed by the Danish state as highly problematic, not least because international student places are subsidised by taxpayers. Consequently, the state has implemented several policies in a bid to head off this situation, including expanding initiatives to increase retention rates of international graduates and reducing the number of places allotted to international students in programmes where retention rates are low (ICEF Monitor, 2018). As this example indicates, international students are often discussed in terms of the value they are likely to bring in the future. We are reminded of arguments made by Mitchell (2003) about the shift in discourse around the objectives of education systems in the US, UK and Canada from a concern with multiculturalism to an emphasis on what she calls ‘strategic cosmopolitanism’ (a form of cosmopolitanism developed with a view to gaining strategic advantage in a global economy), in response to the needs of neoliberal capitalism. Robertson’s (2011) point about the ‘multiple subjectivities at play’ also draws attention to the fact that although this book is primarily about international students, the individuals being discussed may carry multiple identities and are likely to be so much more than ‘simply’ students (they may be parents, carers or workers, for example, see Brooks, 2012; Raghuram, 2013). The ‘reframing’ of international students by the state is also discussed in the work of Liu-Farrer (2011) and her detailed account of the role played by Chinese international students in Japan’s labour market. She highlights the ‘typical’ struggles found in the Chinese student-migrant experience: from low-wage worker to entering the ‘corporate’ sector to (eventually) success in the transnational economy between Japan and

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China. Her book makes two broader arguments of note: first, that international education is an important channel of global labour migration (and part of both low wage and highly skilled sectors); and second, that international students are increasingly important actors in the global economy as they facilitate and participate in transnational business networks. She highlights their ‘cultural and linguistic skills’ (Liu-Farrer, 2011, p. 2) (these were discussed in Chap. 4 in relation to understanding the value of international education through the development of, inter alia, embodied cultural capital). In some earlier work on young people moving between Hong Kong and Canada for education, we have also discussed the complex and ‘blurry’ relationship between international students and students who are immigrants (Waters, 2006, 2008). The majority of the research participants in this project were not holding a study visa, but were, in fact, classified as ‘dependent immigrants’ (dependents of a parent who had moved to Canada for ‘work’ even though, as we were told repeatedly, they had actually moved to Canada for their education). Some students suggested that their parents had made a strategic financial calculation in relation to their education. It was deemed less ‘expensive’ to immigrate to Canada (as, for example, an ‘investor’) and pay domestic tuition fees, than to send one or more child(ren) to Canada on a student visa, paying full international student fees (amounting to many thousands of dollars more). The point here is that the mobility, internationally, of students for education is often about international students (i.e. students on a particular temporary ‘visa’) but can be and is also about young people who move under different visa categories, with other family members and do not ‘count’ in international statistics on ISM. Knowledge and other workers can also be international students to the extent that they are engaged in continual learning (Raghuram, 2013). As immigrants, their relationship to the state is one of ‘investment’ and ‘exchange’ (or labour for eventual citizenship and associated rights). Of course, as we go on to discuss, international students are not always seen as immigrants, however.

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International Students as Temporary Sojourners Another view of international students is that their stays are inherently temporary in nature, intending, upon graduation, to ‘return home’ (this is particularly relevant for credit-mobile students but is also a feature of discussions about degree mobility). For a start, international students are, as far as the state is concerned, supposed to be temporary (habitually on visas that are time-limited). Second, an extensive literature covers in detail students’ motivations for return, which are varied but often include career-related decisions, such as the labour market advantage gained back home (their credentials lack value as a ‘positional’ good in the host country) (Hu & Cairns, 2017; Lomer et al., 2018; Tran, 2016; Waters, 2009). As Geddie (2013) has shown, international students are often pulled in multiple directions following graduation, with social relations (including romantic ties) proving influential in where graduates end up. Here, the arguments relating international student mobility to conceptualisations of transnationalism seem particularly apposite. As transnational sojourners, international students are often assumed to sustain only a loose connection to their ‘host’ country. This aligns with some of the economic arguments made in Chap. 7 around ethics and the superficial and mercenary ways in which international students have been represented in both policy and media debates. Partly as a function of their assumed temporary-ness, their voices have been silenced and their importance as social and political actors denied. The extant literature has stressed the sojourning nature of international student mobility, whether explicitly or implicitly (Soong, 2015). Gu and Schweisfurth (2015) conducted a study of 652 Chinese students who returned ‘home’ after completing a degree at a UK university. As we discuss elsewhere (see also Brooks & Waters, 2021), China is a particularly interesting case as in recent years it has sought actively to attract its young people studying overseas back home  following graduation, offering tax breaks, housing benefits, schooling for children, and city-based hukou,4 amongst other things. Despite their focus on returnees, Gu and Schweisfurth (2015) nevertheless concluded that ‘return’ is actually far  Hukou is an area-based population registration system within the People’s Republic of China.

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better captured by the concept of ‘transnationalism’—a sense of belonging to, and identification with, here and there. In other work, too, international students are envisaged as quintessentially transnational and cosmopolitan, harbouring multiple allegiances and being constantly mobile (Favell, 2011; Ong, 1999). The assumption is that international students invariably intend to ‘return’—at least initially—for reasons that include getting the most ‘value’ out of their international qualifications and embodied cultural capital (Waters, 2006, 2008). Their overseas qualifications are usually worth more in their home labour market than they are in the country where they were acquired. Nevertheless, graduates rarely completely relinquish their ties to the place where they studied (in the case of Waters’s (2008) research, this was evident even though many students had acquired host country citizenship). Baláž and Williams (2004) described the experiences of returnee international medical students from Slovakia and the complex nature of push and pull factors discouraging and facilitating their ‘return home’, including experiences of discrimination in the host country and issues around national licensing (i.e. the formal recognition of their medical credentials to conform with licensing laws). This section has considered the extent to which international students are embedded within state discourses around immigration, permanent residency, citizenship, temporariness and transnationalism. In the next section, we consider how states may incorporate international students as part of their own ‘development’ or ‘soft-power’ strategies.

International Students as Part of Wider State Strategies States can play an active role in coveting and seeking to retain international students, as part of what might be termed larger ‘nation-building’ projects. In this section, we explore the nature of these projects, including diaspora strategies, financial/monetary concerns, citizenship initiatives, and soft-power.

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Making an argument about the ways in which states can enlist international students as part of wider strategising, Sidhu et al. (2016) explore ‘government assemblages of internationalising universities’ within East Asia, where international students are considered a central pillar of smaller states’ ‘development’ strategies. The desires of universities and national governments are bound up within these ‘state-driven projects aimed at securing demographic renewal and building new economi[es]’ (p. 1494). We discussed this initiative briefly in Chap. 2, in relation to urban educational hubs and the Global Schoolhouse Programme in Singapore; international higher education has become a key pillar in Singapore’s present and future, which is heavily reliant on sustaining and developing its human capital (and inward flowing international students are a crucial aspect of this). Hence, in some contexts at least, international students have a far more important role than merely ‘propping up’ cash-strapped higher education institutions. Rather, they are a part of a much larger, more profound strategy, which is concerned with the very reproduction of the state.

Diaspora Strategies Increasingly, states have come to view their overseas diaspora as a source of value. International students, however, remain under-theorised in accounts of states’ diaspora strategies despite evidence increasingly pointing to their important role. This statement from the OECD (2019) highlights some of the main ways in which so called ‘mobile students’ might be viewed by states as sources of opportunity: For their countries of origin, mobile students might be viewed as lost talent (or ‘brain drain’). However, mobile students can contribute to knowledge absorption, technology upgrading and capacity building in their home country, provided they return home after their studies or maintain strong links with nationals at home. Mobile students gain tacit knowledge that is often shared through direct personal interactions and can enable their home country to integrate into global knowledge networks. Some research suggests that students overseas are a good predictor of future scientist flows in the opposite direction, providing evidence of a significant movement of

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skilled labour across nations, which can also be referred to as ‘brain circulation’ effect (Appelt et al., 2015). In addition, student mobility appears to shape international scientific co-operation networks more deeply than either a common language or geographical or scientific proximity. (OECD, 2019, p. 229)

Framed in instrumental terms, the potential ‘value’ of international students for states (their role in knowledge-driven capacity building) is clear. Perhaps most surprising, however, is the claim that student mobility is a ‘predictor’ of international scientific networks of cooperation being more directly influential than either common language or spatial proximity. This point stresses the importance of ISM for states: international students are a very important aspect of knowledge diasporas. Nevertheless, international students have generally been neglected in related discussions of diasporas. Larner (2015), for example, explored the role played by universities in the creation of knowledge diasporas, but her focus on what she called ‘international researchers’ (postdoctoral fellows and academics) largely overlooked students. She was interested in the formal links that governments and institutions were making with their ‘offshore citizens’ through universities (research collaborations, for example) as ‘academic intermediaries for new knowledge configurations’ (2015, p. 198). Raghuram (2013) argues that although student migration is a ‘key component of knowledge migration’, it is generally not treated as such. Furthermore, little attention has been paid, within the literature but also within policy pronouncements, to the ways in which states are explicitly attempting to coerce or obligate their citizens to ‘return’ following their studies overseas. This is most obviously achieved through so-called ‘bonded’ government scholarships, where the ‘best and the brightest’ are awarded competitive academic scholarships to study abroad, with the requirement that they return following graduation to work for a period of time (usually several years) in the home country (see Yang, 2016). Bonded scholarships are an important way in which states and international students interact—states are ensuring that their citizens return, encouraging ‘brain circulation’, as elaborated by Saxenian (2002), but at the same time preventing ‘brain drain’. Even where students are not tied to states by bonded scholarships, states can offer strong

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‘incentives’ for return, such as housing subsidies, tax breaks, and educational advantages for children. These have, to date, been little explored in the literature but are an important area of enquiry (see Brooks & Waters, 2021; Gu & Schweisfurth, 2015).

Financial Incentives for States As we have noted in other chapters, international students have frequently been labelled ‘cash cows’ to refer to the ways in which institutions—and countries—‘market’ and sell their education products overseas, with the aim of attracting full fee-paying students (Baas, 2006). The sector has embraced terms like services and goods in relation to education, reflecting ‘a prevailing instrumental logic…indicative of the tenacious hold of the language of the market on the academic imagination’ (Sidhu, 2006, p. 15). There is inevitably some overlap, in this section, with the discussion in Chap. 4 on the value attached to international higher education and Chap. 7 on ethics. Here, however, we focus on the apparent financial worth of international students to their ‘host’ countries. Statistics proclaiming the value of international students to key ‘host countries’ are generally easy to come by (these figures are less readily available for non-Western countries with a more complex relationship to international student mobility). For Canada, international students are said to be worth (in GB pounds) £12 bn annually and 170,000 jobs (CIC News, 2020); for the USA the figures are £31 bn, making international education the fourth largest export industry behind automobiles, commercial aircraft and pharmaceuticals (Lu, 2020; Morgan and Penfield, 2019). For the UK, this figure is £25 bn and 940,000 jobs (HM Government, 2019) and, for Australia, figures are £19 bn and 240,000 jobs (Henebery, 2019). In purely economic terms, international students are undeniably ‘valuable’ to national and regional economies, not to mention the revenue they bring to individual higher education institutions and further education colleges. One of the first books to interrogate and critique the marketisation of higher education in relation to internationalisation  was Sidhu’s (2006) Universities and Globalization: To Market, To Market. She questioned the

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taken-for-grantedness of marketisation in higher education—the generally widespread acceptance that it is an inevitable outcome of globalisation. Rather than submitting to  this ‘market’, Sidhu sought to ‘recast’ international education ‘as a set of geopolitical and geoeconomic engagements with colonial roots and interrogates the conceptual relationship between international education and globalization’ (pp. vii–viii). The state often has a significant ‘hand’ in the international higher education market. Sidhu’s (2006) argument includes a discussion of the role that international education programmes and scholarships have played in colonial and imperial projects, singling out the US Fulbright Program and the Commonwealth’s Colombo Plan in order to unpick and expose their ideological and nationalistic routes. The Fulbright Program was established in the 1940s during the Cold War where educational aid schemes were envisioned as a way of winning over ‘hearts and minds.’ Today the programme operates in 140 countries with more than a quarter of a million of scholarship recipients. As time progressed, Sidhu (2006) argues, the Fulbright Program became seen as ‘proof ’ of both American benevolence and modernisation. Similarly, the Colombo Plan (founded in 1950) was an educational programme initiated by seven Commonwealth countries (including Australia) but grew to include Japan and the United States, funding the education of scholarship recipients within newly independent Asian countries. According to Sidhu (2006), the Colombo Plan ‘sought to educate the “other” in an Australian image’ (p. 11): ‘Discursively packaged as a gift’, they had clear political, national and ideological objectives. Thus, even the ‘market’ in international higher education is more complicated than (merely) financial concerns. Much of the discussion around international higher education as a ‘business’ has made reference to the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and its role in the growth and expansion of a so-called ‘global education services industry’ (e.g. Robertson 2003; Knight, 2002). Knight (2002) provides the following, useful summary: ‘GATS is the first legal trade agreement that focuses exclusively on trade in services—as opposed to products. It is administered by the World Trade Organisation, a powerful organisation with 144 member countries. Education is one of the 12 service sectors covered by

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GATS. The purpose of GATS is progressively and systematically to promote freer trade in services by removing many of the existing barriers’ (p. 5). The implications for higher education and its relationship to the state, it has been claimed, are far reaching. Indeed, according to Robertson (2003), under GATS, education has become transformed into a multi-­ billion-­ dollar industry, powered by particular countries and regions (namely the USA, Australia, Japan, the EU and New Zealand) (see also Olds, 2007 for a discussion of how GATS has been influential in the development of Singapore as a ‘global education hub’). Knight (2002) addresses the debates that have emerged as a consequence, describing them in terms of risks and opportunities. On the one hand, critics assert that GATS threatened to undermine the ‘public good’ aspect of higher education, diluting the role of government and also, potentially, the quality of education. On the other hand, commentators have stressed the benefits in terms of increased trade that GATS can offer, such as promising innovations through new providers and modes of delivery, increased student access to higher education, and economic growth. For contemporary states, therefore, the literature would suggest that international student mobility is far ‘bigger’ than ‘education’ alone. It has been, as Sidhu (2006) claims, ‘recast’—to encompass significant and pressing social, political, economic and cultural questions that reverberate throughout society. Much research on international student mobility is increasingly ‘outward looking’: that is, research that ‘deliberately situates its object(s) of analysis relative to broader research programs (i.e. beyond the sector)’ (Hanson Thiem, 2009, p. 2). Hanson Thiem (2009) describes how education has come to be understood in broader terms: In recent years, education has emerged as a policy priority for many states—tied to both the restructuring of welfare services and the pursuit of economic development. Education extends into new spaces and times of the lifecourse as individuals seek social and economic advantage and face the discipline of flexible labor markets. Finally, education has become an economic frontier, as states develop new export strategies, and providers seek to capitalize on deregulation and increased demand. (p. 2)

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This sense that (international) education has extended into ‘new spaces and times’ and has become a state priority and an ‘economic frontier’ is, of course, debatable, as historical arguments could be presented that show a long-standing link between state policy, education systems and broader objectives. Whilst we may dispute claims to their ‘newness’, we nevertheless concur that the debates discussed in this book have import far beyond the potentially narrow remit of studying ‘mobile students’ and would suggest that ISM is of increasingly weighty significance for governments around the world.

International Students as ‘Appropriated People’ As discussed by Yang (2016) in his thesis on ‘foreign talent’, the recruitment of international students through its bonded scholarship scheme is far more than a short-term goal for the Singaporean state. He describes the ‘public and symbolic dimension’ to this policy—how the ‘foreign scholar figure functions as a public symbol’ (p. 3). Foreign students are, in the eyes of the public, expected to embody excellence: in the way in which they conduct themselves as well as exuding ‘a gratitude commensurate with the privileges bestowed’ upon them (p.  3). Many of these scholarship students come from China and are seen by the Singapore state (and public) as ‘appropriated people’—forced to work, for a number of years following graduation, in Singapore, contributing directly to the wealth and prosperity of the city-state. They are also, it is argued, viewed as ‘preferred candidates’ for naturalisation, by virtue of their ethnicity and language. Yang (2016) notes, however, that very often these ‘appropriated people’ have desires and plans of their own that perhaps do not match the aims and objectives of the state or the public at large and that these two aspects (individual desire and state intent) are held in tension. As Yang (2016) describes here: International educational mobility…often interlaces the instrumental desires and designs of the nation-state, of institutions of higher learning, with the autonomous desires and life-projects of individual social agents (such as mobile students and their families or communities). (p. 4)

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Consequently, what the state might desire from international students and what international students want for themselves may or may not align. We consider the objectives of students in other chapters—here we retain a focus on the institution of the state. As Ho (2017) has argued, ‘transnational social reproduction projects [including international educational mobility]…are intertwined with geostrategic agendas’ (p.  17). Although the balance of research to date on student mobilities has tended to centre on social reproduction and students’ individual aspirations, objectives, and achievements, more research is now examining how states themselves seek to benefit from coveting international students and graduates beyond overtly mercenary concerns. The case of China is a particularly interesting one in this regard—as Yang (2020) has noted, unusually, the Chinese state is largely unconcerned with deriving a ‘profit’ from international student tuition fees. Instead, international students are perceived as important in geopolitical, strategic terms, exemplified in the way in which the government has deployed educational scholarships in the exercise of soft power (Mulvey, 2020). The Chinese state offers a large number of scholarships for higher education through the Belt and Road Initiative (see discussion in Chap. 2)—around 10,000 in 2019. Scholarship holders are ‘advantaged’ in many ways, receiving free educational tuition, housing, access to learning resources, and so on. There is a widespread perception that international  students on scholarships receive better treatment than domestic students do (Yang, 2016). Haugen (2013) looks specifically at the case of African university students studying for a degree in China. She discusses China’s drive to attract students from the continent and considers how this represents two competing ideologies: the desire to yield greater political and diplomatic influence within Africa and, at the same time, a turn to a more market orientation around higher education, based upon generation of revenues from international student fees. It is clear from the literature that one of the ways in which states intervene directly in international student flows (and ‘appropriate’ students, who in many ways become indebted to their host country) is through the provision of government scholarships, considered in the next section of this chapter as part of a wider discussion of the significance of ‘soft power’.

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International Student Mobility and ‘Soft Power’ The term ‘soft power’, to indicate a state strategy, is increasingly being applied within  discussions of ISM.  Joseph Nye’s (2004) now famous book by the same name outlines how and why states deploy soft power: ‘the ability to shape the preferences of others’ and a ‘need to get others to buy in to your values’ (p. 5). It is instructive, here, to consider the strategies of two countries when it comes to international students: the UK and China. The UK’s international education strategy update, published in 2021, emphasises the importance of soft power in relation to the UK’s international student recruitment strategy (Gov.uk, 2021). Lomer (2017a) has worked specifically on how the UK promotes soft power through its hosting of international students. Indeed, this type of influence is found to be a key rationale behind the UK’s moves to ‘welcome’ such students; alumni become ‘unofficial ambassadors’ for the UK (Lomer, 2017a, p. 586). She writes: ‘In the soft power rationale, attracting significant proportions of international students is argued to increase the UK’s influence in global diplomacy, as international graduates of British education are considered to be more knowledgeable and appreciative of “British values”’ (p. 583). For Mulvey (2020), a similar ‘diplomacy’ function is apparent in the strategies of the Chinese state with respect to international student recruitment, what he describes as anticipated ‘improved relations’ between China and a student’s ‘home country’. Similar to the findings of Yang (2016), Lomer (2017a) argues that underpinning these state strategies is a largely unsupported assumption that students will feel a strongly held loyalty and sympathy towards (be ‘appreciative of ’) the host state. When students do not display these anticipated empathies, friction can result (Tian & Lowe, 2009). Mulvey (2020), in his case study of Ugandan international students in China, makes the point that participants frequently experienced racism in China and other forms of ‘social alienation’. Tian and Lowe (2009) described similarly ‘negative’ experiences of international medical students in China (see also Yang, 2018). Thus, the operation of ‘soft power’ is complex and often thwarted by students’ feelings and experiences. As Mulvey (2020)

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has written in relation to Ugandan international students, ‘most participants expressed admiration for some facets of Chinese culture, and increased understanding of Chinese culture, but also a sense of alienation from local people. The result of such relatively multifaceted positions held by graduates is that an unquestioning sense of obligation or positivity towards the host nation cannot be guaranteed’ (p.  471). Similarly, Papatsiba (2005) writing about educational scholarship holders in Europe (Erasmus participants) has argued that mere ‘contact’ does not automatically lead to tolerance and understanding. In other words, the goals of ‘soft power’ are frequently predicated on the relatively simple act of bringing a foreign student in and assuming that, consequently, this student will develop an unfettered sympathy towards and admiration for the host country and will, furthermore, spread this message amongst their networks overseas. The extant research has shown little evidence that international student mobility does, in fact, work in this way.

International Students, Race and the Nation Implicated in how international students experience ‘the state’ and how the state is continually constructed through nationalism are issues of race and ethnicity. As noted above (and in Chap. 7), many international students report having experienced racism during their study abroad experience.5 Lee (2020), who has researched ‘Western’ students in China, noted that her participants reported experiencing preferential treatment in the host country because of their (White) race. Although relatively little has been written on race and the nation with respect to international student mobilities, we briefly reflect upon its significance here. Yang (2016) asks, for example, ‘why does it seem that students from China are recruited [to Singapore] in significantly larger numbers than students of any other nationality?’ Racial solidarity (based on historical patterns of migration), he implies, is significantly important in this regard. As Chacko (2020) also observed in relation to Singapore, the city-state has focused on recruiting international students primarily from India and China with a  This has been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, as early research would seem to indicate (e.g. see Mittelmeier & Cockayne, 2020). 5

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view to keeping ‘the ethnic mix of the country stable, hoping to pre-empt the rise of inter-ethnic tensions that could arise if new ethnic populations were brought into the country’ (p. 5). Taking a different (home country) perspective on this issue, as discussed in detail in Chap. 4, Koh (2017) considers the importance of race to understanding why young people from Malaysia ‘go abroad’ to study. Migration for study is part of a wider ‘culture of migration’. In other words, in the Malaysian context migration is viewed as a ‘common’ and accepted way of life’ for families as well as individuals and, in relation to this, migration for education is seen as a ‘social mobility strategy’. This strategy, she argues, is a perhaps-­ unconscious response to the ‘structural constraints posed by Malaysia’s bumiputera-differentiated citizenship and the practice of race-based affirmative action policies’ (p. 27). Migration for education has become internalised amongst families as a way of coping with institutionalised racism in Malaysia without being articulated as such or indeed widely seen in this way (Koh, 2017). We return to this example in Chap. 7, when we discuss at greater length some of the ethical issues associated with international student mobility. These studies of the significance of race and the nation-state have an historical dimension (discussed in Chap. 4). For Yang (2016), the colonial and migration history of Singapore is central to any understanding of contemporary student mobility strategies. Likewise, for Koh (2017), emigration from Malaysians for education cannot be totally comprehended without reference to the development of Malaysia’s race-stratified education system, rooted in Britain’s ‘divide and rule’ strategy based on the ‘myth’ of Malay indigeneity versus the immigrant Chinese population (see Chap. 4). Koh (2017) shows how race has been central to how Malaysians have made education-related migration decisions (see also Sin, 2013). The role race has played in the development of the contemporary state is an often-overlooked factor underlining some forms of ISM.

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International Student Mobility Beyond the National Level There has been a tendency, within the extant literature on international student mobility and migration, to emphasise and prioritise the national level when it comes to discussions of state involvement in ISM. This kind of methodological nationalism has been apparent across work in the social sciences. And yet, there are clearly other ‘levels’ of governance that require discussion. In this section, we turn to consider the relationship between international students and regional development on the one hand, and urban governance on the other, representing alternative ‘scales’ at which the state could be seen to operate in relation to international student mobilities.

Exemplifying Regional Development International student mobilities have been intimately connected with regional development strategies and governmentalities in different parts of the world. One example of this is so-called ‘Rising Asia’ (a general term used to indicate the economic ‘success’ of Asia, globally). Rising Asia is discussed as a project of ‘innovation-driven development’ (Sidhu et al., 2020, p. 5). Universities (and their role in knowledge production) have a central role to play in this project as key actors. Rising Asia can be viewed as a group of countries within Asia, espousing a collection of ‘nation-­ state-­level’ strategies and together creating what Sidhu et  al. (2020) describe as a wider policy region. They identify several aspects to this emergent ‘region’ that we highlight here. First, they discuss the development of cross-national ties in relation to inter-governmental foreign (education-related) aid. Countries such as China and Japan are significant aid ‘donors’ within the region. Such aid includes technical and vocational training provision with the aim of reducing poverty and improving livelihoods. China is a large provider of higher education scholarships to students within the wider region. Second, they identify particular companies within the region who facilitate what they call ‘regional imaginations’ in their employees:

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International student mobilities are thus enabled through joined-up networks between regionally dispersed industries and national universities. To the extent that the economic ties within the region continue to grow, companies with regional networks (as is the case with Samsung) will continue to require a workforce with the requisite education and training and cultural knowledges to fit their missions to operate effectively in the region. (Sidhu et al., 2020, p. 48)

Thus, big business has played and continues to play an instrumental role in actively creating the sense of a Rising Asia throughout the wider region.

Municipal Government and ISM The relationship between international students and urban areas was discussed in Chap. 2 on the geographies of international student mobility. Here, in this last thematic section of the chapter, we focus particularly on the role played by and the response of city-wide authorities (municipal government) in the internationalisation of education, with implications for international student flows, on which very little has, to date, been written. Moskal (2017) rightly identifies the lack of attention that has been paid to what she calls ‘multi-level policies’ (i.e. at levels ‘below’ a concern with national immigration and the nation-state) in relation to international students. [International] students are positioned at the intersection between the self, the state and various other ‘assemblages of power’ which enable and constrain students’ life trajectories (Robertson, 2013). The ‘assemblages of power’ represent multiple and interconnected sets of forces, that include the regulatory authorities of the state who establish the immigration regime, but also institutions and structures of power that operate both within and beyond the national level, such as the institutions and actors involved in the governance of immigration at the regional or city level, universities and student’s recruitment agencies and transnational companies. The concept of ‘assemblages of power’ enables us to think beyond the

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nation-state and consider students’ outcomes at the intersection of different scales. (Moskal, 2017, p. 127, emphasis added)

This statement is intriguing, not least because it forces us to think about where internationally mobile students might be positioned within various constellations of power. Students have been rarely discussed explicitly in relation to power (unlike many other social groupings) partly, we argue, because of the way in which their mobilities are often depoliticised within debates—seen as separate from broader workings of the state and politics (something we have endeavoured to correct within this chapter) (cf. Beech, 2014; Brooks, 2016; Brooks et al., 2020; Pottie-Sherman, 2018; Waters, 2018). We agree that students’ engagements with states are multi-dimensional and that more could be said about these entanglements—including further research into how international students engage with (different levels of ) the state in different ways, including cities (see Pottie-Sherman, 2018, on students’ local interactions with states). There is an emergent literature that focuses on the internationalisation of higher education at the level of the city (some of which was discussed in Chap. 2). This includes work on so-called ‘educities’ (Knight, 2011; Lewis & Kearns, 2014) and the role played by universities in local and regional economic development. As noted by Lewis and Kearns (2014, p.  196), the term ‘educity’ originated in the naming of an education-­ centred regional initiative (Educity) in Iskandar, Malaysia. It has subsequently been used to refer to a strategy of regional economic development, based on university networks, ‘to facilitate innovation-led economic growth.’ A related term is that of urban ‘education hubs’ (Knight, 2018), as discussed in Chap. 2. The ‘hub’ is an important metaphor, implying the advantages that can accrue from spatial concentration of education-­ related activities. Cities provide an excellent location for an education-­ hub, not least because international students are attracted to the multitude of ‘opportunities’ afforded by large cities, including proximity to employers, leisure facilities and various consumption-driven cultural attractions (Brooks & Waters 2018; Collins, 2008). States use these hubs as a way of concentrating international educational activities and services, thus maximising the benefit they can deliver to the nation as a whole.

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The literature on ISM and how it relates to cities is nascent but underdeveloped. And yet, it is clear that international students make decisions about where to study in relation to the host city (as discussed in Chap. 2). Cities have a role to play in actively attracting students, as illustrated by the example of urban or education hubs. Cities are also a manifestation of state power, albeit at a different level from the ‘nation’—the default focus of debates around state strategies. More work is needed, we suggest, on uncovering the ‘assemblages of power’ that Moskal (2017) invokes, beyond the nation-state.

Conclusions International students are not free-floating individuals enjoying unrestricted movement. From the initial decision to study abroad, they face multiple and multiply situated encounters with ‘the state’. This may begin with exposure to the marketing campaigns that different states deploy in order to attract international students, it may include scholarship and visa applications, and will continue throughout the period of study through to post-graduation, where students may be given the opportunity to seek work and apply, eventually, for permanent residency, or perhaps will be required to leave the host country immediately. International students embody multiple identities in their interactions with the state  apparatus: as taxpayers, diplomats, carers, consumers, patients and workers. Some international students will seek permanent relocation to their country of study and will apply for citizenship. Over a time frame that sometimes spans years, students will encounter the state at different levels of intimacy—from faceless application procedures to border guards and passport controls, to study permits, to the rules and regulations attached to living in particular cities. Recently, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, international students in Australia have been forced to engage with the state in other ways too: state-run food banks, which have been a lifeline for many. States are not passive recipients of international students either but, as we have shown in this chapter, are often highly proactive in attempts to attract them. Perhaps due in part to the tendency to stress the ‘demand-level’ drivers of ISM (Findlay, 2011),

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and to view international students as hyper mobile and privileged individuals, the complex ways in which states and students intersect have been often overlooked in debates. In this chapter, we have sought to uncover some of this complexity in the relationship between international student mobility and nation-­ states. We focused, in particular, on the ways in which international students intersect with state projects and strategies, from the perspective of both their ‘home’ and ‘host’ nations. Our views of ‘the state’ have been multi-level and expansive, emphasising not just national or federal-level initiatives, but have also considered how the state is manifest in other ways too (regionally and city-wide). The chapter began with a discussion of the ‘student-immigration nexus’ and how international students experience policy around immigration, permanent residency (PR) and citizenship/naturalization. International students are often (but not always) classified as immigrants within their host country. This has implications for how they are framed, discursively—particularly within countries that have a history of hostility towards immigrants. We discussed how and why international students are considered immigrants in some national contexts and not in others. We also reiterated the important point that international student mobilities can also encompass other categories of migrant (family, worker, and so on). Our discussions are not limited to the official classification of ‘international student’. Some international students either desire or end up acquiring PR within their host country. For many other students, citizenship might be their ultimate goal or an unintended consequence of living for many years in their host country and working there following graduation from university. The chapter also considered why states may view international students as ‘temporary sojourners’. In all these discussions, the salience of the concept of transnationalism for understanding student-state relations came to the fore. The chapter moved on to consider wider state strategies in relation to international student mobility. In other words, we centred our discussions on the state, at different levels (other chapters in this book are more ‘student centred’). Here we discussed concepts of diaspora, economically motivated strategies and the prevalent idea of soft power. Finally, the

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chapter shifted to discussing alternative levels of state engagement with international students, including regional development and the role of cities in shaping international student mobility. There are strong links, in this section, to the discussion in Chap. 2 on the geographies of international student mobility (where a multi-scalar approach to understanding mobility patterns is much more apparent). Consequently, through this chapter we have attempted to broaden the extant debate beyond a tendency to see international students are largely unconnected to more complex and multi-layered state projects, projected simply as privileged and mobile ‘cash cows’ in policy and media discourse (see Chap. 7). Their role in various constellations of ‘power’ is asserted. To date, much of the literature remains focused on the students themselves (as either individualised agents or as part of transnational households) and whilst this perspective remains absolutely vital, the power of the state (at different levels) can get rather side-lined in these accounts, to the detriment of a more holistic understanding of international students mobilities and migration.

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Lewis, N., & Kearns, L. (2014). ‘Educity imaginaries’? Escaping mobile policy imaginaries to reimagine educational futures in Auckland. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 55(2), 196–211. Liu-Farrer, G. (2011). Labor migration from China to Japan: International students, transnational migrants (Vol. 77). Routledge. Lomer, S. (2017a). Soft power as a policy rationale for international education in the UK: A critical analysis. Higher Education, 74(4), 581–598. Lomer, S. (2017b). Recruiting international students in higher education: Representations and rationales in British policy. Springer. Lomer, S. (2018). UK policy discourses and international student mobility: The deterrence and subjectification of international students. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 308–324. Lomer, S., Papatsiba, V., & Naidoo, R. (2018). Constructing a national higher education brand for the UK: Positional competition and promised capitals. Studies in Higher Education, 43(1), 134–153. Lu. (2020). https://www.visualcapitalist.com/international-­students-­impact­u-­s-­economy/ Madge, C., Raghuram, P., & Noxolo, P. (2009). Engaged pedagogy and responsibility: A postcolonial analysis of international students. Geoforum, 40(1), 34–45. Malet Calvo, D. (2018). Understanding international students beyond studentification: A new class of transnational urban consumers. The example of Erasmus students in Lisbon (Portugal). Urban Studies, 55(10), 2142–2158. Mavroudi, E., & Warren, A. (2013). Highly skilled migration and the negotiation of immigration policy: Non-EEA postgraduate students and academic staff at English universities. Geoforum, 44, 261–270. McLaughlan, G., & Salt, J. (2002). Migration policies towards highly skilled foreign workers. Report to the Home Office. Migration Research Unit Geography Department, University College. Mitchell, K. (2003). Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: From the multicultural self to the strategic cosmopolitan. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 28(4), 387–403. Mittelmeier, J., & Cockayne, H. (2020). Global depictions of international students in a time of crisis: A thematic analysis of Twitter data during Covid-19. SSRN. Morgan and Penfield. (2019). https://www.nafsa.org/about/about-­nafsa/new-­ nafsa-­d ata-­d espite-­s tagnant-­e nrollment#:~:text=Washington%2C%20 November%2018%2C%202019%20%E2%80%93,the%20 2018%2D2019%20academic%20year

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Moskal, M. (2017). International students’ pathways between open and closed borders: Towards a multi-scalar approach to educational mobility and labour market outcomes. International Migration, 55(3), 126–138. Mosneaga, A., & Winther, L. (2013). Emerging talents? International students before and after their career start in Denmark. Population, Space and Place, 19(2), 181–195. Mulvey, B. (2020). International higher education and public diplomacy: a case study of Ugandan graduates from Chinese universities. Higher Education Policy, 33, 459–477. Neveu Kringelbach, H. (2015). Gendered educational trajectories and transnational marriage among West African students in France. Identities, 22(3), 288–302. Nonini, D. M. (1997). Shifting identities, positioned imaginaries: Transnational traversals and reversals by Malaysian Chinese. In D. Nonini & A. Ong (Eds.), Ungrounded empires: The cultural politics of modern Chinese transnationalism (pp. 203–227). Routledge. Nye, J.  S., Jr. (2004). Soft power: The means to success in world politics. Public Affairs. Nyland, C., Forbes-Mewett, H., Marginson, S., Ramia, G., Sawir, E., & Smith, S. (2009). International student-workers in Australia: A new vulnerable workforce. Journal of Education and Work, 22(1), 1–14. OECD. (2019). Education at a Glance. OECD. Olds, K. (2007). Global assemblage: Singapore, foreign universities, and the construction of a “global education hub”. World Development, 35(6), 959–975. Ong, A. (1999). Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Duke University Press. Papatsiba, V. (2005). Political and individual rationales of student mobility: A case study of ERASMUS and a French regional scheme for studies abroad. European Journal of Education, 40(2), 173–188. Pottie-Sherman, Y. (2018). Retaining international students in northeast Ohio: opportunities and challenges in the ‘age of Trump’. Geoforum, 96, 32–40. Raghuram, P. (2013). Theorising the spaces of student migration. Population, Space and Place, 19(2), 138–154. Robertson, S. (2011). Cash cows, backdoor migrants, or activist citizens? International students, citizenship, and rights in Australia. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(12), 2192–2211. Robertson, S. (2013). Transnational student-migrants and the state: The education-­ migration nexus. Springer.

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Robertson, S. (2003). WTO/GATS and the global education services industry. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1(3), 259–266. Sage, J., Smith, D., & Hubbard, P. (2013). New-build studentification: A panacea for balanced communities? Urban Studies, 50(13), 2623–2641. Saxenian, A. (2002). Brain circulation. How high-skill immigration makes everyone better off. Brookings Review, 20(1), 28–31. Scott, C., Safdar, S., Desai Trilokekar, R., & El Masri, A. (2015). International Students as ‘Ideal Immigrants’ in Canada: A disconnect between policy makers’ assumptions and the lived experiences of international students. Comparative and International Education/Éducation comparée et internationale, 43(3), 5. Sidhu, R.  K. (2006). Universities and globalization: To market, to market. Routledge. Sidhu, R., Collins, F., Lewis, N., & Yeoh, B. (2016). Governmental assemblages of internationalising universities: Mediating circulation and containment in East Asia. Environment and Planning A, 48(8), 1493–1513. Sidhu, R. K., Chong, H. K., & Yeoh, B. S. (2020). Student mobilities and international education in Asia: Emotional geographies of knowledge spaces. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Sin, I. L. (2013). Cultural capital and distinction: Aspirations of the ‘other’ foreign student. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(5–6), 848–867. Smith, D.  P., & Hubbard, P. (2014). The segregation of educated youth and dynamic geographies of studentification. Area, 46(1), 92–100. Soong, H. (2015). Transnational students and mobility: Lived experiences of migration. Routledge. Stein, S., & de Andreotti, V.  O. (2016). Cash, competition, or charity: International students and the global imaginary. Higher Education, 72(2), 225–239. Thiem, C. H. (2009). Thinking through education: The geographies of contemporary educational restructuring. Progress in Human Geography, 33(2), 154–173. Tian, M., & Lowe, J. (2009). Existentialist internationalisation and the Chinese student experience in English universities. Compare, 39(5), 659–676. Tran, L. T. (2016). Mobility as ‘becoming’: A Bourdieuian analysis of the factors shaping international student mobility. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(8), 1268–1289. Valentin, K. (2012). Caught between internationalisation and immigration: The case of Nepalese students in Denmark. Learning and Teaching, 5(3), 56–74.

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Valentin, K. (2015). Transnational education and the remaking of social identity: Nepalese student migration to Denmark. Identities, 22(3), 318–332. Warren, A., & Mavroudi, E. (2011). Managing surveillance? The impact of biometric residence permits on UK migrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37(9), 1495–1511. Waters, J., & Brooks, R. (2012). Transnational spaces, international students. Emergent perspectives on educational mobilities. In R. Brooks, A. Fuller, & J. Waters (Eds.), Changing spaces of education. New perspectives on the nature of learning (pp. 21–38). Routledge. Waters, J. L. (2006). Geographies of cultural capital: Education, international migration and family strategies between Hong Kong and Canada. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(2), 179–192. Waters, J.  L. (2008). Education, migration, and cultural capital in the Chinese diaspora. Cambria Press. Waters, J. L. (2017). Now we know most international students go home after their courses—the vilification must end. The Conversation, August 24, 2017. Retrieved November 11, 2020, from https://theconversation.com/ now-­we-­know-­most-­international-­students-­go-­home-­after-­their-­courses-­ the-­vilification-­must-­end-­83008 Waters, J. L. (2018). International education is political! Exploring the politics of international student mobilities. Journal of International Students, 8(3), 1459–1478. Waters, J. L. (2009). In pursuit of scarcity: Transnational students, ‘employability’, and the MBA. Environment and planning A, 41(8), 1865–1883. Wiers-Jenssen, J. (2003). Norwegian students abroad: Experiences of students from a linguistically and geographically peripheral European country. Studies in Higher Education, 28(4), 391–411. Yang, P. (2016). International mobility and educational desire: Chinese foreign talent students in Singapore. Springer. Yang, P. (2018). Compromise and complicity in international student mobility: the ethnigraphic case of Indian medican students at a Chinese university. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(5), 694–708. Yang, P. (2020). China in the global field of international student mobility: An analysis of economic, human and symbolic capitals. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1–19. (Advance online access)

6 Learning and Classroom Experiences

Introduction This chapter focuses specifically on social processes related to learning— both inside and outside higher education classrooms. It first considers the extent to which various academic-related factors motivate a decision to move abroad for all or part of a degree, before going on to explore how international students perform academically during their studies. We suggest that international students are often viewed as either ‘model minorities’ and ‘academic elites’, on the one hand, or ‘struggling foreigners’, on the other hand, and that these constructions frequently inform how their learning is understood by policymakers, higher education staff and ‘home’ students. This can be seen with respect to both the curriculum and pedagogical practices in many higher education institutions, which are considered in the following two parts of the chapter. In the final section, reflecting some of the points made in Chap. 4, we turn to the concept of cultural hegemony, which can help explain disconnects experienced by mobile students within the classroom, as well as their framing as ‘in deficit’ by various stakeholders. As part of this discussion, we provide an example of what a more ‘engaged pedagogy’ (Madge et al., © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Waters, R. Brooks, Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78295-5_6

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2009) may look like, as well as examining the arguments of those who suggest that constructing a binary between ‘home’ and ‘international’ students risks essentialising culture and overlooking significant commonalities between the two groups. The place of academic factors in international students’ decisions to move abroad are discussed in scholarship from various disciplinary perspectives. The experiences of international students within the classroom (which constitute most of the discussion that follows) are, however, considered primarily within the education literature, often with the aim of understanding better, and thus improving, pedagogical processes. The geographical imbalance of such studies is also striking. The vast majority are written by scholars located in Anglophone nations of the Global North—particularly the UK, US and Australia—and while some acknowledge and address international students from a diverse range of home countries, many focus primarily on those coming from East Asian nations. As we will explain below, this has been driven, at least to some extent, by the problematisation of ‘Asian learners’ within Western classrooms. Thus, while this body of work reflects broad-brush historical patterns in flows of students, it pays little attention to the new geographies of mobility discussed in Chap. 2 or to, in many cases, the diversity of the international student body evident even within the Global North.

Academic Content as Motivation for Mobility It is clear that students move abroad for higher education for numerous reasons. Perhaps the most widely-discussed in the extant literature are those relating to a desire to consolidate one’s social position; secure a form of ‘distinction’ that differentiates oneself from other graduates of mass higher education systems; and pursue novel and potentially exciting new opportunities (Brooks & Waters, 2011; see Chap. 4). Nevertheless, although it is often considered less frequently within scholarship, mobile students are, in many cases, also motivated by academic factors (including, for example, the type and content of degree programmes and the particular pedagogies employed). These factors typically differ depending on where students are moving to and from. For example, students

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moving to the US often emphasise the attraction of a broad-based liberal arts education that is offered in many institutions, and which varies significantly from the programmes available in their home country (Ma, 2020). Although liberal arts provision has grown within Europe over recent years (van der Wende, 2011), British students have identified the more established American provision as a reason for wanting to study abroad (Waters et al., 2011). The Chinese students studying in the US interviewed by Ma (2020) also spoke of the appeal of what they viewed as a more ‘well-rounded’ education than that available in their homeland. This was often closely related to the academic content of such courses, but also particular social imaginaries dominant in China about American liberal education. In addition, students may choose to study abroad when they are not able to gain admission to the course they wish to pursue in their home nation. This has been documented particularly in relation to competitive degrees like medicine, with European students moving to Norway (Wiers-Jenssen, 2008), and Indian students taking up places in Chinese universities (Yang, 2018) for this reason (see also Chaps. 3 and 4). Mobile students also talk in more general terms about the attraction of particular academic cultures, not only the content of specific degree programmes. This is a strong theme in Ma’s (2020) study of Chinese students in the US. Indeed, she argues that many of her respondents were drawn to the US by the emphasis on creativity and critical thinking that they believed underpinned most American degree programmes. She cites the example of Stefanie, one of her interviewees: Stefanie, a finance student at Notre Dame with a second major in applied math, mentioned critical thinking during the first few seconds of our interview. When asked why she wanted to study in the United States, she said that for her, developing critical thinking skills was the main allure of American education. (p. 85)

For Stefanie, and others like her in the sample, critical thinking was seen as ‘the defining feature and crown jewel’ of American higher education, associated with ‘the ability to go beyond dichotomous right-or-­ wrong thinking’ (p.  85), being open-minded, and challenging both authority and one’s own biases. They believed that this mode of academic

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engagement would not have been available to them if they had remained in China, because of what they asserted to be the test-driven nature of the Chinese education system and its privileging of dualistic thinking (in which answers are deemed either right or wrong). We return to this contention below, when we examine in more detail the ways in which an emphasis on critical thinking has often been used to valorise Western higher education systems and position students from China and other East Asian countries as in educational deficit as part of a ‘struggling foreigner’ discourse. A desire to escape what are viewed as non-ideal educational cultures has likewise been noted among students from other parts of the world. Indeed, Cairns et al. (2018) have argued that many European students who take part in the Erasmus mobility programme see their time abroad as an escape from the pressures of their existing study regimes. Notwithstanding the small number of European studies cited above (Cairns et al., 2018; Wiers-Jenssen 2008), the majority of research that discusses the impact of academic cultures on mobility focuses on movement from the East to West and, often, specifically from China to Anglophone nations such as the US, Australia and UK. However, there is a growing body of work that has documented the increasing appeal of courses offered in Asian nations themselves (e.g. Cheng, 2018), reflecting the new geographies of international student mobility explored in Chap. 2. This has shown how degree programmes in China, for example, have been taken up by students unable to gain access to similar courses in their own country (e.g. Yang, 2018), and also by those wishing to learn Mandarin (Ding, 2016). Moreover, Roberts et  al. (2010) have shown how many of the international students in Taiwan, who participated in their research, were motivated by quite specific academic factors such as being able to study traditional, rather than simplified, Chinese characters, and the perceived high standard of the Mandarin Studies programmes offered at the university in which they conducted research. The authors argue that such academic offerings have secured Taiwan a unique place in the world market, with courses that institutions in the Anglophone world are unable to replicate. While a focus on such aspects of learning and academic provision are more common in studies of whole degree rather than credit mobility, as noted above, Cairns et al. (2018) maintain that many Erasmus students

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are motivated, at least to some extent, by the opportunity to explore new curricula, appreciating the national differences, even among neighbouring European countries, in both degree content and pedagogy. Although Erasmus students tend to claim that they have to spend longer on their studies than they did in their home institution—largely because they are typically not learning in their native language (see discussion below)— this does not appear to compromise the value they attribute to experiencing new forms of education. Moreover, they emphasise the appeal of both formal and informal learning whilst abroad, and the interconnected nature of these. We return to informal learning in a later section of this chapter.

Academic Performance Despite the diversity  amongst international students, and their various motivations for moving abroad for higher education, when their academic performance is discussed—within both policy and, to some extent, individual HEIs—they tend to be portrayed in one of two ways: as either ‘model minorities’ and ‘academic elites’, who are high-flyers, academically (Nguyen et al., 2019; Zhou & Bankston III, 2020), or as ‘struggling foreigners’ who find academic work difficult and are defined largely in terms of their differences from ‘home’ students (Tannock, 2018). The body of work we explore in this chapter focuses largely on the academic capabilities (perceived or otherwise) of students—and this binary, when drawn upon, is usually related to issues directly connected to learning. (However, as we have contended elsewhere in the book, international students are often viewed as elites—not necessarily because of their academic attainment, but as a consequence of their assumed family wealth.) Discussing this polarisation with respect to the UK specifically, Tannock (2018) argues that the ‘academic elite’ construction is drawn upon particularly with reference to postgraduate students, and those working in STEM fields and at research-intensive universities. In addition, it is used to underpin arguments, from the HE sector, that no cap should be applied by the government to the number of incoming international students— on the basis that reducing the number of such excellent students would

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fundamentally weaken the national research base (ibid.). While many international students do perform extremely well, this particular framing has the effect, Tannock maintains, of erasing those whose attainment is less impressive and may face genuine difficulties with their learning, and also the ways in which institutional policies and practices may negatively impact on even those attaining highly (ibid.). This construction is, however, less pervasive than the second, in which international students are seen as problematic learners, who will inevitably perform less well academically than their domestic peers (Lomer & Mittelmeier, 2021; Heng, 2018). This, too, has significant implications. As Tannock (2018) notes, in this model, there is little point discussing international students as part of debates about equality of attainment levels, ‘because we already know that, of course, international students are destined to have lower levels of attainment than home students, precisely because they are foreign students’ (p. 193). He cites one of his research participants who claimed: ‘The ridiculousness of the whole treatment of international students is that your intellectual ability is constantly challenged …. Because the presumption is that you’re just dumb, right? You’re not English speaking, you’re dumb’ (p. 194). As we will discuss below, there are often significant barriers that international students face, and some do perform academically at a lower level than their domestic counterparts. Nevertheless, this framing serves to obscure both their capabilities and the ways in which their learning can be significantly affected by how they are taught and the curriculum with which they are required to engage (see below). Both framings tend to homogenise international students as a group, and assume that all are either high-flyers or struggling with their degree programmes (Choudaha et  al., 2012). Although data on the academic performance of international students relative to their domestic counterparts remain quite limited (often because of an emphasis in policy on inequalities amongst different groups of home students—see Chap. 7 for further details), various studies have indicated that, within Anglophone classrooms in the Global North, there are often substantial differences between groups of international students, with those from European, American and Australasian backgrounds frequently performing more highly than those from Africa and Asia (Crawford & Wang, 2016; Morrison et al., 2005).

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In explaining differences in attainment, both between international students and their domestic counterparts, and between different groups of international students, researchers (and practitioners working in this area) have tended to reify ‘culture’—often equating it with nationality (Lomer, 2017)—and focus on the impact of ‘foreignness’ (such as the challenges of studying in a non-native language and adjusting to new educational cultures) and racism (Tannock, 2018). However, as we show in the discussion below, assertions of ‘foreignness’ and racism are frequently closely interwoven—as the views of academic staff and ‘home’ students about international students can often be strongly inflected with discriminatory assumptions (Tebbett et al., 2021), while the structuring and content of programmes of study can convey strong messages about cultural hegemony (often informed by the types of colonialism discussed in Chap. 4).

Curriculum Over the past couple of decades considerable effort has been devoted to ‘internationalising’ the curriculum. This was initially motivated by concerns to ensure that the programmes on offer within higher education institutions were sufficiently appealing to an international market— linked to the desire, on the part of many universities, to increase substantially their number of incoming mobile students. However, more recently, emphasis has been placed on the value to home students, too, of having more diverse and internationally-focused programmes of study—often referred to as ‘internationalisation at home’ (see Harrison, 2015). Nevertheless, it remains the case that not all staff (or even researchers) agree about what constitutes an international curriculum. Jones and Killick (2007) distinguish, for example, between curricula that are ‘pragmatically-­based’, focussing on the skills and competences thought to be needed to live and work in a globalising world, and those that are ‘values-based’, which place more emphasis on the development of attitudes necessary to respond effectively to global issues. Developing this kind of argument further, Tannock (2018) contends that there are three dominant understandings of an ‘international

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curriculum’, which have quite different ideological outlooks and political agendas. The first model he outlines focuses largely on helping international students adapt to a fairly unchanging local curriculum, and draws strongly on the ‘struggling foreigner’ framing discussed above. In this model, there is no interrogation of global hierarchies, the impact of colonialism, or other factors that may affect how knowledge is constructed. The second model he identifies, which is broadly aligned with the ‘internationalisation at home’ initiative mentioned above, foregrounds the learning of home students and considers how an international curriculum can best be constructed to develop their intercultural skills. This often has the effect of positioning international students as resources rather than individuals whose own interests should be equally considered and catered for. Tannock questions the ethics of using international students in this way and also the efficacy—as they are often not representative of the nations from which they come. Indeed, this model can be seen to draw on ‘the reified notion of the international student as conveyor of national culture’ (Lomer & Anthony-Okeke, 2019, p. 617). Tannock’s third model focuses on the development of students (both home and international) as ‘global citizens’. This is typically accompanied by the assertion of a common global identity and an erasure of all differences between home and intentional students. Higher education institutions across the world have established curricula intended to develop global citizens, which are often based on the assumption that, as a result of recent political shifts, ‘citizens’ rights, identities and sites of civic engagement can be derived from global, national and local spaces, rather than exclusively from nation-state institutions’ (Hammond & Keating, 2018, p. 3). Although official discourses associated with such programmes tend to emphasise ideas about critical democracy, social justice and the reduction of inequalities, several empirical studies have shown how, in practice, many global citizenship initiatives end up privileging ideas associated with individual competitiveness and labour market preparation— thus privileging the ‘global worker’ over the ‘global citizen’ (Harrison, 2015; Pais & Costa, 2020). This is illustrated well in Hammond and Keating’s (2018) comparative study of global citizenship programmes at universities in Japan and the UK. They contend that both programmes had ‘infused within them an agenda of employability, pointing to the

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potential co-optation of [global citizenship] discourse by neoliberal objectives aimed at the production of globally competent workers’ (p. 13). With respect to the UK, global citizenship education was promoted as part of a highly marketised approach in which ‘global graduates’ from the institution were constructed as playing an important role in the resolution of global problems, while in Japan the programme was tied to improving the nation’s performance in a globalised knowledge economy. Alongside these three dominant models of international curricula that have often been adopted by (primarily, although not exclusively, Western) universities, Tannock (2018) identifies a ‘counter-hegemonic’ version of international education, which differs from those discussed above in foregrounding the voices and experiences of international students. The UK’s ‘Why is My Curriculum White?’ movement, in which international students have played an important role (ibid.), can be seen as an example of this, as can various other student-led initiatives to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ (Begum & Saini, 2019). An attempt to develop such counter-­ hegemonic curricula can also be seen in the work of some educators. For example, Lomer and Anthony-Okeke (2019) have described their efforts to build a module that was ‘ethically internationalised’ with respect to both content and pedagogy. Discussing the principles that underpinned their work, they contend that, ‘An ethical epistemic approach to internationalisation of the curriculum must be grounded in an epistemology which emphasises uncertainty, shifting positions, and complex, interconnected meanings and interpretations’ (p. 617). Nevertheless, despite case studies such as this, progress towards a more emancipatory version of the ‘internationalised curriculum’ remains slow, with considerable variability between both individual teaching staff and academic disciplines (Harrison, 2015). We develop this analysis further later in the chapter, when we examine evidence of enduring cultural hegemony.

Pedagogy While there has been some (albeit often limited) attempts by individual university departments and academic staff to redesign the curriculum to address better the needs and interests of international students, classroom

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pedagogies frequently remain unexamined. Indeed, pedagogy is rarely an explicit area of focus within institutional internationalisation strategies and, when it is mentioned, it typically focusses on the provision of separate courses for international students, often in the area of study skills— thus reinforcing the kind of deficit model mentioned previously (Lomer & Anthony-Okeke, 2019). In this section of the chapter, we focus on a number of areas of pedagogy that have been the subject of research and debate—examining the language of instruction; ‘critical thinking’; speaking, assessment and citation; and group work and broader social interactions. Reflecting the general geographical orientation of the literature in this area, which we discussed at the start of the chapter, the majority of the work we explore below focusses on the experiences of international students within Anglophone classrooms of the Global North. Moreover, it typically engages with the framing of international students—and those from East Asia in particular—as ‘struggling foreigners’ rather than ‘academic elites’.

Language of Instruction Higher education staff, students and even researchers who frame international students as ‘struggling foreigners’ often do so on the basis of assumed language difficulties (Harrison & Peacock, 2010). Clearly, many—although not all—students who cross national borders in pursuit of a higher education have to study in a non-native language. This can be a challenge, at least initially, and may impede learning even for students with a relatively high level of linguistic ability. Students participating in Erasmus exchanges, for example, reported spending considerably more time covering material than they believed they would have done if it had been in their native language (Cairns et al., 2018). Some scholars have argued that such problems have been exacerbated by the increasingly competitive market for international students. Indeed, Straker (2016) has contended that within many countries of the Global North, the increasing reliance on the international student market to make up shortfalls in national funding (see Chaps. 4 and 7) and acute competition between higher education institutions has led to the lowering of language

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standards within admissions processes—with a consequent impact for both student and teacher. Nevertheless, it is also important to recognise that language fluency often gives home students an advantage within the classroom (Harrison, 2015) and is frequently conflated with intellectual ability and superior academic skills (Harrison & Peacock, 2010). Within many classrooms in the Global North, oral contributions are valued highly (see later discussion) and can commonly form crucial components of assessment, through individual and group presentations, for example. As a consequence, those with less developed oral skills can be viewed as weaker learners and ‘relegated to observers, “manual labourers” or freeloaders in the context of group work discussions’ (Harrison, 2015, p.  423). Indeed, numerous studies have indicated that both international and home students see language as a barrier not only to forming inter-cultural friendships (see discussion below) but also to effective academic engagement. For example, the ‘home’ students in the UK interviewed by Harrison and Peacock (2010) tended to foreground issues related to language, describing the effort required to communicate with other students if they were not native English speakers, and how they perceived language difference as a barrier to both academic understanding and personal interaction. However, Harrison and Peacock (2010) question whether these accounts can be taken at face value, and suggest that language might have been discussed so readily by their interviewees because other factors, such as conflicting value systems or educational backgrounds, were more difficult to bring up. These are discussed later in the chapter. It is not the case, however, that all international students face the same degree of disadvantage across the world. Jon’s (2012) research, for example, demonstrates how in Korea those international students who were native English speakers were accorded greater status by their Korean peers than those who spoke other languages; the former group therefore found it easier to make friends and engage in collaborative learning. The power of English, as a hegemonic ‘global language’, to affect classroom interactions and structure relations is thus brought into sharp relief. It is also worth noting, however, that students are judged, not solely on their vocabulary and syntax but also on their accent (Yang, 2018). Here, there are notable parallels with scholarship on equity among UK ‘home’ students that has

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indicated that middle class accents and manners of speech (typically associated with southern England and ‘received pronunciation’) are often valorised in higher education classrooms, while working class idioms and accents are commonly problematised (e.g. Loveday, 2016).

Critical Thinking Critical thinking has been a particular focus of the deficit narratives associated with the ‘struggling foreigner’ discourse. Song (2016) notes that the University of Oxford has made prominent claims that critical thinking is at the core of its approach to teaching and learning. She goes on to claim that while, on the face of it, this seems to promote an uncontroversial and neutral intellectual agenda, it is underpinned by a concern that some students, and particularly those from East Asian countries, are in deficit; ‘the “Socratic spirit” as well as “intellectual standards” are seen as belonging to the Western educational tradition, to which the newcomer is found wanting’ (Song, 2016, p. 28). Researchers have argued however that critical thinking, as conceived in the West, is often understood in highly divergent terms, and is not as fundamental to intellectual enquiry as many universities seem to suggest. Turner (2006), for example, has maintained that critical thinking is only one form of critical reasoning, while Song (2016) contends that critical thinking cannot be taught independently of what is being thought about; adequate content knowledge is essential, as thought processes are intertwined with the subject of analysis. Moreover, Song alerts us to the importance of culturally-specific reasoning, asserting that, in a culture like China, ‘where maintaining social harmony is paramount and avoiding social offence is of higher social value, developing a Western argument style of critical reasoning, which is adversarial and aggressive, has no long term purpose for the Chinese students’ (p.  34). Similarly, writing with respect to Japanese students, Welikala (2008) suggests that criticality is interwoven with norms relating to personal relationships, and that silence within the classroom in Japan is not read as indicative of either intellectual passivity or a failure to think in an analytical manner. She goes on to argue that within Japanese educational cultures arguing for a particular point of view (often seen as

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evidence of critical thinking within the West) is not viewed, of itself, as evidence of critical learning, but rather language fluency and social confidence. Critical thinking as practised in Western higher education institutions can thus, many scholars suggest, be seen as a form of ‘symbolic capital’ possessed by Western academics (Ryan, 2016) and engrained not only in curricula, learning outcomes and statements about academic practice, but additionally in the perspectives of employers and university managers. Indeed, Song and McCarthy (2018) have suggested that the strong emphasis on critical thinking in Australian higher education institutions is closely bound up with the concept of graduate competences. They argue that ‘The essentialisation of critical thinking is driven by the state in response to pressure from Australian businesses and adopted by universities as a mandated requirement for all students to be market-ready’ (p. 354). Moreover, in Australia and other countries of the Global North, critical thinking is marketed as a key feature of Western education, and often foregrounded in institutions’ attempts to compete in the global market for international students (and particularly those from East Asia) (Song, 2016). Song (2016) reflects that it is ironic that critical thinking has become such a strong selling point for Western higher education institutions at the very time when neo-liberal corporatism has resulted in academic staff having less time to develop transformative teaching practices and are under pressure to ensure the ‘employment relevance’ of the material they teach. The research discussed in this section is also clearly informed by colonial legacies and enduring assumptions of cultural hegemony.

Speaking, Assessment and Citation While critical thinking has been the subject of numerous studies and, as noted above, is often regarded as a key distinguishing feature of a Western higher education, there are various other differences manifest in Western classrooms that are commonly viewed as further evidence of the ‘deficient’ nature of international students (notably those from East Asian nations). In this section we explore three of these: the emphasis on

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speaking (which is often seen as synonymous with class participation— thus obscuring various other ways in which students may be actively engaged); particular modes of assessment; and citation and referencing practices. All three are described well by Ma (2020) in her research on Chinese students in American universities and colleges. She notes, for example, that while active participation in discussions is central to the US liberal arts education, many of her Chinese respondents acknowledged their disinclination to engage in such verbal exchanges. Ma contends that although some of this reticence can be explained in terms of language barriers (see above), differences in prior experiences of education offer more explanatory power. Indeed, she asserts that in China more emphasis is typically placed on actions than words—because of the historical influence of Confucianism. Particular value is also attributed to speaking appropriately, with due respect—and thus directly challenging academic staff within the classroom is often viewed as inappropriate. Although there is now evidence that Chinese culture is changing (see discussion below) and oracy skills have come to be viewed as more important within society generally, Ma (2020) argues that many parts of the Chinese education system have yet to embrace this particular shift. She notes that class discussions can also be made more difficult by Chinese students’ prior experiences of assessment which, if they were educated in China, will have been exclusively test-based. As oral communication is not part of the Gaokao (the Chinese university entrance exam), it is not prioritised within the school curriculum. Moreover, she asserts that, as students have come to expect to give right or wrong answers to prescribed questions, and because of the high stakes nature of Chinese examinations, they are often afraid of making mistakes and not confident at expressing themselves freely in class. Prior experiences of a test-orientated educational system also, Ma (2020) suggests, affected her respondents’ attitudes towards and performance within the US assessment system. She notes that in Chinese schools, grades are almost entirely, if not exclusively, based on test scores and, even at tertiary level, it is common that one final exam determines a student’s grade for that particular course. In contrast, in the US, although

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there is considerable diversity between both subjects and institutions, assignments throughout the year often count towards the final grade and require planning from an early stage—particularly in arts and social science programmes. While American students and international students from Europe may be familiar with this mode of assessment, it can present particular problems for Chinese students who are typically much less practised in the skills required to produce high-quality coursework at multiple points throughout the year. Reflecting on these differences, Ma (2020) explains: Any serious delay in one of the components can compromise the quality of the work—and even worse, threaten its completion. These are the injurious impacts of procrastination on academic studies. Psychologically, the damage is even more profound. Students are often fraught with guilt, anxiety, and even self-hatred, all of which can be debilitating. (p. 105)

Similarly, she argues that significant cultural differences about citation can also lead to various misunderstandings and heighten the anxiety experienced by Chinese students with respect to plagiarism policies. While most American students are very familiar from school with the referencing practices expected at university-level, such as using one’s own words to summarise a particular argument and citing those who are quoted verbatim, Chinese students typically encounter these practices for the first time at university (although this may not always be the case for those studying at postgraduate level (Cumming et al., 2018)). Thus, what is often assumed by American staff to be something straightforward requires considerable effort from Chinese students trying to familiarise themselves with the practice and it can trigger significant angst (see also Fatemi & Saito, 2019; Tannock, 2018). Although this argument has been made most frequently with respect to Chinese students, there is evidence that international students from various other parts of the world also bring with them different approaches to text-citing, which are often problematised in US classrooms (e.g. Isbell et al., 2018; Merkel, 2020).

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Group Work and Broader Social Interactions For proponents of ‘internationalisation at home’ and those who emphasise the intercultural skills and competences that can be inculcated when students from different national backgrounds and cultures mix, social interaction within the classroom and other spaces of the university is key (Harrison, 2015; Ma, 2020; see arguments in Chap. 2 on how these relations are conceptualised geographically). Ryan (2016), for example, argues that inter-group contact can lead to a reduction in prejudice on the part of individuals as well as broader changes in perspective. She notes, however, that such change does not come about merely by bringing students from different backgrounds together. Instead, groups have to be accorded equal status with the classroom, with those from other academic systems given the space to contribute their views. Moreover, classroom interactions need to be pursued in a co-operative manner ‘with firmly established and articulated common goals, underpinned by support at the highest level’ (p. 15). If these conditions are not met, then close proximity of students can exacerbate, rather than reduce, prejudice. Focussing on academic attainment more specifically, there is evidence that higher levels of learning are reported by international students who interact more with students from diverse cultural backgrounds (Glass, 2012) but that establishing good social relationships is important before students are happy to work in class with those from other national backgrounds (Mittelmeier et al., 2018). These processes are, however, complex and not always played out in the same way for all international students. In Rienties et al.’s (2012) research, conducted in a Dutch business school, social integration with ‘home’ students was associated with academic success for international students from Western backgrounds but was not a predictor of long-term academic success for international students from countries outside the Global North. The patterns of social interaction between international and ‘home’ students, evident in many classrooms across the world, have been often been explained with reference to broader relationships between nation-­ states, reflecting some of the arguments about cultural hegemony that we pursue in greater detail below. A number of research studies have shown,

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for example, how hierarchies are commonly established within classrooms that reflect the dominance of the English language and Western Anglophone nations (Stein & de Andreotti, 2016; see also Chaps. 2 and 4). Writing with respect to Singapore, Yang (2018) describes how international students from China—even those in receipt of competitive scholarships awarded by the Singaporean government—faced discrimination by local students on the basis of their poor command of English or their ‘Chinese-trained English accents’ (p. 83). Hayes (2019) describes this privileging of Anglophone norms, even in non-English-speaking countries, as ‘double-country oppression’: international students from outside the English-speaking Global North are often excluded from the social and academic networks of ‘home’ students because of their lack of characteristics associated with both the home country and Anglophone nations. Writing with respect to the UK and Germany, she observes: Despite two different nation-states (with different public discourses about international students) engaging in internationalisation, the relations of power stay the same, as those who were muted in the Anglophone context were also muted in the same ways and for the same reasons (i.e. through the lack of cultural and legal boundedness to Anglophone countries) in the non-Anglophone context. (pp. 12–13)

Reflecting on the impact of such interactions with ‘home’ students, Ma (2020) maintains that negative comments made about China by their classmates had led her respondents to identify more strongly with their home country and socialise with other Chinese students as a means of insulating themselves from such comments. The ways in which the social networks of international students are viewed by relevant stakeholders can be discriminatory and inflected with neo-colonialist norms. O’Connor (2018) has argued that within Irish higher education institutions clustering amongst co-nationals is deemed problematic for only some students—namely those from China, Malaysia and other East Asian nations. Staff in her research were critical of how students from these countries ‘self-segregated’ and yet were largely oblivious to similar types of clustering by Canadian students (we discuss this ‘hierarchy of acceptability’ further in Chap. 7). For East Asian students,

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although recourse was typically made to the rhetoric of inter-cultural dialogue, it was ‘de facto assimilation’ that was, in practice, required (ibid.). Despite this kind of problematisation of international students’ social behaviour, relatively little resource is typically devoted to orientation programmes and other activities to promote interactions between students (Beech, 2019; Ma, 2020; Sawir, 2013). Moreover, separate induction programmes are often held for ‘home’ and international students, which tends to reinforce an assimilationist model of group relations. There is, however, another strand of research that has offered a different perspective on social networks. This has suggested that international students can derive significant benefit from their interactions with other international peers, and questioned whether learning is adversely affected if friendships are not established with ‘home’ students (see also discussion in Chap. 2). Montgomery and McDowell (2009) show how the international students in their research in the UK had established relatively few close friendships with British students and yet were supported well in their learning by the connections they had made to other international students. Their peers, from countries outside the UK, provided: a range of practical help (such as proof-reading work, handing in assignments and collecting handouts if students were ill); a forum in which to discuss ideas covered by the course, especially aspects that were more difficult to understand; and wider psychological support and encouragement. Indeed, Montgomery and McDowell suggest that the international students in their study can be viewed as akin to a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), with a strong sense of group identity, exerting influence on both academic and social learning. Other scholars have maintained that the emphasis on social integration within so much of the pedagogical literature on international students is a consequence of the relative silencing of students’ own voices. Page and Chahboun (2019), for example, argue that this research focus stems largely from universities’ framing of international student recruitment as an opportunity to develop cross-cultural learning. From this perspective, they suggest, the main objective of international student mobility is seen as social, and thus any lack of interaction between students is viewed as problematic (perhaps, at least partially, because it can be perceived as failing to benefit ‘home’ students). In contrast, they

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contend that international students may be relatively unconcerned about whether or not they develop cross-cultural friendships within the classroom and outside. Instead, they may have chosen to study abroad for a variety of other reasons—such as because the foreign university has particular academic expertise or facilities, or because they are keen to increase their competitiveness within global labour markets. Moreover, as discussed in Chap. 5, international students may be motivated, primarily, by citizenship-related concerns. While some of these objectives may be more easily achieved through the establishment of cross-cultural relationships, it is not always a necessary precondition.

Impact of Cultural Hegemony and Essentialism Cultural Hegemony A large majority of the literature associated with the ‘struggling foreigner’ framing of international students focuses on the impact of cultural differences on approaches to study and experiences within the higher education classroom. Moreover, as we have suggested above, it tends—either implicitly or explicitly—to contrast ‘Western’ approaches to learning with those from East Asia. In explaining the emphasis placed on critical thinking and other areas of learning in which Asian students are frequently seen as in deficit, scholars have often drawn upon the concept of cultural hegemony, arguing that failing to recognise alternative cultures of learning can be read as an imposition of imperialist practices. Lomer and Anthony-Okeke (2019), for example, note that the perceived value of national higher education systems differs markedly throughout the world and, often, it is those of former imperial powers that are regarded most highly—not least because of the material advantage they were able to accrue through colonial exploitation. Associated with the vertical stratification of higher education systems across the world is a similar differentiation of pedagogy. Indeed, practices such as Socratic questioning, upon which critical thinking and discussion-focused seminars are often based, originate from a Eurocentric philosophical tradition. They are also

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associated with a constructivist epistemology, in which it is assumed that learning occurs when students are actively involved in a process of meaning-­making and knowledge creation (Biggs & Tang, 2011). In contrast, in nations (or individual classrooms) where an objectivist epistemology is dominant, a didactic, lecture-based pedagogy is likely to be preferred. Moreover, although international students often bring with them diverse ways of thinking, there remains a tendency in the West not to recognise this, and to elevate Western teaching methods to a position of unquestioned authority (Song, 2016). Similar arguments have been made in relation to curriculum content, not merely teaching methods. For example, within the Global North, Eurocentric knowledges are often taken to be the universal norm while indigenous knowledges are viewed as, at best, marginal. This has been evidenced across the curriculum, including areas that cross-cut disciplines such as employability initiatives (Huang & Turner, 2018). A discussion about the ‘value’ attached to different international qualifications, and how this relates to the privileging of Western knowledge, can be found in Chap. 4. Viewing academic skills and knowledge in this way, and formulating curricula based largely on Western sources and authors, can be understood as an act of neo-colonialism—for imposing a particular cultural frame upon students (despite often preaching the importance of independent thought) (Lomer & Anthony-Okeke, 2019), and assuming the inherent superiority and quality of Western approaches (Ryan, 2016). This is a particular problem in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths where academics often emphasise the importance of teaching ‘Western truths’ and can be particularly resistant to adjusting their curricula for a more diverse student body (Sawir, 2011), but is evident across all disciplines. While it could be expected that the increasing strength and importance of Chinese universities on the world stage (discussed in Chap. 2) would have led to a re-thinking of some of these assumptions about Western superiority, Song and McCarthy (2018) maintain that it has actually had the opposite effect, further engraining cultural hegemony. They assert: From our perspective, the construction of international students as either requiring assistance or a dumbing down of standards is founded on the

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same form of culturalism that privileges a static countenance of Western superiority …. However, the palpable rise of Asian universities from a Confucian historic tradition challenges this very teleology, provoking the regulatory state and, in turn, the universities to overtly essentialise Western critical thinking as the superior form of cognition. (p. 359)

This analysis thus suggests that despite—or perhaps even because of— the transformations in the geographies of higher education that we outlined in Chap. 2, practices within classrooms have tended to remain resistant to change.

Responding to Cultural Hegemony While the issues discussed above continue to be evidenced in many studies of the contemporary university, a body of work has emerged over the past couple of decades that explores how more democratic and open teaching approaches can be developed (e.g. Jones & Brown, 2007; Lomer & Anthony-Okeke, 2019). Although there are numerous examples of innovative practice in this area, we focus here on just one initiative—to illustrate how higher education practitioners can resist the imposition of hegemonic cultural norms: Tran’s (2011) concept of ‘mutual adaptation’. Writing with respect to Chinese and Vietnamese students in Australian classrooms, she concentrates on academic writing conventions within education and economics master’s courses as a case study. She suggests that, to date, three main models of adaptation have been evident. First, some students have responded to Australian norms through ‘surface’ adaptation. Here, the students disguised their own beliefs about good academic writing but conformed to classroom norms as a coping mechanism and means of securing good grades. Tran argues that in such cases, the power of teachers’ expectations is evident. Second, she outlines processes of ‘committed’ adaptation. Here, students exercised agency and deliberately tried to accommodate what was asked of them. They replaced their existing writing practices with those sanctioned by the teacher and judged these as superior. Tran describes the use of this approach by one student in the following way: ‘She was trying to break free from the

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Chinese stereotypes that she positioned herself in by making reference to her struggle through the process of drafting and redrafting’ (p. 88). Tran notes that although this student and others like her, through the strategies they adopted, shifted quickly to identify as members of the discipline’s ‘discourse community’, they tended to juxtapose ‘Western’ and ‘Chinese’ ways of constructing knowledge, routinely positioning the former as of greater value. The third model outlined by Tran (2011) is a hybrid. Here, the students engaged critically and creatively with the disciplinary requirements of their Australian classroom and treated their first language and culture ‘as a resource rather than a problem’ (p. 88). She provides the example of one student who talked about the way in which she combined a structured and linear way of writing (which she viewed as a key element of Australian norms about academic communication) with her personal preference for using metaphors frequently throughout her work. While Tran (2011) views this hybrid model as a significant improvement on the previous two, she contends that, in classrooms with international students, adaptation should be a two-way process, not something that is required only of mobile students. Indeed, she advocates a model of ‘mutual adaptation’ in which knowledge is shared between staff and students. Staff create opportunities for students to share with them, and students exercise agency by sharing with staff. This approach, she suggests, increases understanding of the other, and leads to a process of repositioning whereby staff reflect critically on their own practices and attempt to change them to suit better international students’ needs, while international students amend their own practices to participate more fully in institutional practices. When such personal changes are then shared more widely, the possibility for more thorough-going disciplinary and institutional change becomes possible (Tran, 2011). Resisting cultural hegemony and adopting more critical practices is not, however, always a straightforward exercise (Elliott & Reynolds, 2014). Institutions—particularly those that are prestigious and highly ranked—may be opposed to counter-hegemonic initiatives. Moreover, students themselves can sometimes be unwilling to embrace critical practices as a result of an adherence to an objectivist epistemology (see above) and a belief that the purpose of their studies is to gain a particular body

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of knowledge from an international higher education institution. Moreover, while the use of participatory group work is often held to be an effective means of recognising the diverse knowledges students bring with them and dismantling power differentials between staff and students, it can, itself, be read as dismissive of some students’ traditions. Indeed, reflecting on her own use of such critical pedagogies, Trahar (2010) writes: I have learned that, seeking to dismantle or dismiss the authority invested in me can be threatening for those students more familiar with positioning the academic as an authority figure. It is much more inclusive to accept the different conceptualisations of the teacher/student relationship, certainly at the beginning of that relationship, as this can lessen the anxiety of such students. (p. 151)

This suggests that the nature of counter-hegemonic approaches needs to be sensitive to the various educational cultures from which international students come and be modified over time to account for such differences.

Contesting Cultural Essentialism Contesting both the ‘struggling foreigner’ model and those that, while disputing ‘deficit’ constructions, contend that there are genuine differences in educational cultures between nations, is a body of research that has proffered a more nuanced understanding of culture. This has emphasised differences within national groups, and also processes of cultural change across many parts of the world which have, in some cases, it is held, led to an increasing convergence of educational values. It argues for caution when writing about whole systems of cultural practice or groups of learners, sensitive to the risks of stereotyping and essentialising individuals from large geographical areas (Ryan, 2016). Various scholars, often influenced by post-modern theories of identity, have argued that students, whether international or ‘home’, should not be understood primarily in terms of their citizenship or national identity,

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because of the static view of both culture and identity that this implies (Anderson, 2014). Moreover, employing such a binary can obscure other important elements of diversity within the student body (Jones & Killick, 2007). For example, in her study of women students at a university in New Zealand, Anderson (2014) demonstrates how the labels attached to her participants that categorised them primarily in terms of their ‘home’ or ‘international’ enrolment status did little to capture the nature of their learning experiences, and often served to obscure significant commonalities between them (in relation to their gender and previous educational experiences, for instance). Indeed, she contends that ‘the women’s accounts highlight the importance of not assuming that students are necessarily the same or different to each other [based on their enrolment category], but recognising that [they] come to higher education with a range of educational experiences and expectations, and that they are active in making sense of their educational journeys’ (p. 649). She goes on to argue that, from a pedagogical perspective, constructing students and teaching approaches solely in binary terms (i.e. ‘home’ and ‘international’) ‘risks promoting reductive assumptions of students’ difference or sameness that are both unhelpful and inaccurate’ (p. 649). A somewhat similar argument is made by Ryan (2016) who has suggested that, because of the widespread impact of internationalisation on higher education systems and institutions across the world, we should move from seeing international students as ‘foreign bodies in domestic settings’ to viewing all students as ‘internationalised’. Other scholars have, instead of collapsing the binary between ‘international’ and ‘home’ students, pointed out the significant diversity between international students, responding to King and Raghuram’s (2013) critique that many teaching staff and researchers have tended to homogenise such students in their practice and analysis respectively (see also Lomer & Mittelmeier, 2021). As we have shown earlier in the chapter, there are significant differences in academic performance by international students from different parts of the world (e.g. Rienties et al., 2013)— that are typically explained by their previous educational experiences— demonstrating something of the heterogeneity of the international student body. For example, Lee et al. (2019) argue, on the basis of their study of undergraduate students’ readiness for college and educational

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engagement at a public university in the US, that differences between international students were evident. Those who spoke English as a primary language in their home country and had been to high school in the US typically performed more highly in relation to both aspects than other international students—and also the domestic students within their sample. Other research has suggested that international students’ experiences are influenced by the specific educational context (during their mobility and previously) and the students’ individual personal characteristics (Straker, 2016). A small number of studies have indicated how social class can serve to differentiate experiences and academic performance—even among international students from the same national background. Ma’s (2020) analysis of the experiences of Chinese students in American colleges and universities has shown how those of ‘first generation’ students, with no family background of higher education (even in China), differed markedly from their more advantaged peers. As we mentioned in Chap. 3, they were, for example, less likely to enrol in selective institutions, speak up in class or have close American friends, and more likely to have poor English, which often served to impede their social and academic integration. She highlights the importance of English language skills and asserts that college-educated parents often had a different attitude about these than their counterparts who had not progressed to tertiary education: The interviews show that college-educated parents often pushed their children to make a conscious effort to reach beyond their comfort zone and socialise with Americans …. They were versed in the liberal education ideal of embracing diverse experiences and people. (p. 234)

Here, we see some of the social class-related patterns that have been well-documented in relation to domestic students (e.g. Lehmann, 2014; Reay et al., 2005) played out among their international peers. Such studies are of growing relevance given the evidence of socio-economic diversification in the profiles of mobile students discussed in Chap. 3, but need to attend additionally to how social characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, age and disability intersect with an identity as an international student.

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There is also evidence to suggest that differences in pedagogical approach, by nation, are not as stark as some have argued and that, over recent years, we have witnessed increasing convergence. Comparative research conducted by Ryan (2016) in China, the UK, US and Australia has indicated that academic staff working in the higher education sector in all four countries shared similar understandings of what constitutes both ‘effective learning’ and ‘good scholarship’. They all tended to foreground qualities such as originality, creativity, innovative knowledge and independence, and also the importance of labour market relevance. She thus argues that ‘These findings provide evidence not only of common ground and common aspirations, but also of the merging of espoused values of these systems, as well as the economic and technological pressures on higher education systems across the world’ (p. 20). Moreover, she notes that her Chinese respondents tended to be more reflective about educational models and the wider learning environment than their counterparts from the three Anglophone nations. She attributes this general convergence to: the extensive interaction between international and domestic students; the normalisation of diversity, rather than uniformity, within many higher education institutions across the world; and the shift from what she calls ‘core-periphery movement’ to multi-directional mobility, with China and other Asian countries themselves attracting increasing numbers of international students (see Chap. 2). A similar study by Wang (2013) of Chinese students (located in China) has also emphasised significant aspects of pedagogical change. He argues that, partially because of the Chinese government’s curriculum reform programme over the last decade, pedagogical practices have shifted. Although many students still prefer traditional modes of teaching, they show considerably less preference for rote learning and memorisation and a greater interest in reflective and enquiry-based learning. The students in his sample also asserted that they generally preferred a less hierarchical relationship with their teachers than had been the case in the past. Conversely, within the West, there has been greater interest within secondary education on the transmission, through teacher-centred approaches, of more traditional, subject-based theoretical knowledge (Young & Lambert, 2014) and large group teaching—facilitated, to some extent, by ‘policy borrowing’ from China (Forestier & Crossley, 2015). Moreover, at

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tertiary level, the expansion of student numbers has led to an increase in large-group teaching and, in some institutions, a corresponding reduction in the small discussion-based seminars that have been characteristic of ‘Western’ approaches to higher education (e.g. Anderson, 2014). Taken together, this body of work helps to deconstruct assumptions that are often made about uniform national cultures of learning.

Informal Learning The chapter has so far focused primarily on formal learning—i.e. that associated with education provided by universities and other institutions of higher education, and for which qualifications are obtained. However, informal learning—here understood as the learning undertaken as a result of everyday activities—is also important to many students who cross borders in pursuit of a degree and can have quite profound implications for the outcomes of mobility. Indeed, some scholars have contended that it is the travel associated with studying abroad that is of central importance. The international students (from a variety of countries) studying in the UK, interviewed by Beech (2019), emphasised how moving to another country had had a fundamental impact on their views and outlook. This period abroad had, Beech suggests, expanded their horizons, forced them to step outside their comfort zones, and required them to be independent. Although it can be argued that similar changes have been documented in relation to higher education in general (even when pursued within one’s home country) (e.g. Hamilton, 2016) and youth travel (Conradson & Latham, 2005), Beech indicates that, for her respondents, it was the combination of studying and living abroad that was key. They learnt—in significant ways—from the opportunity to reflect on their home culture and own behaviour. They talked in particular about the importance of ‘international exposure’ and how it came about through their wider interactions in the host society, not merely those associated with their academic study. However, reflecting some of the points made earlier in this chapter, Beech also notes that informal learning was, in some cases, limited as a result of students’ difficulties establishing relationships with ‘home’ students in and out of the classroom, and the

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absence of adequate institutional support in fostering such interactions. Writing with respect to international doctoral students in particular, Elliott et al. (2016) make similar points about the importance of informal learning or, in this case, what they refer to as the ‘hidden curriculum’. They argue that through activities such as joining a local choir, engaging in voluntary work, and even just socialising in local pubs, the learning of international students was ‘scaffolded’. As well as off-setting any social or academic loneliness, such experiences improved their linguistic skills and broader cultural competence. They write: ‘These educational components of the hidden curriculum can apply to many student sojourners for whom increased understanding of jokes and idioms enhances their confidence and encourages them to express their thoughts’ (p. 744). Similar claims have been an important element of analyses of the Erasmus mobility scheme. Cairns et al. (2018) assert that, through participating, students come to broaden their own understanding of what learning is all about, often coming to the view that it involves a vast range of life experiences, from living in a new place to encountering the host country and its culture. They go on to claim that ‘Erasmus connects formal, non-formal [organised educational activity outside the formal system] and informal learning and it is the fact that students recognise learning in all these different dimensions that is critical to their evaluation of value in their stays abroad that is important’ (p. 80). This, they contend, has a significant impact on how students conceptualise learning—coming to view it as something essentially positive, rather than associated with the ‘hardship’ of exams, homework and sitting at a desk for long hours each day. Developing such arguments, various scholars have maintained that the informal learning that mobile students undertake, alongside their formal education in the host country, can result in quite profound personal change (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002; see also Chap. 4). In part, this is because such experiences can trigger a reflexive process, in which individuals come to reflect more deeply about societal similarities and differences, and themselves (Cairns et al., 2018). Drawing on a large dataset of 652 Chinese students who had returned home after having studied abroad, Gu and Schweisfurth (2015) show how these individuals believed they had changed in substantial ways—including the development of what the authors call a ‘diaspora consciousness’. They note that, for almost all

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their interviewees, the skills they had developed at managing the emotional, psychological and intellectual challenges of studying and living in a foreign country were also employed to enable them to ‘step outside their own cultural and habitual norms and values in order to better understand “the other”’ (p. 958). Further key changes, outlined by the authors, included a broadened worldview, increased ‘cosmopolitan confidence’ (defined as being embedded and comfortable within a range of different social networks), and having undergone a self-reported ‘identity transformation’. Similar arguments are made by Marginson (2014) in relation to international students more generally. Rejecting the view that students are expected to and should ‘adjust’ to host country norms, he contends that study abroad typically brings about a condition of ‘disequilibrium’ for students in which they exert considerable agency in managing their lives reflexively and re-forming their social identities. On the basis of interviews with international students studying in Australia, he maintains that all became different in important ways during or after their period of mobility, asserting that ‘the joys and terrors of making a self amid a range of often novel choices’ (p. 7) is widely felt. He goes on to contend that although all higher level study can be understood, to some degree, as a process of self-formation, particularly strong personal agency is required within international education because of the sense of instability mobile students can experience with respect to the host society. This process of self-formation is complex, Marginson (2014) holds, because it stretches over numerous domains—affecting how students think and feel about culture, society and family, for example, as well as their education: It includes learning to speak in new conversational idioms. It includes the acquisition of knowledge and personal sensibilities via liberal education as cultural capital. It incorporates social capital, whereby higher education fosters functional relationships and social networks. It accounts for the fact that students may acquire new values and beliefs in the country of education, and perhaps greater tolerance and more cosmopolitan relationships. (p. 12)

Evident in this conceptualisation of the international student is a considerably more agentic individual than that portrayed in some of the

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literature discussed previously in this chapter (see also Tran & Vu, 2018). Nevertheless, Marginson (2014) also recognises that pedagogic structures are necessary to support this type of self-formation—especially those that augment the freedom of international students. Thus, in this analysis, informal learning is viewed as dependent, to some extent at least, on the particular approach taken within formal education.

Conclusions Despite the literature on the academic components of a period spent studying abroad being relatively narrow—stemming primarily from the discipline of education and concentrating mainly on the experiences of students from East Asian countries studying in the Anglophone Global North—this chapter has argued that important social processes occur within the classroom, which are worthy of our attention and analysis. We have demonstrated, for example, the ways in which various academic factors can sometimes have a significant influence on students’ decisions to move abroad for their degree. More broadly, we have shown how, despite some international students being positioned as ‘model minorities’ or academic elites, it is their construction as ‘struggling foreigners’ that more often underpins their treatment by higher education staff and, sometimes, other students—evidenced in both the curriculum they are required to follow and the pedagogies to which they are exposed. Drawing on some of the themes we first introduced in Chap. 2, the final part of the chapter discussed in detail the enduring influence of cultural hegemony and ideas associated with cultural essentialism on the classroom experiences of international students. We contended that these tend to underpin the framing of such individuals as ‘struggling foreigners’ and appear relatively resistant to changes in the wider geo-political environment (such as the increasing strength of Chinese universities on the world stage). Nevertheless, we also documented how some scholars have attempted to introduce more critical pedagogies and curricula—in an attempt to resist the imposition of hegemonic cultural norms and contest cultural essentialism. Such attempts to develop a more ‘engaged pedagogy’ are typically underpinned by a concern to address key ethical

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problems evident in some forms of international education—a theme to which we return in Chap. 7. The issues addressed in this chapter articulate with a number of broader themes that thread through this book. First, the profound manner in which colonialism informs many of the practices, social processes and attitudes documented with respect to learning has clear links to the ways in which international student mobility has been—and continues to be—valued, discussed in Chap. 4, and also to the historical patterns of movement that we explored in Chap. 2. Given this emphasis, it is perhaps unsurprising that the extant literature is so heavily focused on the experiences of East Asian students in the Anglophone Global North. Nevertheless, given the changing geographies of ISM, it is important that future work considers how learning is played out in other locations and amongst other nationalities of migrant student. Second, this chapter has brought into sharp relief debates about the extent to which international students should be viewed as a distinct group, given both the often-­ significant differences between them, and some key commonalities with ‘home’ students. While recognising the importance of not treating internationally mobile students as a homogenous group, and paying attention to their differing needs and experiences, there is clearly also value in giving them a political voice as a particular community. Indeed, throughout this book, we explore many issues that are experienced only by international students, and which therefore require them to be able to speak, and be represented, as such. Finally, we return to some of the points made at the start of the chapter, about the role of academic factors in motivating a decision to study abroad. This can often be overlooked, particularly within the disciplines of sociology and geography, when scholars frequently foreground the importance of social reproduction and the acquisition of citizenship, for example (see many of the studies discussed in Chaps. 4 and 5). Studies of ‘home’ students have shown how academic factors, and the identity of a ‘learner’, often remain very important to such individuals in a variety of different national contexts—despite their frequent positioning in other ways by higher education staff and policymakers (Brooks & Abrahams, 2020). We should not forget that learning is often central to the motivations and self-understandings of international students, too.

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Mittelmeier, J., Rienties, B., Templaar, D., & Whitelock, D. (2018). Overcoming cross-cultural group work tensions: Student perspectives on the role of social relationships. Higher Education, 75, 149–166. Montgomery, C., & McDowell, L. (2009). Social networks and the international student experience. An international community of practice? Journal of Studies in International Education, 13(4), 455–466. Morrison, J., Merrick, B., Higgs, S., & Le Metais, J. (2005). Researching the performance of international students in the UK. Studies in Higher Education, 30(3), 327–337. Murphy-Lejeune, E. (2002). Student mobility and narrative in Europe. The new strangers. Routledge. Nguyen, J., Carter, J. S., & Carter, S. K. (2019). From yellow peril to model minority: Perceived threat by Asian Americans in employment. Social Science Quarterly, 100(3), 565–577. O’Connor, S. (2018). Problematising strategic internationalisation: Tensions and conflicts between international student recruitment and integration policy in Ireland. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 339–352. Pais, A., & Costa, M. (2020). An ideology critique of global citizenship education. Critical Studies in Education, 61(1), 1–16. Page, A., & Chahboun, S. (2019). Emerging empowerment of international students: How international student literature has shifted to include the students’ voices. Higher Education, 78, 871–885. Reay, D., David, M., & Ball, S. (2005). Degrees of choice: Social class, race and gender in higher education. Trentham Books. Rienties, B., Beausaert, S., Grohnert, T., Niemantsverdriet, S., & Kommers, P. (2012). Understanding academic performance of international students: The role of ethnicity, academic and social integration. Higher Education, 63, 685–700. Rienties, B., Heliot, Y., & Jindal-snape, D. (2013). Understanding social learning relations of international students in a large classroom using social network analysis. Higher Education, 66, 489–504. Roberts, A., Chou, P., & Ching, G. (2010). Contemporary trends in East Asian higher education: Dispositions of international students in a Taiwan university. Higher Education, 59, 149–166. Ryan, J. (2016). ‘Asian’ learners or ‘internationalised’ learners? Taking advantage of international cultural academic flows. East Asia, 33, 9–24. Sawir, E. (2011). Academic staff response to international students and internationalising the curriculum: The impact of disciplinary differences. International Journal for Academic Development, 16, 45–57.

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Sawir, E. (2013). Internationalisation of higher education curriculum: The contribution of international students. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 11(3), 359–378. Song, X. (2016). ‘Critical thinking’ and pedagogical implications for higher education. East Asia, 33, 25–40. Song, X., & McCarthy, G. (2018). Governing Asian international students: The policy and practice of essentialising ‘critical thinking’. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 353–365. Straker, J. (2016). International student participation in higher education: Changing the focus from ‘international students’ to ‘participation’. Journal of Studies in International Education, 20(4), 299–318. Stein, S., & de Andreotti, V. (2016). Cash, competition or charity: International students and the global imaginary. Higher Education, 72, 225–239. Tannock, S. (2018). Educational equality and international students. Justice across borders. Palgrave Macmillan. Tebbett, N., Jöns, H., & Hoyler, M. (2021). Openness towards diversity? Cultural homophily in student perceptions of teaching and learning provided by international and home academic. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(5), 522–544. Trahar, S. (2010). Has everybody seen a swan? Stories from the internationalised classroom. In E. Jones (Ed.), Internationalising the student voice. Routledge. Tran, L. T. (2011). Committed, face value, hybrid or mutual adaptation? The experiences of international students in Australian higher education. Educational Review, 63(1), 79–94. Tran, L. T., & Vu, T. T. P. (2018). ‘Agency in mobility’: Towards a conceptualisation of international students’ agency in transnational mobility. Educational Review, 70(2), 167–187. Turner, Y. (2006). Students from mainland China and critical thinking in postgraduate business and management degrees: Teasing out tensions of culture, style and substance. International Journal of Management Education, 5(1), 3–12. van der Wende, M. (2011). The emergence of liberal arts and science in Europe: A comparative perspective. Higher Education Policy, 24(2), 233–253. Wang, J. J. (2013). Understanding the Chinese learners from a perspective of Confucianism. In M.  Cortazzi & L.  X. Jin (Eds.), Researching cultures of learning: International perspectives on language learning and education (pp. 61–79). Palgrave Macmillan.

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7 Ethics and Student Mobility

Introduction In the preceding chapters, Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities has dealt with various ethical issues evoked by international student mobilities. We have discussed how the ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ have been represented in prevailing discussions of ISM (the non-West seen as somehow lacking); how students have experienced (negatively) the classroom setting; how they have been conceptualised habitually as ‘cash cows’ and their value discussed in terms of ‘capital’ (trumping any human dimensions). As we have seen more recently, international students have been a ‘casualty’ of COVID-19—forced to endure hostility, violence, isolation (and even destitution) in their host countries, being threatened with deportation or unable to return to their host country to study. All these issues point to the question of ethics and, in particular, the ethical treatment of international students. This chapter, therefore, is intentionally positioned towards the end of the book to bring together and consolidate a vital consideration of ethics—to foreground and emphasise the importance that we, as researchers, attach to ethics in

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studying education. Indeed, we are not alone with this view. Most higher education practitioners would probably agree that what we are engaged in is an ethical endeavour—or at least that ethical principles should underpin teaching, research and the other activities undertaken by and within universities. Although there are clearly many different theories of ethics, at a very general level, ethical practice is associated with showing concern for other people, rather than merely pursuing one’s own interests, and respecting others’ rights and dignity. In relation to education, this is often understood to include treating students and prospective students fairly and equitably, and providing a suitable environment for them to be able to develop both intellectually and personally. Lomer (2017), for example, has argued: All education is an ethical matter, inasmuch as it entails responsibility for critical empowerment, facilitating a space for individual becoming, and teaching for the critical engagement of social citizens. These opportunities rely on relationships to thrive, to ensure that ‘becoming’ is a question of students’ agency rather than an imposed production route to a disciplined being. (pp. 15–16)

The discipline of geography has also contributed to such understandings, with scholars drawing on Massey’s (2004) discussion of the ‘geographies of responsibility’ to argue that those working within higher education systems of the Global North have a duty to consider colonial legacies in their teaching practices, and develop pedagogies that are based on principles of interdependence and mutuality (Madge et al., 2009). Nevertheless, despite the often-prominent place of ethical statements within institutional policies and documentation, research has indicated that the treatment of international students often falls short of espoused standards. It has also indicated that international students are frequently excluded from policies aimed to increase equity between students, while some forms of unethical treatment—such as those related to colonial legacies (see Chaps. 4 and 6)—are rarely addressed in either policy or practice. In this chapter, we focus specifically on what we consider to be some of the key ethical challenges associated with student mobility, that affect both the lived experiences of individuals and broader relationships

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between nations. While we acknowledge that international students are agentic actors who are not mere recipients of policy and practice in the ‘destination’ country, our discussion in this chapter centres primarily on the actions of national governments and higher education institutions— in recognition of the significant power they exert on the experiences of mobile students (and the focus of extant research in this area). We first consider issues associated with access to educational mobility—and how this impacts debates about equity and fairness. We then develop this discussion by juxtaposing the treatment of home and international students. Indeed, while many countries have implemented policies to increase the social diversity of the population of ‘home’ students, these are almost never replicated with respect to their ‘international’ peers. Moreover, international students often suffer worse experiences than domestic students during their time at university  because of, for example, the higher fees they have to pay, the more limited work opportunities available to them, and their greater propensity to experience racism and discrimination. The chapter then examines the ways in which international students are constructed in marketing, media and policy texts from around the world, and argues that we see inequalities here, too—as international students are frequently positioned as economic or political resources, in need of tutelage from nations of the Global North. Finally, the chapter maintains that while international student mobility can, in some circumstances, be advantageous for both sending and receiving countries, it can also work to exacerbate inequalities between nation-­ states and this, also, has ethical implications.

Who Goes Abroad? Who Benefits? In Chap. 3, we argued that over recent years we have seen a degree of change in the profile of those who take up opportunities to study abroad. Nevertheless, a key ethical concern remains the ways in which student mobility continues, in many cases, to advantage those from more privileged backgrounds (see Chap. 4)—thus not enabling equality of access, and reducing the capacity of education to act as a ‘social leveller’ (through promoting social mobility). Here, there are many parallels with the large

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literature in the sociology of education that has been concerned to document the various ways in which education systems across the world reproduce social inequalities (Brooks, 2019). Cross-border movement, itself, has now come to be seen as central to ‘successful’ youth biographies, as Farrugia (2018) has contended: ‘Mobility is critical to the formation of valorised youth subjectivities which represent the cultivation of distinction through identification with a “global” outlook’ (p. 105). Students from more affluent and educated families are still more likely than others to move abroad for their higher education, and to experience smooth transitions on arrival (Rose-Redwood & Rose-Redwood, 2019), while a period studying in another country continues, in many contexts, to offer an employment advantage (e.g. Wiers-Jensen, 2019). Even in Luxembourg, where a large majority of students move abroad for some or all of their higher education, such mobility can serve to exacerbate social inequalities. Kmiotek-Meier et al. (2020) show how it remains an important part of elite formation, enabling those who will go on to hold positions of power nationally to build networks that will help to sustain the country’s Europeanised outlook. Although it has become more acceptable among younger generations in Luxembourg not to move abroad, differences in family background remain: the parents of those who study abroad typically have a higher level of academic qualification than the parents of those who remain in the country for the whole of their higher education. Similar trends are evidenced in a wide variety of other studies from across the globe. Within Australia, for example, Dall’Alba and Sidhu (2015) argue that the University of Queensland promotes short-­ term student mobility as a capital accumulation strategy and a means for students to acquire ‘distinction’. The vast majority of students who took up these opportunities were from professional or managerial backgrounds aiming to gain life experience and move outside their comfort zones. Reflecting on the motivations and experiences of these mobile students, Dall’Alba and Sidhu speculate that ‘this configuration produces a habitus for the contemporary graduate-cum-citizen who is able to engage successfully with market-driven competition and globalisation’ (p. 739). While there is some recognition of these inequalities, and a small number of institutions and organisations have taken steps to ameliorate them (see Chap. 3), overall, there is relatively little action in this area. For

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example, in their analysis of formal documents associated with the Bologna Process (an initiative intended to increase coherence among higher education systems across Europe), Powell and Finger (2013) contend that while there is some awareness of the social inequalities that underpin patterns of student mobility, in general, issues related to social selectivity and its effect on social mobility are understated, and there is very little discussion of the mechanisms that could reduce such inequalities (although, as we note at the end of Chap. 3, there has been some recent interest in widening participation in the Erasmus scheme). Moreover, because of the ways in which ideas of social justice tend to be framed within national contexts (see later discussion), little, if any, pressure is placed on higher education institutions or national policymakers to increase the social diversity of incoming mobile students (Tannock, 2018). Student mobility can also serve to reproduce inequalities beyond the level of the individual. Indeed, the University of Queensland scheme, mentioned above, is, Dall’Alba and Sidhu (2015) suggest, largely underpinned by the university’s strategy to consolidate its position as an elite institution in an increasingly stratified field. We consider these additional inequalities in more detail later in the chapter when we focus specifically on the impact of student mobility on relationships between nation-states.

Differential Treatment Fees and Work Perhaps the most obvious and frequently-discussed difference between how domestic and international students are treated, in many parts of the world, is the level of fee they are asked to pay. Although in some countries, international students pay no fees at all (e.g. Norway, Slovak Republic, Slovenia) or the same as domestic students (e.g. Chile, Israel, Italy), in many parts of the world, the discrepancy is large. Indeed, the OECD (2018) notes that about half the countries where national data are available charge higher fees to international students. For example, at

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Imperial College London, for the 2021/2022 academic year, UK students paid £9250 per year for an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, while the comparable fee for international students was £34,500. Charging international students high fees, and indeed increasing the number of such students, has been a key means of mitigating cuts to public funding of higher education, that have occurred in many nations since the late 1980s (O’Connor, 2018; Raghuram et al., 2020; Tannock, 2018). Perhaps unsurprisingly, this rationale is rarely made explicit to international students (Robertson, 2013); instead, formal explanations for fee differentials tend to focus on caps for fees charged to domestic students (where these exist)—suggesting that international students are paying for the actual cost of their education, while domestic students are not—or that the families of domestic students also contribute to the cost of their education through the taxes they pay, and so are entitled to pay lower fees or no fees at all. Despite strong initial opposition to differential fees when they were first introduced (in countries where they are payable), they now tend to be fully accepted by most policymakers and higher education leaders, and embraced for their income generation possibilities (Tannock, 2018). While charging people of different nationalities different prices for the same product would, in most areas of life, be seen as highly discriminatory and probably illegal, the ethical implications of differential fees are rarely articulated (Raghuram et al., 2020). Indeed, campaigning by the UK’s national students’ union on behalf of international students has focused on ‘fixed fees’ (i.e. ensuring fees do not increase during an international students’ programme of study) rather than removing or even reducing the difference between the fees charged to ‘home’ and international students (Tannock, 2018). The academic literature has also been relatively silent on this issue—Raghuram et  al. (2020) note that academics and higher education institutions have failed both to question adequately the entanglement between national fees and those paid by international students, and to highlight the ethical and political need to do so. International students themselves are not, however, equally oblivious to the ethical implications of fee differentials, particularly when they also do not have access to the same scholarship opportunities as many domestic students; it has been a key grievance of

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some Chinese students studying in Western universities, for example (Fong, 2011). There are also other differences, related to finance, experienced by international students. Many, particularly in China and India, apply through ‘education brokers’. Fong (2011) notes the very high cost in China of using either a prestigious broker, with a reputation for reliability, or one willing to provide illegal documents and services. She also argues that some of the brokers used by her respondents (Chinese students intending to move to a Western country for higher education) engaged in dishonest practices in order to earn more commission: as they were paid per student who ultimately enrolled, some gave overly low estimates about the likely cost of living in particular cities and/or countries, in order to entice students, even if they suspected the students were likely to have trouble affording it. Brokers or agents can also experience pressures to recruit because they may lose their job if they fail to meet their recruitment targets (Beech, 2018). In the US, the use of such intermediaries, by American students seeking study abroad, is illegal, primarily because of ethical concerns about incentivised recruitment (ibid.). It is interesting to note, however, that the same prescription does not apply to the recruitment of international students to the US (ibid.). Students paying high fees for their education are often keen to work part-time during their studies to improve their financial situation, while securing a job post-graduation in the country of study can be an important driver of a decision to study abroad in the first place (see discussion in Chap. 5). Nevertheless, in this area, too, international students are often treated differently from their domestic peers. In some countries (such as the US, France, Ireland and the UK until relatively recently), it can be extremely difficult for international students to stay on to work post-graduation, often becoming subject to strict immigration policies as soon as their student status ends (Moskal, 2017; O’Connor, 2018; Robertson, 2013). In other nations (such as Australia and Canada), however, international students are often encouraged precisely because of their potential labour market contribution, and used to fill specific skills gaps (O’Connor, 2018). Concerns have also been raised, within this latter group of nations, about the ethics of attracting students as, at least in part, future workers. Fong (2011) writes:

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One of the ways developed countries have managed to maintain strong economies despite rising dependency burdens is by attracting young immigrants from the developed world while limiting social welfare costs through immigration policies that allowed developed countries to benefit from the labour and intellectual and economic capital of foreign students and workers during the young, productive, healthy parts of their lifecycles. Meanwhile, the homelands of these foreign students have to bear the social welfare costs generated by the children, the elderly, the ill and the disabled who were left behind. (p. 139)

Moreover, even in countries where international students have the legal right to stay on and work, it is not always easy to secure employment (Chacko, 2020). Indeed, some of Fong’s (2011) respondents—who had moved from China to various Western countries for their higher education—found it difficult to gain white collar work in the country they had studied in because their language was deemed inadequate and/or they had faced some form of racial, ethnic and/or cultural discrimination. Fong notes that ‘Some Chinese citizens were dismayed to learn after completing college in developed countries that the developed world credentials they had thought would bring them upward mobility ended up being almost useless’ (p.  139). In such cases, implicit promises of the value of an international education were felt not to have been kept. Similar disappointments are noted in Moskal’s (2017) research with students from Indonesia and Thailand, as well as China, in the UK. He demonstrates that while they expected that their international experience would reduce barriers to the UK labour market, many struggled to find jobs at all, and relatively few had positive labour market experiences. Ethical issues are brought into sharp relief here, with respect to both differential treatment within the labour market, and a belief that international students were often being misled about the future value of their qualification.

Monitoring and Surveillance The differential treatment of international students is also played out with respect to their monitoring by the state. This has been especially

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marked in the UK over the past decade as governments have implemented ‘hostile environment’ policies to deter immigration. This has included processes of ‘everyday bordering’ (Yuval Davis et al., 2019), where various people who potentially come into contact with immigrants, such as landlords, healthcare professionals and employers, are required to take on monitoring functions and ensure that the individuals they deal with have a right to be in the country (see also O’Connor (2018) with respect to Ireland). Higher education staff have been compelled to engage in such ‘borderguard’ duties, including checking the attendance of international students. While some universities have chosen to subject all students to identical forms of monitoring, others have introduced specific monitoring processes for just those from outside the EU. In these circumstances, educational objectives have been subordinated to those associated with immigration policy. As one member of staff working in a university international office remarked, ‘What’s happening now is immigration is dictating policy and universities are twisting themselves inside out in order to deliver on compliance targets’ (quoted in Tannock, 2018, p.  49). Moreover, students attending lower status higher education institutions and/or from lower socio-economic groups tend to be more adversely affected by such policies. Yuval Davis et al. (2019) maintain: Foreign students who attend elite universities and private colleges and have a wealth of social and economic capital to support them do not encounter the difficulties experienced by students from poorer backgrounds. This places a differential burden on contrasting institutions of education that are obliged to manage the border. Administrators encounter students from particular, racialised minority populations and from less privileged positions who feel they have to over-comply in carrying out monitoring duties. (p. 127)

Fong (2011) shows clearly how international students can suffer from the monitoring of the institutions they attend. Several of her respondents (Chinese students, who had moved to the West for higher education) described government crackdowns on the schools they were attending to improve their English, prior to applying for a university place. Some schools were shut down—because their attendance records did not

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adequately match those students who were showing up for class—affecting even those who had attended diligently. In such cases, students typically lost their tuition fees and were sometimes at risk of losing their student visa, because of suspicions about their attendance. In Australia, the closure of private colleges in similar circumstances led the Federation of Indian Students in Australia to frame the issue as a human rights violation, because of the loss of money involved and the ensuing change of status from student to ‘refugee’ (Robertson, 2013). It is important to note, however, that the experiences of mobile students can differ significantly by country; national migration policies help to determine the extent to which international students experience borders as open or closed (Levatino et al., 2019).

Racism and Discrimination Discrimination can also be experienced within the university environment, at the hands of other students or even staff. As we demonstrate in Chap. 6, students from East Asian countries, in particular, often have to contend with various stereotypes of the ‘Oriental other’ that assume they are passive and needy learners (Heng, 2018; O’Connor, 2018), while the social segregation between students we discuss in Chaps. 2 and 6 can also be based on discriminatory attitudes (Rose-Redwood & Rose-Redwood, 2019). Moreover, the construction of international students as ‘mere migration hunters’, in countries where there is a well-established pathway from higher education to citizenship, can undermine the sense of responsibility teachers feel for the academic progress of such students within the classroom (Tran & Vu, 2016). Discrimination can also manifest itself in more direct and violent ways (Baas, 2014; Park, 2010). Indeed, in their research at a UK university, Brown and Jones (2013) found that almost a third of the international students they surveyed had experienced some form of abuse. In most cases this was verbal, but in a small number of cases it manifested itself physically. This has been brought into sharp relief more recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic. International students from China have faced discrimination in many Anglophone countries as a result of coronavirus being labelled a ‘Chinese virus’ by the

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media (Mittelmeier & Cockayne, 2020) and some prominent politicians, such as Donald Trump (Gao & Sai, 2020; Zheng et al., 2020), and prejudice against mask-wearing in the early months of the pandemic before such practices became widely mandated (Wang, 2020). Drawing on her research with international students in Ireland, O’Connor (2018), argues that a ‘hierarchy of acceptability’ operates within the higher education sector, primarily through a lens of Whiteness. By this, she means that discrimination is not experienced equally by all international students, with non-Whites more likely to be subject to negative comments and criticism than their White peers. She points out that while various different nationalities of international students tended to cluster together in separate groups on the campus at which she conducted fieldwork, it was only the practices of the Chinese and Malaysian students that were deemed problematic by university staff. Clustering by Chinese and Malaysian students was seen as ‘self-segregation’ and evidence of their own responsibility for their lack of social integration, while identical clustering by Canadian students was not discussed in the same terms (see discussion in Chaps. 2, 4 and 6). O’Connor goes on to argue: ‘This is an example of how the categorisation of students by the university can reinforce a distinctly racialised discourse that problematises the presence of Malaysians as a group whose relations with others set them apart and require active management, while White Western students are free to make their own choices of who[m] to socialise or live with’ (p. 348). This hierarchy of acceptability, played out through a lens of Whiteness, is evident in other national contexts, too (see, for example, Lee’s (2020), discussion of the preferential treatment given to White Western international students in China). Jon (2012) shows how similar judgements are sometimes made by students themselves, in this case in a university in South Korea, which can lead to the marginalisation of international students. She argues that perceived power differentials, by country of origin, affected the relationships between the students she observed. In general, Korean students felt themselves to have lower status than international students from Western Europe, but higher status than those from other Asian countries, particularly those that were viewed as ‘less developed’. Language was also significant, with the Korean students showing a preference for international

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students who spoke English, and thus rejecting Chinese students as friends on this basis (see also Yang, 2016). In this example, despite the manifold advantages of being able to speak Chinese languages, students were keener to improve their ability at speaking a language more obviously associated with ‘the West’. Jon concludes that the patterns of social interaction she observed can be understood as a form of neo-racism, in which discrimination operates on the basis of nationality and culture rather than physical differences alone. Similar arguments are made with respect to students at the prestigious ‘Grandes Ecoles’ in France. Darchy-­ Koechlin and Draelants (2010) maintain that, despite the difficulty of gaining a place at these schools, enrolled international students are not seen as equal to their French peers. They note that, in one of the institutions in which they conducted research, ‘one student explained to us how foreign students were quickly associated to the GNP [Gross National Product] of their country and next indexed (ranked) by certain French students based on a global economic scale of countries (rich/poor)’ (p.  438). These accounts accord with Stein and de Andreotti’s (2016) concept of a dominant ‘global imaginary’, in which the West is understood to be at the top of a global hierarchy ‘with the rest of the world trailing behind’ (p. 226). As well as serving to establish a degree from a Western country as a highly desirable product, such a hierarchy additionally ‘underlies the racist reception of many international students by their faculty and staff’ (ibid.). We discuss this further below. In other cases, discrimination is related more closely to fears on the part of domestic students and the population at large about ‘foreign talent’ and the increasing competition for jobs. This appears to be the case for Chinese scholars in Singapore, as Yang’s (2016) research attests. Yang also notes, however, that racism against international students may be linked to more generalised fears about identity and belonging. He writes: ‘As a young and ethno-linguistically diverse nation, Singaporeans may be nervous that their fragile sense of national identity and belonging will be diluted, as large numbers of foreign interlopers come to live among them without seeming to bother to assimilate or even interact meaningfully’ (p. 4). Certainly, within the UK, there is some evidence that international students can become caught up in broader debates about immigration and national belonging. Black international students, for example, are

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subject to racism that is only partially related to their status as international students (Hyams-Ssekasi & Caldwell, 2019). Experiences of racism can, unsurprisingly, have a profound influence on international students, both inside and outside the classroom, resulting in loneliness, sadness, homesickness and anger (Brown & Jones, 2013; Sawir et  al., 2019). Drawing on their own experience of being Japanese international students in Canadian classrooms, Maynzumi et al. (2019) outline how racial discrimination impacted on their education. They recall how teachers and other students misread their lack of confidence at speaking English as being ‘quiet’ and so, they argue, they were often overlooked and effectively silenced in class. Such experiences can drive vicious circles: a common response to racism is to try to reduce one’s visibility in the classroom, even if this means being viewed as academically unsuccessful and reinforcing stereotypes about the attainment of international students (Hayes, 2019) (see Chap. 6 for further details). Kim (2011) argues that, for transnationally mobile students, experiences of social exclusion and discrimination can produce paradoxical effects. Indeed, she contends that for the young Asian women in her sample, experiences of studying abroad enhanced, rather than diminished, their national identity: the marginalisation that they faced increased the likelihood that they would ‘withdraw to their ethnic enclaves, their own communication spaces, channels and networks’ as sources of daily sustenance (p. 10).

Ability to Seek Redress Finally, international students experience poorer treatment compared to domestic students in both how, collectively, they are discussed in (or absent from) education policy, and their ability, as individuals, to seek redress for problems they face during their studies. As Brown and Tannock (2009) have argued, and as we have mentioned in earlier parts of this book, because issues related to equality are articulated largely at the level of the nation-state, international students are often excluded from such considerations:

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With international students, there are no strong equity demands to accept lower achieving students from disadvantaged social backgrounds, provide free or heavily subsidised student tuition, emphasise social science and humanities education relevant to students’ personal identities or support the needs and interests of local communities surrounding college campuses as there are for higher education students domestically. (Brown & Tannock, 2009, p. 384)

Moreover, as universities have increased their numbers of international students, so they have become less dependent on nationally-framed expectations that they will promote the public good (Naidoo, 2003). Various scholars have also shown how the formal, legal rights of international students, articulated for example in the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights, often do not translate in any straightforward fashion in to on-the-ground experiences (Hayes, 2019; Marginson, 2012). Marginson (2012) has argued that while international students are affected by two regulatory regimes—in the country of their citizenship and the country in which they study—they are often not fully protected by either. This legal position has, he suggests, three particular implications for international students. First, and as has been discussed in various parts of this chapter already, they are positioned as outsiders in the country in which they are studying—sometimes welcomed and valued for their contributions and, at other times (for example, in the US after 9/11), seen as a threat to the constitution of the nation-state: In threat mode, the nation-state focuses on its own welfare and security, asserts its own interests as a right, and models the students as outsiders without intrinsic rights. In this mode it is difficult for nation-states to conceive of international students (temporary) insiders with legitimate issue of their human security and rights. (Marginson, 2012, p. 500, emphasis in the original)

Second, because students are subject to two national regimes they can also be affected by the legal and political relationships between the two. This can be seen with respect to the steps Russia took to encourage its nationals to return from studying in the UK, following the Skripal

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poisoning case in 20181 (SI News, 2018), and China’s interventions in Australia and New Zealand after concerns about the security of Chinese students studying there (Marginson, 2012). Third, and like many transnational migrants, international students experience incomplete legal protection because of their ‘in-between’ status, and often cannot exercise full agency as a citizen in either their country of origin or destination. They typically do not have full access to their home legal, welfare and political systems and, equally, have a different status from local citizens in the country in which they are studying. The nature of this difference (and where boundaries are drawn) does, however, differ geographically. For example, within countries of the European Union, students from other EU nations are treated more favourably than those from outside the EU. Marginson (2012) concludes by maintaining that, to be the self-­ determining person imagined within the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights, international students must be given sufficient legal protection so that they are able to exert their agency within their country of study. He suggests that nations should ensure that international students are accorded the same rights as students who are citizens of that country, and a global architecture (established through bilateral agreements or global agencies) is developed to ensure such rights. Tannock (2018) largely shares this analysis of the problems faced by international students because of their particular legal status but suggests that solutions are more likely to be found at the local level—as a result of the action taken ‘by particular groups, in particular struggles for particular stakes’ (p. 224). From his perspective, there is no need for one global framework to protect the legal rights and ensure the ethical treatment of international students; instead, he advocates the development of a multiplicity of frames for understanding and promoting educational equality and justice.

 Sergei Skripal (a former Russian intelligence officer) and his daughter Yulia, were poisoned in the UK. After an investigation, the UK government accused Russia of attempted murder and took a series of punitive measures against the Russian state. 1

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 onstruction of Students in Policy, Marketing C and Media Texts Ethical considerations extend not just to the everyday interactions and experiences of international students, but also to the ways in which they are constructed in various texts. While in the section above, we referred to the substantive content of some policies (for example, in relation to the monitoring and surveillance of international students), in this part of the chapter we focus more specifically on the ways in which students are discursively constructed in policy, marketing and media materials, and the impacts these can have on, for example, students’ sense of belonging. Such texts do not simply respond to issues in the social world but help to shape the ways in which we understand the society around us (Bacchi, 2000). They construct certain possibilities for thought by ordering and combining words in particular ways, and excluding or displacing other combinations (Ball, 1990, p. 18). Writing with respect to education policy, in particular, Lomer (2017) maintains that policy discourses: enter public awareness and may influence institutional policies and discourses, expressed through marketing materials. They may also influence academics’ representations of international education and students and therefore classroom practices. …. They have the power to alter conversations, interactions and consequently relationships between staff and students, and between students. (p. 15)

Indeed, there is now some evidence that higher education students are aware of the dominant ways in which they are viewed by politicians and policymakers (e.g. Abrahams & Brooks, 2019). In this section, we first consider dominant tropes about international students in policy and marketing texts, as the two are often closely intertwined, before moving on to consider the conceptualisations prevalent in media reports. In both cases, we consider the ethical implications that flow from these particular constructions.

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Policy and Marketing Texts Analyses of the constructions of international students in policy and marketing texts have tended to concentrate, primarily, on Anglophone nations (likely because these countries have been producing such texts for a relatively long period of time). Lomer (2017) and Findlay et al. (2017) have focused on the UK specifically. Writing with respect to UK government policies, Lomer argues that international students are represented in a range of ways: as ambassadors (related to assertions that they often exercise ‘soft power’, to the UK’s benefit, on return home, and concerns about decline in the nation’s global influence); as educational resources (in terms of the diversity that they bring to UK higher education classrooms); as in cultural deficit (referring to, for example, their supposed passivity in classrooms); as financial resources (for ensuring the feasibility of courses that tend to be unpopular among UK nationals, and for shoring up UK HEIs more generally); and as migrants (related to a broader UK context in which immigration is seen by many as a serious social problem). She notes that several of these constructions are in conflict— for example, ‘Students who are supposed to be developing lasting respect and affiliation with the politics of a country are nevertheless interrogated by immigration officials and prevented from staying on after their degree’ (p.  219). Similar tensions are noted by Findlay et  al. (2017) in their research on how ISM is promoted to prospective incoming students by a variety of agencies within the UK. They argue this is particularly apparent with respect to messages about the wider significance of studying abroad; UK universities have had to find a way of marketing their study opportunities without being able to offer prospective students possibilities for future employment or citizenship because of the UK’s strict immigration rules operating at the time of their research (these were relaxed slightly in 2019, as we note in Chap. 5). Findlay et al. suggest that the UK HE sector responded to this dilemma by drawing on a discourse of ‘global citizenship’. In this way, ‘international students wishing to study abroad as part of a wider desire to move internationally for more than study (i.e. for access to employment in the global economy and other

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international life opportunities) can be sold the possibility of studying abroad as a launch pad for later mobility’ (p. 151). Studies that have explored constructions in other Anglophone nations have focused on how international students are typically portrayed as economic objects in both policy texts and marketing materials. Karram’s (2013) analysis of such texts from Australia, Canada, the UK and US identified two distinct discourses. In the first, dominant in policy texts, international students were objectified as tradable objects in relation to national-level competitiveness, and very little was said about their day-to-­ day experiences. This discourse, she maintains, ‘uses the language of competition, laced with a sense of urgency, and constructs the international student population as a market rather than stakeholders in the migration process’ (n.p.). The second discourse, more common in institutional materials, focused on means for supporting international students, used a language of accommodation and care, and positioned students and institutions (rather than national governments) as key constituents. Karram argues that this discourse is a subsidiary one and, while representing international students in a more positive manner, may ultimately serve to prevent change through ‘deflecting attention from the inherent inequalities of foreign student recruitment and regulation at a national level where students are constructed as markets’ (n.p.). There are some similarities here with Sidhu’s (2006) earlier work on dominant tropes in the higher education marketing materials of Australia, the UK and US. Sidhu notes, however, that while the UK and Australia commonly constructed the international student as an object of trade, rather different representations were evident in the US at the time of her research, informed by the desire to maintain its role as a world leader, both politically and economically. Thus, the  international student tended to be positioned as ‘valuable human capital with the potential to contribute to the American enterprise in the “global talent race” and as an ally who will uphold America’s interests overseas’ (Sidhu, 2006, p. 297). National variations have also been outlined in work that has focused on Europe, including a number of non-Anglophone countries. Brooks (2018a) has shown how, while all of the six countries in her research (Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain) tended to foreground student mobility as part of prominent internationalisation

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strategies, how they discussed mobile students were notably different. These differences related to the scale of desired mobility—for example, the relative emphasis placed on intra-national, European or worldwide mobility—and, with respect to inward mobility, the types of student that were desired or at least welcomed. There was a significant contrast between the central place accorded to refugee students within German policy documents, on the one hand, and the emphasis on recruiting only the ‘brightest and the best’ in the English texts (see also Brooks, 2018b), on the other hand—linked to rather different articulations of the ‘politics of responsibility’ (Massey, 2004). Moreover, the strong focus on promoting intra-European student mobility evident in the Spanish and German documents (often linking clearly to a desire to inculcate a strong European identity among the young) was notably absent in the Danish and English texts. Here, there is distinct evidence of wider political cultures within specific nation-states (for example, in relation to the strength of Euroscepticism) framing the construction of the mobile student. As noted above, it is likely that the ways in which students are discussed in such texts affects how they are thought about by others in society, as well as how they understand their own position within the country in which they are studying (or considering studying). In many of the constructions discussed previously, students are talked about in a pejorative manner—valued for their money and future political contribution rather than their selves, and in cultural deficit, for example. Policy and marketing texts—as mentioned briefly above—can furthermore serve to position some types of international students as less desirable or worthy than others. This can be carried out through substantive policies, such as increasing the required level of savings students need to have to secure a study visa, conveying the message that only the wealthy are welcome (Robertson, 2013). It can also be achieved through the language used. Within the UK, for example, policy has often emphasised the importance of attracting the very strongest international students and deterring those who are seen to prop up ‘bogus colleges’ (see Chap. 5). It is notable that rather than concern being expressed about ‘bogus colleges’ potentially harming the international students who enrol at them, the focus is instead on the harm being done to UK students through the continued existence of such colleges funded largely through international students’ fees (Brooks, 2018b).

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Analyses of policy texts have often argued that the framing of international students is informed by neo-colonial assumptions. Reflecting the discussion above about the ways in which racism can play out within universities, policy can frequently reinforce a putative hierarchy of nations, in which those from the Global North occupy positions at the top. Indeed, Stein and de Andreotti (2016) maintain that such a hierarchy constitutes a particular ‘global imaginary’ which informs numerous policies related to the recruitment of international students. They contend that, in Canada, this has been played out through three particular tropes, which they refer to as ‘cash’, ‘competition’ and ‘charity’. As might be expected, the first positions international students as a source of income, but also intellectual capital, which supports the continued prosperity of Western nations and their universities. ‘Competition’ denotes the positioning of international students as unworthy and inferior participants in the contest for educational and employment opportunities. This trope is perhaps more likely to be found in media and popular discourse rather than governmental policy documents, but does underpin the initiatives taken by some countries (such as the UK, France and the US) to make it difficult for international students to enter the labour market on completion of their studies. Finally, ‘charity’ refers to the policy discourse in which international students are understood as objects of development, and recipients of what is assumed to be the West’s ‘universal knowledge’ (see Chap. 6). Stein and de Andreotti (2016) note, however, that this third trope has become less prevalent as the number of international students has grown significantly and they have become increasingly important for many universities’ financial health. Neo-colonial assumptions are also evident in what is absent from policy, as well as what is present. For example, writing with reference to England’s Teaching Excellence Framework (a policy introduced in 2016 that aims to improve teaching quality through regular institutional assessment), Hayes (2019) notes that while certain types of diversity are recognised explicitly within the policy, that presented by international students is not. Thus, while higher education institutions are expected to show what they are doing to promote the learning and attainment of students who are Black or minority ethnic, mature, disabled and/or from working class backgrounds, they are not required to demonstrate an equal degree

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of attention to international students. Similarly, Tannock (2018) has shown that while English higher education institutions are required by government to take action to ‘widen participation’ among their student body, policies commonly focus exclusively on home students. Moreover, unlike their domestic counterparts, data are not collected about the social background of international students. Policies produced by individual higher education institutions have also been subject to analysis. Discussing international students in Canada, Stein and de Andreotti (2016) note that, in response to concerns about the treatment of this group, the ethics of internationalisation has become a prominent topic of debate. However, they go on to argue that work in this area has tended to reproduce, rather than dismantle, ideas about global hierarchies and the dominance of nations located within the Global North. Examining the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) strategic plan, written in 2014, they note that while there has been a change in the vocabulary used in this and other such documents, underlying assumptions—what they call the ‘grammar’ of such documents— have not altered. This is evident, they contend, in the following example from the strategic plan: ‘UBC assumes its responsibilities at the centre of dialogue and activity, leading a moral approach to working with sister institutions to strengthen Canada’s role on the world stage’. Here, ethics is instrumentalised as a means of maintaining Canada’s economic advantage, and securing UBC’s place at the centre of developments. Thus, Stein and de Andreotti assert that even language intended to address problems of racism can have the effect of underlining assumptions about Western superiority. Such representations in policy and marketing texts have clear ethical implications. For example, constructing international students as primarily economic objects or migrants can obscure the potential for such individuals to be marginalised and suffer racism, in the ways described earlier in this chapter (O’Connor, 2018; Robertson, 2013). Moreover, as Lomer (2017) has argued, if students are positioned in limited ways within policy discourses, this may affect relationships within the higher education classroom and promote a narrow ‘mode of being’, thus reducing the possibilities for agency and critical engagement (p. 16).

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Media Texts We see similar themes to those within policy documents emerging from how international students are covered by the media—particularly the print media. Previous research that we have conducted has suggested that, within UK newspapers, international students from East Asia tend to be discussed in more positive terms than do domestic students (i.e. UK nationals) with East Asian heritage (Brooks, 2017). This difference can be explained, we argue, in terms of the ways in which the former group are seen to be of economic value (in relation to the high fees paid) and not a threat to the racial make-up of the country—because, unlike domestic East Asian students, it is assumed that they will return to their country of origin on completion of their studies. Nevertheless, the majority of work in this area has painted a rather different picture, and points to the more negative terms in which international students are frequently discussed. Collins (2006), for example, also focused on the media portrayal of East Asian international students but, in this case, in New Zealand rather than the UK. He contends that they are constructed in one of three ways: as an economic object, an exotic other, or as a social problem. These work together to construct a ‘spatial imaginary of the Asian student body’ and, because it is difficult to distinguish between Asian international students and those who are New Zealand citizens, such understandings are applied to all East Asian young people, even if they are permanent residents. Collins argues that they thus reinforce ‘a fixed economic, cultural and social distance between a singular discursive “self ”, New Zealander, and a singular discursive “other”, Asian student’ (p. 231). Such constructions are, however, often relatively unstable, and can differ as the wider context changes. For example, Robertson (2013) shows how the media portrayal of international students in Australia shifted significantly in the mid-­2000s. Prior to this date, they were typically viewed as ‘elite, affluent, inner-city transient[s]’ (p. 55). However, as a result of policy changes in 2004–2005, which opened up a new vocationally-focused education pathway for international students, the social and class demographics of student-migrants altered considerably (see discussion in Chap. 3) which, in turn, had a significant effect on how they were covered in the press. Robertson notes that in the late 2000s, two new tropes about

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international students had become prominent within media coverage— that they were either strategic opportunists who had exploited the education system to gain entry to Australia, or that they were ‘cash cows’ and victims of the system. Both tropes, Robertson contends, challenged the previously-dominant view that international students were the ideal neo-­ liberal, compliant and self-reliant migrant. In such analyses, media constructions are assumed to affect the perceptions of the wider public, which then influence the ways in which international students are treated. There is also some evidence, however, that the media can have a more direct impact on those who cross national borders for education. Fong (2011), for example, provides a compelling case of how specific countries are discussed in the global media can affect the decisions and motivations of young people. Indeed, in her ethnographic study of Chinese students who moved to the Global North for their higher education, she argues that her respondents were often influenced by media narratives that positioned their home country, China, in negative terms and, as a result, encouraged them to view life abroad, typically North America or Western Europe, as a much more desirable option. In many ways such narratives tended to reinforce the type of ‘global hierarchies’ discussed in earlier parts of this chapter. Fong asserts: ‘Increasing access to international media narratives that assumed, enacted, or proclaimed developed countries’ superiority over China, while exposing China’s problems caused many Chinese citizens to perceive China as backward’ (Fong, 2011, p. 42). Robertson (2013) focuses more specifically on the impact of the media in students’ host country. Writing with respect to Australia, she argues that many of the young people she spoke to indicated that their feelings of not belonging were often reinforced by how they were represented in the media. They pointed, specifically, to the lack of non-White faces in news broadcasts (and also in advertising), and their stereotypical portrayal as either victims of a system that exploited international students, or back-door migrants who chose to study in Australia only as a means of gaining permanent residency (see Chap. 5). Moreover, they were conscious of the negative ways in which their countries of origin were often discussed in the Australian media. This, Robertson suggests, had a profound effect on their subjectivities and sense of identity, and fed into their desire to maintain a sense of transnational difference.

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Inequalities between Nation-States While the majority of the discussion so far in this chapter has focused on ethics in relation to individual students and, in some cases, their families, international mobility also has implications for ethical practice at a larger scale, including relationships between countries. We alluded to this in the section on fees and work, when we noted that using student mobility to stimulate highly skilled immigration can advantage host countries at the expense of the student’s home nation. However, host societies benefit not only from the future labour of mobile students, but also, in many countries, from the (often very significant) fees they pay and the money they spend in their local communities, as well as the wide range of positive impacts within their classrooms (see Chap. 6) and their universities more generally. Within the UK, for example, international education is positioned clearly and unambiguously as one of the country’s main ‘export industries’ (even though much of the education is not actually ‘exported’). Educating international students has shifted very significantly since the 1970s away from a model that foregrounds ‘aid’ to one that is based around ‘trade’ (Findlay et  al., 2017; Robertson, 2013; Stein & de Andreotti, 2016). The various benefits of inward student migration are not, however, distributed equally, as the substantial literature on the geography of student mobility attests (e.g. Adnett, 2010; Chap. 2). Although several Asian countries are increasingly attractive to international students, regional hubs are developing in the Middle East, Africa and South-East Asia, and some ‘traditional’ destinations have become less popular with mobile students (Kondakci et al., 2018) (see also Chap. 2), Anglophone nations of the Global North remain net beneficiaries. Perkins and Neumeyer’s (2014) analysis of student flows suggested that, at the time of their research, 56 per cent of the global total of student mobility was from developing to developed countries and only 0.9 per cent from developed to developing nations. Fong’s (2011) ethnographic study of mobile Chinese students also emphasises the clear distinction that was drawn by many of her respondents between developed and developing countries, and the pull of the former:

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The complaints most Chinese citizens in my study made about China were part of a global narrative about the teleological, dichotomous, unilinear evolutionist division of the world into developed countries that sit at the top of the global, social, economic and political hierarchy and developing countries that must, can and should play by the rules of the global neoliberal system in order to become developed. (p. 41)

This narrative positioned global countries as, according to Fong, a kind of ‘paradise’ to which her respondents believed they had a right. In explaining the ongoing popularity of Western nations, scholars have pointed to the importance of macro-economic considerations in students’ decision-making. Van Mol (2014), for example, argues that students’ choices about where to go on short-term exchanges (in this case, within Europe) are often informed by comparing the economic situation of home and destination countries. He suggests that many Polish students, for example, tend to go to countries with higher standards of living in the belief that this will offer them direct financial returns if they are able to combine study with full-time work. Similar arguments have been made in relation to whole-degree mobility (see, for example, Perkins & Neumeyer, 2014). Economic strength can, of course, increase the resources available for recruiting international students, with countries winning the largest share of the international student market typically those who devote most money to marketing the opportunities available in their country (Findlay et al., 2017). Indeed, Findlay et al. (2017) argue that where rich nations choose to target their marketing efforts can have a significant effect on the geography of student flows. In contrast, small and/or relatively poor nations can have much less success in attracting international students—not least because of the more limited resources that can be devoted to marketing and infrastructure (Urbanovic et al., 2016). Others scholars have, however, argued that more important than economic strength in explaining the geographies of student mobility are colonial linkages (e.g. Ploner & Nada, 2020) and, relatedly, the dominance of the English language (e.g. Perkins & Neumeyer, 2014). As we discussed in Chaps. 4 and 5, writing about Malaysia specifically, Koh (2017) maintains that the country’s contemporary migration patterns,

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particularly for education, can be understood as an outcome of British colonial legacies of race, education and citizenship. At a general level, perceptions about the supposed superior quality of Anglophone Western education have persisted, and continue to underpin students’ motives for studying abroad. However, the race-stratified education system that was established by the British colonial government has remained largely in place, and has influenced race-specific migration patterns. For example, non-bumiputera students (i.e. those who are not of Malay descent) have typically viewed studying overseas as a means of circumventing some of the obstacles and discrimination they have faced in Malaysia, opening up opportunities to live and work abroad. In contrast, bumiputera students who, under British rule, benefitted from scholarships to study abroad to prepare them for work in the civil service, often continue to view study abroad, not as a route to a new life in another country, but effective grounding for employment in Malaysia. Various scholars have argued that the dominant patterns of international student mobility do not only reflect historical colonial relationships but serve to reinforce them in the present day. Farrugia (2018) writes: ‘International students are part of a contemporary geography of knowledge that positions “global standing” as the touchstone for educational prestige at the same time as “the West” maintains its colonial status as the centre of epistemological valorisation’ (p. 88). Portuguese strategies to attract international students, for example, respond to different demands and interests embedded in the nation’s geopolitical memberships. As we discussed in Chap. 4, França et al. (2018) argue that while Portugal has responded to pressures from the European Commission to increase the level of international activity within the European Higher Education Area, its strategies are also informed by its desire to retain influence over its former colonies and thus encourage inward mobility from nations such as Angola, Cape Verde and Brazil. Focussing more on the ways in which coloniality is played out in classroom practices, Hayes (2019) argues that international student receive only ‘conditional equality’. By this, she means that they are accepted as equal only if they discard their own ways of knowing and affirm the status of Western knowledge as universally relevant and worthwhile. This was a key theme of our discussion, with respect to learning, in Chap. 6.

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The dominance of English, and its influence on patterns of ISM, can also be seen as both a colonial legacy and a means of reinforcing historically unequal relationships in contemporary society. Many students are attracted to Anglophone nations because of the opportunity to become fluent in the dominant language of global business and as it is often recognised as a highly valuable form of embodied cultural capital on return home (Waters, 2006). Various non-English speaking nations are now also offering English-language programmes, in an attempt to attract international students (Wiers-Jensen, 2019), but such initiatives can be extremely expensive if countries have to employ English-speaking staff from abroad (see Urbanovic et al.’s (2016) discussion of Lithuania, for example), not always easy to deliver (Curle et al., 2020) and may also have a deleterious impact on the national language (Choi, 2010). These various influences have been reinforced through the operation of world university rankings. Despite some shifts over recent years, with Chinese universities achieving increasingly high positions in such tables (see Chaps. 5 and 7), rankings tend to exert power in favour of countries that are already dominant within the global higher education market (Pusser & Marginson, 2013)—through using metrics that tend to favour institutions of the Anglophone Global North. Because such rankings have come to play an important part in students’ decision-making and the allocation of national scholarships for study abroad (see Chap. 2), this has the effect of channelling student flows towards nations and institutions that already have considerable wealth, power and influence, and reinforcing patterns of privilege.

Conclusions International student mobility, in common with many other aspects of ‘internationalisation’, is often seen in a wholly positive light. It is expected to contribute to ‘peace and mutual understanding, quality enhancement, a richer cultural life and personality development, the increase of academic quality, … economic growth and societal well-being’ (Teichler, 2015, p. S10). Given the strength and prevalence of such discourses, it is easy for ethical issues to be overlooked. Nevertheless, much recent work

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across the disciplines of education, sociology and geography has sought to problematise practices related to student mobility, and highlight the ways in which individuals—and also nations—can suffer through initiatives to encourage more and more students to pursue higher education abroad. Despite the increasingly pervasive rhetoric about ‘internationalisation at home’ and the valuable diversity brought to classrooms by international students, building on the arguments established previously in the book, this chapter has shown how ethically-problematic colonial and post-colonial imperatives continue to frame the ways in which mobile students are both discussed and treated in practice. This is evident in, for example, policy and media constructions, and the geography of student flows between countries. We have also shown how various ethical concerns can stem from how social justice tends to be understood in national terms, which results in international students being treated worse than their domestic peers in a wide range of situations—such as being excluded from initiatives to widen participation and charged high fees. While many of these concerns are common across a number of nation-states, there is also some significant variation—affected by countries’ different experiences of colonialism, ‘migration and integration regimes’ (Van Mol, 2014), and higher education funding policies. There is also evidence of within-country variation, as some higher education staff have sought to identify ways in which the ‘politics of responsibility’ (Massey, 2004) can be expanded to include those who are mobile for their higher education (Madge et al., 2009). Indeed, responsibility for the ethical treatment of students, their families and nations lies not solely with those responsible for education and migration policy and those who write about international students in marketing or media texts. Chapter 6 has outlined various ways in which teachers in university classrooms can impact on the pedagogical experiences of students; such individuals can also help to ensure that educational practice avoids some of the problems identified in this chapter. Responsibility also lies with researchers, themselves—in, for example, not assuming a Western perspective that ignores developments in other parts of the world, and paying due attention to the heterogeneity of international students (Kondakci et al., 2018; Robertson, 2013). It is important to return to the point that we made in the introduction to this chapter, that international students themselves

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are not passive actors; affirming their own agency can be a crucial ethical act. Moreover, as Tran and Vu (2017) have argued, universities can play key roles in creating conducive conditions and opportunities for international students to exercise responsibility as social members, intercultural learners and, ultimately, ethical citizens. This chapter has argued that the fair treatment of international students is an ethical matter. We should ensure that student migrants are not treated less favourably than their domestic peers because of principles of equity, and a belief—still articulated by many—that a key purpose of higher education is to promote the public good (Nixon, 2012). Nevertheless, one can also argue that treating such students well is an important strategy—for national governments, sub-national regions and individual higher education institutions—even in highly marketised systems, where emphasis is typically on private gain rather than public good. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a good deal of publicity has been given to various ways in which international students have been treated poorly, some of which we have discussed above. There is now some evidence to suggest that students’ decisions about whether to move abroad for higher education and, if so, which country to choose, are affected, to some extent at least, by judgements about how they will be treated. Research by Mok et al. (2021), for example, has indicated that students from mainland China and Hong Kong have come to place more emphasis on their personal safety when making such decisions, often leading them to stay closer to home. Focussing more specifically on student migration from China to the UK, Yang et al. (2020) have argued that safety concerns have grown in importance, and include a fear of racerelated attacks. Taking action at national, local and institutional levels to ensure that international students are not subject to discrimination and are not treated less favourably than ‘home’ students can thus be conceived, not only as an ethical stance, but one that is necessary to continue to attract student migrants. Indeed, such approaches may be even more important in a post-COVID-19 and climate-fragile world where individuals may be more reluctant to travel, and thus the competition for a smaller pool of international students becomes increasingly fierce.

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Karram, G. (2013). International students as lucrative markets or vulnerable populations: A critical discourse analysis of national and international events in four nations. Canadian and International Education, 42(1), 6. Kim, Y. (2011). Transnational migration, media and identity of Asian women. Routledge. Kmiotek-Meier, E., Karl, U., & Powell, J. (2020). Designing the (most) mobile university: The centrality of international student mobility in Luxembourg’s higher education policy discourse. Higher Education Policy, 33, 21–44. Koh, S.  Y. (2017). Race, education and citizenship. mobile Malaysians, British colonial legacies and a culture of migration. Palgrave Macmillan. Kondakci, Y., Bedenlier, S., & Zawacki-Richter, O. (2018). Social network analysis of international student mobility: Uncovering the rise of regional hubs. Higher Education, 75, 517–535. Lee, K. (2020). Becoming a bona fide cosmopolitan: Unpacking the narratives of Western-situated degree-seeking transnational students in China. Social and Cultural Geography. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2020.1821393 (Advance online access) Levatino, A., Eremenko, T., Molinero Gerbeau, Y., Kabbanji, L., Gonzalez-­ Ferrer, A., Jolivet-Guetta, M., et al. (2019). Opening or closing borders to international students? Convergent and divergent dynamics in France, Spain and the UK. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 366–380. Lomer, S. (2017). Recruiting students in higher education. Representations and rationales in British policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Madge, C., Raghuram, P., & Noxolo, P. (2009). Engaged pedagogy and responsibility: A postcolonial analysis of international students. Geoforum, 40, 34–45. Marginson, S. (2012). Including the other: Regulation of the human rights of mobile students in a nation-bound world. Higher Education, 63, 497–512. Massey, D. (2004). Geographies of responsibility. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 86, 5–18. Maynzumi, K., Motobayashi, K., Nagamyama, C., & Takeuchi, M. (2019). Transforming diversity in Canadian higher education: A dialogue of Japanese women graduate students. In C. Rose-Redwood & R. Rose-Redwood (Eds.), International encounters. Higher education and the international student experience (pp. 159–172). Rowan and Littlefield. Mittelmeier, J., & Cockayne, H. (2020). Global depictions of international students in a time of crisis: A thematic analysis of Twitter data during COVID-19. SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3703604

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Mok, H. K., Xiong, W., Ke, G., & Cheung, J. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic and international higher education and student mobility: Student perspectives from mainland China and Hong Kong. International Journal of Educational Research, 105, 1–11. Moskal, M. (2017). International students’ pathways between open and closed borders: Towards a multi-scalar approach to education mobility and labour market outcomes. International Migration, 55(3), 126–138. Naidoo, R. (2003). Repositioning Higher Education as a Global Commodity: Opportunities and challenges for future sociology of education work. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(2), 249–259. Nixon, J. (2012). Higher education and the public good. Continuum. O’Connor, S. (2018). Problematising strategic internationalisation: Tensions and conflicts between international student recruitment and integration policy in Ireland. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(3), 339–352. OECD. (2018). Education at a glance. OECD. Park, H. (2010). The stranger that is welcomed: Female foreign students from Asia, the English language industry, and the ambivalence of ‘Asia rising’ in British Columbia, Canada. Gender, Place and Culture, 17(3), 337–355. Perkins, R., & Neumeyer, E. (2014). Geographies of educational mobilities: Exploring the uneven flows of international students. The Geographical Journal, 3, 246–259. Ploner, J., & Nada, C. (2020). International student migration and the postcolonial heritage of European higher education: Perspectives from Portugal and the UK. Higher Education, 80, 373–389. Powell, J., & Finger, C. (2013). The Bologna process’s model of mobility in Europe: The relationship of its spatial and social dimensions. European Educational Research Journal, 12(2), 270–285. Pusser, B., & Marginson, S. (2013). University rankings in critical perspective. The Journal of Higher Education, 84(4), 544–568. Raghuram, P., Breines, M., & Gunter, A. (2020). Beyond #FeesMustFall: International students, fees and everyday agency in the era of decolonisation. Geoforum, 109, 95–105. Robertson, S. (2013). Transnational student-migrants and the state. The education-­ migration nexus. Palgrave Macmillan. Rose-Redwood, C., & Rose-Redwood, R. (2019). Self-segregation of global mixing? Social interactions and the international student experience. In C. Rose-Redwood, R. Rose-Redwood, & R. (Eds.), International encounters. Higher education and the international student experience (pp. 19–34). Rowan and Littlefield.

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Sawir, E., Marginson, S., Deumart, A., Nyland, C., & Ramia, G. (2019). Loneliness and international students: An Australian study. In C.  Rose-­ Redwood, R. Rose-Redwood, & R. (Eds.), International encounters. Higher education and the international student experience (pp. 113–127). Rowan and Littlefield. SI News. (2018). Russian students called back from ‘unfriendly’ countries unlikely to respond. Retrieved October 3, 2019, from https://www.studyinternational.com/ news/russian-­students-­called-­back-­unfriendly-­countries-­unlikely-­respond/ Sidhu, R. (2006). Universities and globalization. to market, to market. Laurence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.. Stein, S., & de Andreotti, V. (2016). Cash, competition or charity: International students and the global imaginary. Higher Education, 72, 225–239. Tannock, S. (2018). Educational equality and international students. Justice across borders. Basingstoke. Teichler, U. (2015). Academic mobility and migration: What we know and what we don’t know. European Review, 23(S1), S6–S37. Tran, L., & Vu, T. (2017). ‘Responsibility in mobility’: International students and social responsibility. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 15(5), 561–575. Tran, L. T., & Vu, T. T. P. (2016). ‘I’m not like that, why treat me the same way?’ The impact of stereotyping international students on their learning, employability and connectedness with the workplace. The Australian Educational Researcher, 43(2), 203–220. Urbanovic, J., Wilkins, S., & Huisman, J. (2016). Issues and challenges for small countries in attracting and hosting international students: The case of Lithuania. Studies in Higher Education, 41(3), 491–507. Van Mol, C. (2014). Intra-European student mobility in international higher education circuits. Europe on the move. Palgrave Macmillan. Wang, T. (2020). The COVID-19 crisis and cross-cultural experience of China’s international students: A possible generation of glocalized citizens? ECNU Review of Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/2096531120931519 (Advance online access) Waters, J. L. (2006). Geographies of cultural capital: Education, international migration and family strategies between Hong Kong and Canada. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(2), 179–192. Wiers-Jensen, J. (2019). Paradoxical attraction? Why an increasing number of international students choose Norway. Journal of Studies in International Education, 23(2), 281–298.

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Yang, P. (2016). International mobility and educational desire. Chinese foreign talent students in Singapore. Palgrave Macmillan. Yang, Y., Mittelmeier, J., Lim, M., & Lomer, S. (2020, July 11). What agents say about the plans of Chinese students. University World News. Retrieved January 31, 2021, from https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?st ory=20200706105641710 Yuval Davis, N., Wemyss, G., & Cassidy, K. (2019). Bordering. Polity Press. Zheng, Y., Goh, E., & Wen, J. (2020). The effects of misleading media reports about COVID-19 on Chinese tourists’ mental health: A perspective article. Anatolia, 31(2), 337–340.

8 Conclusion

It is now over a decade since our original book on ISM, Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education was published, and a lot has transpired in the intervening period. The field of research in this area has grown substantially: there is now a large and expansive literature on student mobility for higher education within the disciplines of geography, sociology and education as well as in youth studies, management, social policy and economics. This expansion reflects, in part, the seriousness of intellectual engagement with student mobilities—and students themselves. Within many academic studies, students have been seen to drive international knowledge flows; play a pivotal role within diaspora networks; figure prominently in nation-states’ immigration and citizenship strategies; and regularly appear in the policy reports of transnational bodies such as the OECD and UNESCO. As discussed in Chap. 6, within the classroom (and wider society), they can offer a rich source of diversity and a means of furthering ‘internationalisation’. At the same time, we must be careful not to overstate the ways in which international students are deemed important, vital, or valuable. Chapter 6 also discussed how students are invariably positioned as ‘lesser’ (the so-called ‘deficit model’). Here, it is useful to reflect on how the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Waters, R. Brooks, Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78295-5_8

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COVID-19 pandemic has brought to a wider audience, and crystallised, many of the issues discussed in this book. The mass spread of COVID-19 has illustrated, for example, how international students are often ‘invisible’, taken-for-granted, exploited and rejected by wider society (Lim, 2020; Waters, 2020). Their palpable suffering in Australia and the UK— homelessness, reliance on food banks—has made headline news (Channel 4 News Report, 2021). As a consequence of the pandemic, resulting in national and local ‘lockdowns’ and border closures, many international students have found themselves stranded—either unable to get home or unable to return to their countries of study (Zhai & Du, 2020). Here, students’ relationships with nation-states and borders, as considered in Chap. 5, have been highlighted. With the disappearance of part-time work, their economic vulnerability has been exposed (where hitherto international students were all assumed to be wealthy) and, as noted above, some have even found themselves homeless (Smyth, 2020; Channel 4 News Report, 2021). Again, the diversity of the international student body is something we considered in Chap. 3. The occasional lack of responsiveness to their plight by higher education institutions has taken many people, not least the mainstream media, by surprise. COVID-19 has brought into sharp relief the importance and prior invisibility of international students within many host countries, beyond academia. The ‘value’ of these countries as destinations for international students (as discussed in Chaps. 2 and 4) may, indeed, be affected into the future. In the rest of the chapter, we briefly discuss a nascent understanding of how the pandemic has impacted and will impact ISM, with reference to what has come before. We then consider other recent geopolitical events that have already had a significant impact on student mobilities, globally. We then return to the question of ethics—an issue that we discuss in detail in Chap. 7 but one that has underpinned much of our discussion throughout the book. Then in closing, we reflect on the future of research on this topic, and where the next ten years might lead us.

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COVID-19 and ISM As discussed above, the pandemic has brought the significance and experiences of international students—and different state responses to them— into the spotlight in various ways. In Australia, the importance of international students both to the economy and to the higher education system (equating to a third of total students) has recently been debated at length (within and beyond academic circles) (Menchin, 2020). Problematic diplomatic and geo-political relations with China, as a consequence of travel restrictions targeting Chinese citizens imposed by Australia early on in the pandemic, have been highlighted. Negative public reaction to international students seen as ‘vectors’ of disease have not been so far removed from the experiences of international students prior to COVID-19, particularly over the past ten years. Dunn et al. (2011), for example, have discussed multiple attacks on students of Indian decent in Melbourne and Sydney, highlighting an inadequate government response which ‘denied’ the significance of racism (p. 72). Such negative government responses to international students can be contrasted with how other states, for example Singapore, have described international students: as a bounteous source of value. As we discussed in Chap. 5, students from China have been openly desired by the Singaporean state, even when the population at large may have far more ambivalent reactions to mainland Chinese bodies (see Yang, 2020). The state has notably favoured the Chinese student body as part of its ‘foreign talent’ programme, with many individuals receiving government scholarships enabling them access to fully funded higher education in Singapore. The contradictory messages that different states emit with regards to international students make navigating these global geographies, for individuals, undeniably challenging. COVID-19 has introduced new spaces to international students’ daily lives (extending those discussed in Chap. 2). Travel corridors, safe countries and quarantine hotels have quickly become part of the lexicon of ISM. Recent developments have ushered in new modes of teaching and learning; as a consequence of COVID-19 many international students have found themselves either studying for their overseas degree ‘at home’

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or confined to a student room in the host country, unable or unwilling to venture far from this space. COVID-19 has, consequently, restricted students’ unfettered movement and heightened the significance of the everyday (as it has for most people under some level of social restriction). It is too early, at this point, to tell either how long the pandemic will last or if and how it is likely to impact students’ experiences and decision-making into the future.

A Retreat from Globalism? In addition, and pre-dating the pandemic, international students have (in the last few years) found themselves caught up in global debates around increasing insularity, nationalism and a retreat from globalism. Political events such as Brexit in the UK have had some very real consequences for student mobilities (not least in the UK government’s decision to withdraw from the Erasmus programme). Erasmus has been replaced by the ‘Turing’ programme, with consequences for international students from Europe travelling into and out of the UK (still the second most significant student-receiving country, globally). This decision to depart ways with the Erasmus scheme was, undoubtedly, partly political (because of its association with the European Union) and also ideological (relating to Erasmus’s goal to create a sense of European identity). Interestingly, the UK is also about to implement a more widespread ‘points-based’ immigration system and a post-study work visa scheme for international students, both of which may, in fact, bring more international students into the UK to live and work on a permanent basis (whereas it has been previously seen that the majority of international students in the UK return home after graduation—see Waters, 2017). Beyond Europe, former President of the United States Donald Trump made a point of expressing hostile views towards international students, including the threat in July 2020 to revoke the visas of students whose learning had moved online. At the same time, it is predicted that President Biden is likely to implement new, more welcoming visa policies directed towards international students (Sapsted, 2021). Much is still unknown at this point, but this does lead us to question the stability of established

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hierarchies in international HE (see Chap. 2) and how these might link to the stratification of opportunities discussed in Chap. 3. There is also, of course, the climate crisis—the United States has, as of January 2021, re-joined the Paris Climate Agreement. Political mobilisation by young people throughout the world over the past two years, spearheaded by Swedish activist Greta Thunburg, has made students and others acutely aware of the climate crisis and its links to (inter alia) air travel. This may indicate a reason why international travel closer to home (involving travel by train, for example) might become more popular over the next ten years, as students eschew flying in favour of more sustainable forms of transportation. This book has emerged, therefore, at a potential ‘watershed’ moment in the recent history of international student mobilities, just as the implications of a pandemic, a new President of the United States, the repercussions of Brexit (and other resurgent nationalisms throughout Europe), the continued ‘rise of China’ and the climate emergency are starting to emerge. As Sidhu and Ishikawa (2020) have recently written: ‘this is a pivotal moment to consider the emotional and the ethical dimensions of international education and the role of universities in fostering alternative ways of relating to difference’ (p. 2). It is to these ethical questions that we now return.

The Importance of Ethics In Chap. 7 we discussed various ethical issues relating to international student mobility: ethical concerns are woven throughout the book and many lead directly on from the significant social moments described above. The ethical treatment of international students—by the state and by institutions—should clearly be a central concern of scholars moving forwards as this field matures further still. In Chap. 4 we discussed in detail issues pertaining to the ‘value’ of international higher education and student mobilities. As several authors (including Marginson, 2013; Sidhu, 2006; Yang, 2020) have written, the positioning of higher education as a for-profit industry, underpinned by neoliberal discourses, wherein international students are conceptualised as ‘cash-cows’, raises a

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number of political and ethical concerns (Tannock, 2018). The relationship between students and educational institutions becomes a primarily transactional, impoverished one (Yang, 2018). As we argued in Chap. 7, it is likely that if institutions continue to neglect and take for granted international students, they are likely to ‘vote with their feet’ and favour countries and institutions who espouse a more rounded and ethical view of international students. Ethical questions are also a fundamental outcome of taking seriously ongoing colonial relationships inherent within international higher education which this book, at various points, has discussed. A postcolonial perspective on ISM can highlight both ‘the global geometries of power underlying macro ISM flows’ as in Chap. 2, and ‘the ways in which power asymmetries percolate into international students’ lived experiences’ (Yang, 2020, p. 523), covered in several chapters. Above all, it emphasises ongoing inequalities inherent in ISM—inequalities between regions, countries and institutions. Although alternative ‘post-colonial’ destination countries such as the Philippines and India are emerging (Choi, 2021) and countries such as China solidify their place as a key destination country, Western English-speaking countries remain predominant and continue to be viewed as the ‘gold standard’. Despite the shifts in these patterns documented in Chap. 2 (which have shown a remarkable change since our 2011 book was published), what is perhaps most striking is the persistency of the message—ISM is becoming diversified and there are more places available overseas for a greater diversity of student and yet the wealthiest, more privileged, most resourced individuals continue to seek an education in the United States or UK, regardless of the relative hostility both of these countries have displayed, in recent years, towards international students (and the examples of neglect seen throughout the pandemic). Thus, the stratification of international student mobility (by class and wealth) persists.

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Looking Forward In closing, we might reflect upon what these changes and events could signify for the future of international student mobilities: for students, states and for the field of academic enquiry more broadly. For a start, as indicated above, the pandemic has had a crucial impact on bringing international students’ experiences to the attention of a wider audience. In terms of changes to students’ learning (Chap. 6), it is likely that some aspects of online delivery will remain, and students will have to weigh multiple considerations when deciding to travel to obtain an international qualification or, indeed, to study for one ‘at home’. Digital developments may lead to more international collaborations between institutions, but virtually, which may in fact reduce student (and institutional) mobility (Tesar, 2020). Transnational higher education (TNE) has, of course, existed for many years (with different degrees of online versus face-to-face teaching). There are reasons why students may opt to stay at—or closer to—home in the future: physical health concerns and anxiety attached to travelling too far, worries about potential future border closures and the revoking of student visas and the increased appeal of more proximate countries and courses (as discussed in Chap. 5, for example, on Asian regionalism). There is also likely to be an increase in programmes involving some, more limited, international mobility (e.g. models that require one or 2 years of a degree to be studies overseas). The extent to which these might be seen to promote widening participation (as discussed in Chap. 3), however, remains unknown. Early indications would suggest a mixed and confusing picture when it comes to the geographies of ISM and how the patterns discussed in Chap. 2 might change into the future— some reports indicating that COVID-19, for example, has resulted in a decrease in applications from overseas students to the more usual destination countries (e.g. Mok et al., 2021) and others that applications continue to be strong (e.g. Jayadeva, 2020). There are early indications also that the election of Joe Biden to the US presidency will see a further increase in student numbers and a consolidation of the country as a key destination, as we noted above. Elsewhere, China’s strict border controls and quarantine measures in place in 2021 make it difficult or impossible

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for international students to enter the country: it is interesting to reflect upon whether this will result in a decline in international students choosing China in the near or distant future, resulting in further changes to extant maps of ISM (Chap. 2). New spaces of ISM call for new methods for studying students. Methodological challenges are already presenting themselves as researchers are unable to engage in face-to-face and ethnographic work as a consequence of the pandemic. However, in order to understand student experiences, greater engagement with so called ‘mundane methods’ (Holmes & Hall, 2020) to capture the everydayness of ISM, will no doubt be needed. Experiments in writing might also lead to more innovative ways of thinking about ISM (Phillips & Kara, 2021). Yi’En Cheng, for example, is capturing international students’ stories in a new book focusing on their everyday experiences in the form of letters. If we reflect for a few moments on the methods deployed in the studies we have reviewed here, research on international student mobility has, for the most part, relied on fairly traditional research techniques: semi-­ structured interviews, questionnaires, website analysis and analysis of policy documents and university marketing materials. Some of the richest accounts of student experiences have involved ethnography of some sort (a very ‘traditional’ method in one sense): Ghosh and Wang’s (2003) auto-ethnographic essay on their transnational experiences as international students moving between their home countries of India and China and Canada (where they were studying) remains iconic. Auto-ethnography can, as they show, provide a rich source of data for understanding the nuances of students’ motivations and experiences (Trahar, 2009). Examples of the successful use of a broader range of methods might include Martinez’s (2020) use of genealogy of internationalisation discourses to map students’ trajectories and how they relate to broader socio-­spatial struggles and Cao and Henderson’s (2020) use of diaries with international master’s students in the UK. Parrott (2019) has used a combination of in-depth interviews with ‘rich pictures’ (i.e. using sketches, doodles or drawings to help unpick complex problems visually) when exploring students’ feelings and experiences, and there have been several papers using social network analysis to understand international

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student mobility (Kondakci et al., 2018; Vögtle & Windzio, 2016; Hou & Du, 2020; Shields, 2013). What has emerged recently has been the need for an even greater understanding of how students experience their (im)mobilities (e.g. Finn & Holton, 2019; Holton & Finn, 2018). The ‘everyday’ is key here: although some work has successfully gained insight into the quotidian and ‘mundane’ experiences of young people (e.g. Fong, 2011; Ma, 2020; Murphy-Lejeune, 2003), more work needs to be done in this area. The use of ‘mobile methods’, for example, is a promising means of understanding the immediacy of students’ mobilities, including walking interviews and go-alongs (where the researcher accompanies the student throughout the day) (e.g. Finn & Holton, 2019). Other potential methods might include utilising material objects (Woodward, 2020) or exploring food and cooking practices (Hall et al., 2020). What this shows is the huge potential for future research on international student mobility. As important as the future is, however, we hope this book has gone some significant way to illustrate the incredibly rich present when it comes to scholarship on student migrants and educational mobilities in the second decade of the twenty-first century. We hope we have done justice to what now is a significant field of work. Inevitably, there are some omissions: our exclusive focus on the movement of individuals primarily for educational purposes means that we excluded a growing literature on the experiences of refugees in higher education, to which we briefly alluded in the introductory chapter. This has emanated from various parts of the world, although many studies have concentrated on nations that have received a large number of refugees over recent years, such as Turkey and Germany, analysing the support provided to such students by national initiatives and institutional programmes (e.g. Jungblut et al., 2020), as well as the experiences of refugee students themselves (e.g. Cin & Dogan, 2020). In addition, research has highlighted considerable national diversity in the prominence given to those who enter higher education abroad as a consequence of forced migration. For example, while in many European countries such students are largely absent from key higher education policies and pronouncements by government officials, Germany has taken a notably different position, often underlining the importance of such students’ future contributions to German society, and taking

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steps to support them in their transition to university (Brooks, 2018). In this case, and engaging with some of the ethical issues we raised in Chap. 7, there is perhaps evidence of what Madge et  al. (2009) have called ‘engaged pedagogy’, which ‘take[s] responsibility to care and to imagine everyday academic practices from a multitude of different perspectives and centres’ (p. 43). Other work, not covered in this book but nevertheless of interest to scholars of ISM, can be found in research on migrants who move for employment or career purposes but also undertake higher education in the ‘destination’ country. Nugroho et al.’s (2018) study of low skilled migrants to South Korea who took advantage of distance learning provision offered by the Indonesia Open University in Korea is a fascinating example of this. Typically, such students differ quite considerably from the economically and culturally privileged individuals discussed in much of the extant literature on ISM. Nugroho et al.’s research highlights an important means through which student-workers can gain access to higher education and improve their employment prospects, but it also reveals attendant problems: student-workers in their study were reluctant to admit their student status to their employers, fearing discrimination. Moreover, as their legal status in the country was categorised as low-skilled labour, their student identity was not considered legitimate. Here, there are strong similarities with some of the arguments we made in Chap. 3, about how widening participation to international study has, in some cases, led to greater status differentiation between various types of (educational) provision (see also Choi, 2021). Furthermore, our book reviews relatively few comparative studies (i.e. research that directly compares policies, practices and/or experiences that relate to internationally mobile students in two or more nation states). In the preceding chapters, some work that has taken an explicitly comparative approach is discussed—for example, Yang’s (2018) comparison of ISM from India to China and from China to Singapore; cross-national analyses of ISM policy by Karram (2013) and Brooks (2018); and Sidhu’s (2006) comparison of marketing texts from the US, UK and Australia. Nevertheless, such work remains quite rare in the context of the literature as a whole. Despite these omissions, we hope that readers will have found this book both interesting and informative. Our hope is that it may, in some small way, inspire the next generation of scholarship around international student migrants and their educational mobilities.

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References Brooks, R. (2018). Higher education mobilities: A cross-national European comparison. Geoforum, 93, 87–96. Cao, X., & Henderson, E.  F. (2020). The interweaving of diaries and lives: Diary-keeping behaviour in a diary-interview study of international students’ employability management. Qualitative Research. (Advance online access) Channel 4 News report. (2021). Retrieved February 2, 2021, from https://www. channel4.com/news/the-­international-­students-­struggling-­to-­feed-­themselves­in-­lockdown Choi, C. A. (2021). Segmented pathways of educational mobility: English language schools, working holidays, and divergent prospects among South Korea’s global youth. Global Networks, 21(1), 40–63. Cin, F.  M., & Dogan, N. (2020). Navigating university spaces as refugees: Syrian students’ pathways of access to and through higher education in Turkey. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 25, 298–312. https://doi. org/10.1080/13603116.2019.1707309 Dunn, K., Pelleri, D., & Maeder-Han, K. (2011). Attacks on Indian students: The commerce of denial in Australia. Race & Class, 52(4), 71–88. Finn, K., & Holton, M. (2019). Everyday mobile belonging: Theorising higher education student mobilities. Bloomsbury Publishing. Fong, V. (2011). Paradise redefined. transnational Chinese students and the quest for flexible citizenship in the developed world. Stanford University Press. Ghosh, S., & Wang, L. (2003). Transnationalism and identity: A tale of two faces and multiple lives. Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 47(3), 269–282. Hall, S. M., Pottinger, L., Blake, M., Mills, S., Reynolds, C., & Wrieden, W. (2020). Food for thought?: Material methods for exploring food and cooking. In H.  Holmes & S.  M. Hall (Eds.), Mundane methods: Innovative ways of researching the everyday. Manchester University Press. Holmes, H., & Hall, S. M. (eds.) (2020). Mundane Methods: Innovative Ways to Research the Everyday. Manchester University Press, Manchester. Holton, M., & Finn, K. (2018). Being-in-motion: The everyday (gendered and classed) embodied mobilities for UK university students who commute. Mobilities, 13(3), 426–440. Hou, C., & Du, D. (2020). The changing patterns of international student mobility: A network perspective. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–25. (Advance online access)

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Jayadeva, S. (2020) ‘The impact of COVID-19 on postgraduate level student migration from India to Germany,’ Centre for Global Higher Education Publications, July 2020 (n.p.) Jungblut, J., Vukasovic, M., & Steinhardt, I. (2020). Higher education policy dynamics in turbulent times—access to higher education for refugees in Europe. Studies in Higher Education, 45(2), 327–338. Karram, G. (2013). International students as lucrative markets or vulnerable populations: a critical discourse analysis of national and international events in four nations. Canadian and International Education, 42(1), 6. Kondakci, Y., Bedenlier, S., & Zawacki-Richter, O. (2018). Social network analysis of international student mobility: Uncovering the rise of regional hubs. Higher Education, 75(3), 517–535. Lim, M. (2020). COVID, geopolitics and the concerns of Chinese international students: Continuities and changes. Available at: https://covidism.­ wordpress.com, n.p. Ma, Y. (2020). Ambitious and anxious. How Chinese college students succeed and struggle in American higher education. Columbia University Press. Madge, C., Raghuram, P., & Noxolo, P. (2009). Engaged pedagogy and responsibility: A postcolonial analysis of international students. Geoforum, 40, 34–45. Marginson, S. (2013). The impossibility of capitalist markets in higher education. Journal of Education Policy, 28(3), 353–370. Martinez, C. A. F. (2020). Student mobility and the production of Chile as an international academic hub. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(5), 553–563. Menchin, J. (2020). Aus: International students shunned not supported. https:// thepienews.com/news/atn-­aus-­intl-­student-­shunned-­supported/ Mok, K.  H., Xiong, W., Ke, G., & Cheung, J.  O. W. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on international higher education and student mobility: Student perspectives from mainland China and Hong Kong. International Journal of Educational Research, 105, 101718. Murphy-Lejeune, E. (2003). Student mobility and narrative in Europe: The new strangers. Routledge. Nugroho, S., Cho, Y., & Collins, F. (2018). Aspirations, ambivalence and performances: The hyphenated identities of Indonesian worker-students in South Korea. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(5), 723–737. Parrott, P. A. W. (2019). Rich pictures in qualitative research in higher education: The student as consumer and producer in personal branding. International Journal of Work-integrated Learning, 20(2), 171–187.

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Phillips, R., & Kara, H. (2021). Creative writing for social research: A practical guide. Policy Press, Bristol. Sapsted, D. (2021). Biden and Brexit to appeal to overseas students? Retrieved February 2, 2021, from https://www.relocatemagazine.com/news/ biden-­and-­brexit-­to-­appeal-­to-­overseas-­students-­dsapsted-­0121 Shields, R. (2013). Globalization and international student mobility: A network analysis. Comparative Education Review, 57(4), 609–636. Sidhu, R. (2006). Universities and globalization. to market, to market. Laurence Erlbaum Associates Ltd.. Sidhu, R., & Ishikawa, M. (2020). Destined for Asia: Hospitality and emotions in international student mobilities. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 1–19. (Advance online access) Smyth, J. (2020). Foreign students think twice about Australia after Covid welfare struggle. The Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/8ccc522d-­fee 9-­4265-­91c6-­15a3121fefca Tannock, S. (2018). Educational equality and international students. Justice across borders? Palgrave Macmillan. Tesar, M. (2020). Towards a post-Covid-19 ‘new normality?’: Physical and social distancing, the move to online and higher education. Policy Futures in Education, 18(5), 556–559. Trahar, S. (2009). Beyond the story itself: Narrative inquiry and autoethnography in intercultural research in higher education. Forum qualitative sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(1), 30. Vögtle, E. M., & Windzio, M. (2016). Networks of international student mobility: Enlargement and consolidation of the European transnational education space? Higher Education, 72(6), 723–741. Waters, J. L. (2017). Now we know most international students go home after their courses—the vilification must end. The Conversation. Waters, J.  L. (2020). Intervention—“the (in) visible student body: Covid-19 and the embodiment of international mobilities. Antipodeonline.org Woodward, S. (2020). Opening up material collections: Adored, forgotten about, potent and mundane objects. In H.  Holmes & S.  M. Hall (Eds.), Mundane methods: Innovative ways to research the everyday. Manchester University Press. Yang, P. (2018). Understanding youth educational mobilities in Asia: A comparison of Chinese ‘foreign talent’ students in Singapore and Indian MBBS students in China. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 39(6), 722–738.

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Yang, P. (2020). Toward a framework for (re) thinking the ethics and politics of international student mobility. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(5), 518–534. Zhai, Y., & Du, X. (2020). Mental health care for international Chinese students affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. The Lancet Psychiatry, 7(4), e22.

Index1

A

Academic elites, 167, 171, 176, 196 Academic performance, 15, 112, 171–173, 190, 191 See also Attainment Accent, 101, 111, 177, 178, 183 Adaptation, 187, 188 America, American, 43, 44, 59, 91, 104, 116, 147, 169, 172, 180, 181, 191, 211, 222 See also United States of America (US) Anglophone, 7, 22, 24, 25, 91, 168, 170, 172, 176, 183, 192, 196, 197, 214, 221, 222, 228, 230, 231 See also England, English Angola, 93, 230 Asian regionalism, 28, 247

Aspirations, 12, 31, 36, 60, 68, 105, 109, 111–113, 119, 150, 192 Assessment, 76, 176, 177, 179–181, 224 Attainment, 57, 171–173, 182, 217, 224 See also Academic performance Australia, 22, 24, 39, 62, 63, 66, 74, 75, 77, 78, 95, 102, 110, 115, 119, 120, 138, 139, 146–148, 157, 168, 170, 179, 192, 195, 208, 211, 214, 219, 222, 226, 227, 242, 243, 250 B

Becoming, 30, 56, 65, 68, 69, 100, 108–109, 206, 211, 246

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Waters, R. Brooks, Student Migrants and Contemporary Educational Mobilities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78295-5

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256 Index

Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), 29, 30n3, 96, 150 Bourdieusian, 13, 107 Brazil, 37, 93, 230 Brexit, 14, 132, 135, 244, 245 British, 11, 43, 80, 88, 90–93, 151, 169, 184, 230 British Council, 27, 64 British Empire, 91, 93 Bumiputera, 80, 92, 93, 153, 230 C

Canada, 24, 39, 66, 95, 102, 113, 134, 138, 140, 141, 146, 211, 222, 224, 225, 248 Cape Verde, 93, 230 Capital cultural capital, 13, 67, 68, 77–80, 96, 97, 99–106, 108, 109, 112, 115, 116, 123, 195 economic capital, 58, 77, 99, 212, 213 embodied cultural capital, 101, 102, 141, 143, 231 ethnic identity capital, 103–105, 118 human capital, 14, 66, 88, 106–107, 144, 222 mobility capital, 105–106 social capital, 42, 44, 67, 99, 115–118, 195 transnational capital, 105 Cash cows, 89, 146, 159, 205, 227, 245 Charity, 224 Children, 6, 59, 60, 69, 73, 100, 101, 142, 146, 191, 212

Chile, 209 China, Mainland China, PRC, Chinese, 7–11, 14, 24, 24n1, 29–31, 30n3, 31n4, 37, 39, 43, 47, 59, 68–70, 72–74, 73n3, 80, 82, 88, 92, 95, 96, 100–102, 104, 105, 108, 110, 112–114, 118, 123, 132, 138, 140–142, 142n4, 149–154, 169, 170, 178, 180, 181, 183, 186–188, 191, 192, 194, 196, 211–216, 219, 227–229, 231, 233, 243, 245–248, 250 Citation, 3, 8–9, 176, 179–181 Cities, 13, 31–34, 36–40, 47, 87, 88, 116, 158, 159, 169, 211 and municipalities, 134 urban areas, 31, 47 See also Urban areas and municipalities Citizens, 174 Citizenship cosmopolitan citizenship, 108 global citizenship, 108, 174, 175, 221 Class reproduction, 77–79, 97, 100, 103 Classroom, 3, 14–15, 32, 42, 112, 119, 167–197, 205, 214, 217, 220, 221, 225, 228, 230, 232, 241 Colonialism, 11, 22, 26, 90, 91, 93, 122, 173, 174, 197, 232 Community of practice, 184 Competitiveness, 27, 40, 88, 174, 185, 222 Confucian, Confucianism, 180, 187 Confucius Institutes, 96, 96n1

 Index 

Consumers (students as), 38–40, 138 Cosmopolitan, Cosmopolitanism, 12, 24, 28, 34, 104, 108, 109, 140, 143, 195 Coursework, 181 COVID-19, 4, 23, 48, 102, 119, 120, 123, 152n5, 157, 205, 214, 233, 242–244, 247 See also Pandemic Creativity, 169, 192 Credentials, 2, 12, 55, 66, 70, 74, 87, 90, 91, 96, 97, 99, 101, 102, 106, 115, 117, 142, 143, 212 See also Qualifications Credit mobility, 4, 6, 57, 62, 71, 72, 81, 82, 131n1, 170 Critical thinking, 169, 170, 176, 178–179, 185, 187 Cross-cultural, 42, 184, 185 Cultural hegemony, 15, 167, 173, 175, 179, 182, 185–187, 196 Culture, 32, 38, 39, 44, 94, 96, 100, 115, 152, 153, 168–170, 173, 174, 178, 180, 182, 185, 188–190, 193–195, 216, 223 Curriculum, Curricula, 167, 172–175, 180, 186, 192, 194, 196 D

Decolonial, Decolonisation, 2 Deficit discourse, 11, 170, 178 Degree mobility, 4, 6, 62, 70, 72, 82, 131n1, 137, 142, 229 Denmark, Danish, 78, 138, 140, 222

257

Diaspora, 14, 95, 132, 134, 158, 194, 241 Diaspora strategies, 143–146 Discipline, Disciplinary, 2, 3, 16, 96, 108, 148, 168, 175, 186, 188, 196, 197, 206, 232, 241 Discrimination, Discriminatory, 15, 79, 92, 115, 118, 123, 143, 173, 183, 207, 210, 212, 214–217, 230, 233, 250 Distinction, 26, 76, 81, 97, 101, 102, 112, 137, 140, 168, 208, 228 Diversification, 2, 10, 12–13, 55–82, 191 Diversity, 15, 29, 39, 45, 57–59, 61, 64, 73, 168, 181, 190, 192, 207, 209, 221, 224, 232, 241, 242, 246, 249 Doctoral students, 194 Domestic students, 5, 15, 25, 34, 39, 40, 42, 45, 89, 191, 192, 207, 209, 210, 216, 217, 226 E

East, Eastern, 7, 26, 46, 91, 170 East Asia, 10, 28, 45, 95, 96, 114, 144, 176, 179, 185, 226 Education agents, see Education brokers Education brokers, 64, 211 Education cities, see Education hubs Education hubs, 40, 41, 47, 93, 148, 156, 157 Elites, 2, 12, 55, 56, 58–60, 66, 67, 74–76, 80, 81, 92, 110, 167, 171, 176, 196, 208, 209, 213, 226

258 Index

Embodied cultural capital, 101, 102 Embodiment, 101 See also Embodied cultural capital Employability, 62, 70, 71, 114–116, 174, 186 Employment, 1, 33, 58, 66, 77, 78, 80, 96, 99, 113, 115, 116, 179, 208, 212, 221, 224, 230, 250 and jobs, 77 and work, 114, 212, 250 See also Jobs, and work England, English, 8, 26, 32, 44, 61, 68, 91, 100, 102, 109–112, 116, 136n2, 172, 177, 178, 183, 191, 213, 216, 217, 222–225, 231 English language, 8, 16, 46, 61, 74, 109–111, 183, 191, 229, 231 english as lingua franca, 110 See also Anglophone Epistemology, 175, 186, 188 Erasmus scheme, 56, 57, 62, 72, 103, 209, 244 Escape, 65, 88, 113–116, 170 Esprit de corps, 117 Essentialism, 185–187, 189–193, 196 Ethics ethics of care, 36 responsibility, 38 Ethnicity, 56, 79, 80, 104, 149, 152, 191 ethnic group, 104 Europe, European, 10–12, 22, 24, 27, 28, 30, 30n3, 43, 47, 57, 58, 62, 72, 95, 100, 102, 105, 114, 152, 169–172, 181, 209, 222, 223, 229, 244, 245, 249

European Union (EU), 5, 12, 30n3, 58, 82, 135, 136, 148, 213, 219, 244 Examinations, Exams, Tests, 32, 112, 180, 194 F

Failure, 68, 76, 77, 111–114, 178 Families, 6, 33, 39, 41, 55–59, 55n1, 61, 62, 64, 66–70, 72–75, 77–79, 81, 98–101, 105–107, 112, 113, 141, 149, 153, 158, 171, 191, 195, 208, 210, 228, 232 Foreign students, 5, 107, 109, 149, 152, 172, 212, 213, 216, 222 See also International students Foreign talent, 14, 149, 216, 243 France, 30, 66, 104, 110, 111, 211, 216, 224 Friendship, 42–44, 118, 119, 177, 184, 185 G

GATS, see General Agreement on Trade in Services Gender, 13, 56, 79, 113, 190, 191 General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), 147, 148 See also World Trade Organisation (WTO) Geographies/geography, 2, 7, 10–12, 21–48, 88, 90, 91, 93, 96, 106, 108, 110, 111n6, 121, 155, 159, 168, 170, 187, 197, 206, 228–230, 232, 241, 243, 247

 Index 

geographies of student mobilities, 2, 12, 23 Geopolitics, 94–97 Germany, German, 62, 66, 67, 78, 132, 183, 222, 223, 249 Global citizen, see Citizens Global city/global cities, 33, 34, 38, 41 Global hierarchy, 174, 216, 225, 227 Global imaginary, 216, 224 Globalisation, 2, 147, 208 Globalism, 244–245 Global North, 7, 16, 30, 46, 96, 137, 168, 172, 176, 177, 179, 182, 183, 186, 196, 197, 206, 207, 224, 225, 227, 228, 231 Global South, 7, 30, 46, 60, 78, 79 Government, 26, 41, 59, 61, 64, 65, 70, 72, 74, 80–82, 93, 121, 132–135, 136n2, 144, 145, 148–150, 155–157, 171, 183, 192, 207, 213, 219n1, 221, 222, 225, 230, 233, 243, 244, 249 Group work, 176, 177, 182–185, 189 H

Habitus, 208 Higher education institution (HEI), 4, 6, 11, 23, 26, 27, 33, 34, 37, 43, 45, 70, 71, 76n5, 88, 89, 109, 115, 121–122, 124, 132, 144, 146, 167, 171, 173, 174, 176, 179, 183, 189, 192, 207, 209, 210, 213, 224, 225, 233, 242 ‘Home’ students, 15, 109, 118, 119, 167, 171–174, 177, 182–184, 190, 193, 197, 207, 225, 233

259

Hong Kong, 10, 14, 22, 40, 63, 78, 95, 110, 116, 117, 132, 141, 233 Hostile environment, 132, 134–136, 213 Households, 88, 105, 159 Human rights, 114, 214 I

Immigrants, 92, 101, 131, 134–137, 139, 141, 153, 158, 212, 213 See also Immigration Immigration, 70, 77, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 143, 155, 158, 213, 216, 221, 228, 241, 244 Immigration policy, 14, 26, 132, 135, 136, 211–213 Imperial College London, 210 Imperial legacies, 23, 90 India, Indian, 8, 30, 37, 40, 43, 59, 61, 62, 67, 68, 72, 73, 80, 88, 100, 102, 105, 110, 112, 136–139, 152, 169, 211, 243, 246, 248, 250 Indonesia, 78, 212 Inequalities/inequality, 9, 10, 15, 16, 62, 79, 82, 90, 123, 172, 174, 207–209, 222, 228–231, 246 Informal learning, 171, 193–196 International curriculum, 173, 174 International education, 1, 2, 6, 10, 13, 14, 22, 26, 28, 29, 40, 46, 63, 72, 79, 87, 88, 90, 92, 96–109, 113–117, 122, 123, 132, 137–141, 146, 147, 149, 151, 175, 195, 212, 220, 228, 245

260 Index

Internationalisation, 1, 2, 38, 155, 156, 175, 176, 183, 190, 222, 225, 231, 241, 248 Internationalisation at home, 173, 174, 182, 232 International students, 1, 22, 55, 88, 131, 167, 205, 241 See also Foreign students Ireland, Irish, 39, 62, 70–72, 74, 76, 183, 211, 213, 215, 222 Israel, 104, 110, 111, 209 J

Japan, Japanese, 95, 112, 114, 118, 138, 140, 147, 148, 154, 174, 175, 178 Jobs, 13, 37, 41, 45, 55n1, 57, 68, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 107, 108, 116, 123, 124, 146, 211, 212, 216 and work, 74, 75, 77 See also Employment, and work K

Kazakhstan, Kazak, 64, 65, 79, 100, 121 Knowledge, 2, 3, 7–9, 14, 22, 26, 28, 29, 40, 47, 60, 64, 69, 74, 77, 91, 94–97, 102, 104, 105, 110, 121, 122, 134, 141, 144, 145, 154, 155, 174, 175, 178, 186, 188, 189, 192, 195, 230, 241

L

Labour market, 12, 55, 58, 72, 77–79, 97, 99, 105, 115, 116, 132, 139, 140, 142, 143, 174, 185, 192, 211, 212, 224 Language, 8, 11, 32, 42, 63, 74, 87, 94, 96, 96n1, 101, 104, 105, 109–111, 119, 145, 146, 149, 171, 173, 176–180, 188, 191, 212, 215, 216, 222, 223, 225, 231 League tables, 26, 27, 64, 121 See also Rankings Learning, 3, 4, 10, 14–15, 34, 36, 37, 46, 63, 104, 109, 117, 118, 141, 149, 150, 167–197, 224, 230, 243, 244, 247, 250 Liberal arts, 109, 169, 180 London, 33–38, 58, 110, 115 Lusophone countries, 93, 94 See also Portugal, Portuguese Luxembourg, 208 M

Malaysia prior, 114 Malaysia, Malaysian, 10, 24n1, 40, 79, 80, 90, 92, 93, 95, 114, 153, 156, 183, 215, 229, 230 Mandarin, 170 Marketing, 15, 27, 33, 36–38, 61, 64, 115, 157, 207, 220–227, 229, 232, 248, 250 Media, 11, 15, 23, 32, 74, 75, 78, 90, 139, 142, 159, 215, 220, 224, 226, 227, 232, 242 Medicine, 72, 169

 Index 

Middle class, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62, 64, 67–69, 72, 73, 78, 81, 82, 100, 101, 103, 105, 112, 178 Mobilities/mobility, 1, 22, 56, 87, 141, 168, 208, 249 Model minorities, 171 model minority students, 167, 196 Monitoring, 212–214, 220 Municipal, 133, 134, 155–157 See also Cities, and urban areas N

Nation, nation state, 4, 10, 14, 16, 21–23, 31, 58, 62, 72, 88, 93, 107, 118, 131n1, 132, 137, 149, 152–153, 155–158, 169, 174, 182, 183, 192, 207, 209, 216–218, 223, 228–232, 241, 242, 250 Neo-colonialism, 186 Neoliberalism/neoliberal/ neoliberalisation, 2, 75, 88, 89, 108n5, 123, 133, 140, 175, 179, 229, 245 Neo-racism, 216 See also Racism Nepal, Nepalese, 26, 32, 78 Netherlands (The), Dutch, 78, 107 Newspapers, 33, 226 New Zealand, 39, 65, 66, 148, 190, 219, 226 Non-bumiputera, 80, 92, 230 Norway, 106, 113, 138, 169, 209 O

One-child policy, 69 China’s one-child policy, 69

261

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 1, 2, 4, 5, 23, 24, 76n4, 144, 145, 209, 241 P

Pakistan, 30, 68, 110 Pandemic, 46, 48, 102, 119, 123, 124, 152n5, 157, 214, 215, 233, 242–248 See also COVID-19 Pedagogies/pedagogy, 15, 167, 168, 171, 175–186, 189, 196, 206, 250 Permanent residency (PR), 5, 6, 8, 55, 74, 75, 78, 120, 134, 137–141, 143, 157, 158, 227 Philanthropic organisations, 62 Plagiarism, 181 Poland, 222 Policy migration policies, 6, 56, 66, 68, 75, 138, 214, 232 state policies, 26, 149 Policy borrowing, 192 Portugal, Portuguese, 58, 93, 94, 230 See also Lusophone countries Positional advantage, 97 Post-colonial, 2, 28, 29, 31n4, 47, 60, 80, 91, 93, 121, 122, 232, 246 Postgraduate, 73, 76, 81, 109, 120, 171, 181 Precarity, 77, 123 Prestige, 32, 36, 76, 77, 102, 230 Privilege, 73, 97, 123, 149, 187, 231 Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSAs), 39

262 Index Q

Qualifications, 5, 26, 68, 77, 81, 91, 99, 100n2, 102, 106, 110, 113, 115, 116, 121, 139, 143, 186, 193, 208, 212, 247 See also Credentials R

Race, 92, 93, 123, 152–153, 230 Racism, 7, 15, 75, 102, 115, 151–153, 173, 207, 214–217, 224, 225, 243 See also Neo-racism Rankings, 26, 27, 102, 114, 121–123, 231 World University Rankings, 27, 122, 231 See also League tables Refugees, 6, 60, 132, 214, 223, 249 Regional development, 154–155, 159 Regional education hubs, 63 Religious, 13 Research, 131 S

Satellite campus, 33–38 Scholarships, 3, 6, 8, 14, 16, 25, 26, 29, 30, 30n3, 59, 60, 64, 65, 82, 96, 100, 101, 110, 121, 124, 132, 145, 147, 149, 150, 152, 154, 157, 168, 177, 183, 192, 210, 230, 231, 243, 249, 250 Science, Technology, Engineering and mathematics (STEM), 95, 171, 186 Second chance, 113 Segregation, 15, 26, 39, 41, 43, 45, 214

Self-formation, 109, 195, 196 Sexuality, 13, 113 Singapore, 10, 11, 14, 22, 30, 40–42, 72, 92, 95, 104, 108n5, 114, 121, 132, 144, 148, 149, 152, 153, 183, 216, 243, 250 Slovak Republic, 209 Slovenia, 209 Social class, 55n1, 56, 75, 77, 79, 80, 97, 98, 103, 191 See also Socio-economic status Social media, 56, 67 Social mobility, 69, 77, 93, 97, 100, 106, 153, 207, 209 Social reproduction, 2, 56, 99, 102, 103, 150, 197 Socio-economic status, 12, 57, 61 See also Social class Soft power, 14, 132, 143, 150–152, 158, 221 South Africa, 31, 37, 63 South Korea, 22, 30, 31, 63–65, 104, 112, 215, 250 Spain, Spanish, 39, 222 Spatial, 21, 31, 43, 101, 145, 156, 226 Staff, 15, 36, 70, 71, 120, 167, 173, 175, 176, 179–181, 183, 188–190, 192, 196, 197, 213–216, 220, 231, 232 States, 13, 14, 25, 26, 28, 29, 45–47, 64, 93, 94, 96n1, 99, 107, 110, 115, 119–123, 131–135, 137, 140–159, 179, 187, 212, 219n1, 243, 245, 247, 250 See also Nation, nation states STEM, see Science, technology, engineering and mathematics Stereotype/stereotyping, 78, 188, 189, 214, 217

 Index 

Stratification, 12, 56, 70–77, 76n5, 81, 82, 97, 185, 245, 246 Studentification, 38, 39, 47, 134 Surveillance, 14, 132, 212–214, 220 T

Texts marketing texts, 220–225, 250 media texts, 220–227, 232 Transnational education (TNE), 25, 25n2, 247 Transnationalism, transnational, 2, 4, 12, 14, 24, 25, 39, 40, 60, 78, 81, 90, 101, 105, 116, 118, 119, 132, 134, 138, 140–143, 150, 155, 158, 159, 219, 227, 241, 248 Tuition fees, 8, 11, 61, 62, 96, 120, 141, 150, 214 Turing scheme, 81 U

Undergraduate, 12, 73, 109, 121, 190, 210 United Kingdom (UK), 10, 11, 14, 22–24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36–40, 43, 57, 58, 62–64, 66, 76, 79–81, 95, 100, 101, 112, 113, 115, 117, 119–121, 132, 134–138, 136n2, 137n3, 140, 142, 146, 151, 168, 170, 171, 174, 175, 177, 183, 184, 192, 193, 210–214, 216, 218, 219n1, 221–224, 226, 228, 233, 242, 244, 246, 248, 250 United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights, 218

263

United States of America (US), 11, 22, 24, 27, 30, 40, 43, 44, 59, 62, 63, 65, 66, 74, 78, 90, 91, 95, 102, 109, 111, 113, 140, 147, 168–170, 180, 181, 191, 192, 211, 218, 222, 224, 245–247, 250 See also America, American University of British Columbia (UBC), 225 Urban areas, 12, 31, 38–40, 47, 134, 155 See also Cities, and municipalities Urban areas and municipalities, 23, 27, 31–41, 47, 58, 87, 88, 110, 116, 120, 133, 134, 155–157, 159, 169, 172, 211 Urban hubs, see Education hubs V

Value/values credentials, value of, 142 differential value, 13 Vietnam, Vietnamese, 118, 187 Visa, 5, 26, 66, 112, 124, 133, 135, 136, 136n2, 137n3, 138, 139, 141, 142, 157, 214, 223, 244, 247 W

West, Western, 7, 9–11, 22, 24–26, 28–30, 46, 47, 58, 66, 73, 90, 91, 95, 96, 101, 121, 122, 133, 152, 168, 170, 175, 178, 179, 182, 183, 185–188, 192, 193, 205, 211–213, 215, 216, 224, 225, 229, 230, 232, 246

264 Index

Western Europe, 215, 227 Whiteness, 215 Work, 1–4, 6–9, 15, 16, 25–30, 32, 38, 43, 56–58, 60, 65, 71, 72, 74, 78, 81, 88, 90, 92, 99, 100, 102, 104–106, 109–111, 114, 116, 131, 133, 134, 136, 136n2, 138–141, 143, 145, 149, 152, 154, 156, 157, 168, 170, 171, 173, 175–177, 181–185, 187–189, 193, 194, 197, 207, 209–212, 222, 225, 229–231, 242, 244, 248–250 See also Employment, and jobs

Working class, 55, 55n1, 59, 64, 81, 82, 178, 224 Work placements, 12, 57, 62 World Trade Organisation (WTO), 147 See also General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Y

Young people, Youth, 6, 10, 15, 23, 24, 32, 33, 60, 61, 64, 65, 69, 76, 78, 79, 81, 92, 93, 105, 111–114, 132, 138, 141, 142, 153, 226, 227, 245, 249