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Deposited in DRO:
07 June 2017
Version of attached le:
Accepted Version
Peer-review status of attached le:
Peer-reviewed
Citation for published item:
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). pp. 126-138.
Further information on publisher's website:
https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12301
Publisher's copyright statement:
This is the accepted version of the following article: 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, which has been published in nal form at https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12301.
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To cite this article: Moskal, Marta (2017) International Students Pathways Between Open and Closed Borders:
Towards a Multi-scalar Approach to Educational Mobility and Labour Market Outcomes, International
Migration 53(3): 126-138. DOI: 10.1111/imig.12301
International Students Pathways Between Open and Closed Borders: Towards a Multi-
scalar Approach to Educational Mobility and Labour Market Outcomes
By Marta Moskal
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the complex and changing relationship between academic capitalism that
encourages global mobility of highly-skilled international students on the one hand and
recent changes to immigration policy in the UK that prevent such mobility on the other. The
paper is based on a longitudinal study that traces the experiences and aspirations of
postgraduates from three Asian countries and their pathways from the UK universities to post
study work and realities. Taking a multi-scalar approach, the analysis of international
students’ narratives unpacks the unevenness of career opportunities, barriers to settlement
and various “assemblages of power” that shape students’ life trajectories. The paper
illustrates how the individual-scale projects intersect with states’ policies of both receiving
and sending countries and other institutions and structures of power that operate within and
beyond the nation-states.
INTRODUCTION
The growing internationalisation of education and economies encourages students to be more
mobile to develop skills that are considered essential to being competitive in an increasingly
global labour market for highly skilled individuals (Tremblay, 2005). However, the increase
in student mobility is not only the result of individual decisions. Higher education institutions
increasingly see international education as an export activity that yields economic returns and
market their tertiary education programmes internationally (She and Wotherspoon, 2013).
For most countries, international education reflects the integration process between higher
education and the knowledge economy conceptualised as “academic capitalism” (Kauppinen,
2015). Demographic, labour and market changes in the last few decades, combined with a
transition to knowledge economy, created demand for high-skilled workers in OECD
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countries. International students have been considered a significant source of skilled labour
for host societies and international education is recognised as an important channel of labour
migration (Liu-Farrer, 2014: 185). The OECD countries have increasingly sought to attract
international students as part of a strategy to expand their knowledge economies, while
students’ source countries have expressed concern about the development consequence of
losing human capital (Findlay, 2011). In the most recent decade universities have become key
facilitators of skilled migration flows, reflecting their engagement in “academic capitalism”
(Hawthorne and To, 2014). Findlay describes the student flows as being heavily influenced
by the financial interests of these who organise, supply and market elite higher education
opportunities within the global economy (Findlay, 2011: 162).
Despite this valuable body of work that illuminates the breadth, complexity and impact of
international student subjectivities and practices (for example, Brooks and Waters 2011;
Findlay et al., 2012; King and Raghuram, 2013), less attention has been paid to the
intersection of the multi-level policies with social imaginaries that shape their mobility
(Geddie, 2015: 236). There has also been surprisingly little research into exploring their
employment outcomes (Hawthorne and To, 2014) and the factors affecting their post-study
choices, aspirations and realities. Drawing from a multi-site qualitative study that follows
Asian (Chinese, Indonesian and Thai) graduates from UK universities, this paper contributes
to further understanding of the students’ experiences and their labour market outcomes.
The students are positioned at the intersection between the self, the state and various other
“assemblages of power” that 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 nation-state and
consider students’ outcomes at the intersection of different scales. Recently debated multi-
scalar approach (Glick Schiller and Çağlar 2011; Glick Schiller 2015) offers to explore
migration across different socio-spatial levels. By using a multi-scalar thinking, the paper
sought to advance a more nuanced theorization of students’ migration as embedded in and
produced through a range of mutually constituted scales, including national, local, regional
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and global structural conditions and agencies (Wiliamson 2015).
The following sections describe the study context of the international student’s mobility to
the UK. This paper places such mobility within the intricate and changing relationship
between academic capitalism that encourages global mobility of high-skilled international
students, recent restrictive immigration policies in the UK that prevent such mobility (see
also Moskal 2015) and the effort of “source” countries to bring overseas-educated graduates
back.
INTERNATIONAL STUDENT FLOWS TO THE UK
The total number of international students continues to grow in developed OEDC countries.
These developed OECD countries attract 73% of all international students enrolled abroad in
2013, according to OECD (2015). Among these countries, the United States hosted the
largest number of all international students (19% in total), followed by the United Kingdom
(10%), Australia and France (both 6%), Germany (5%) and Canada and Japan (both 3%). The
United Kingdom, similar to other developed countries, is engaged in the global competition
for skills-driven labour, in part, by the changing demographics of their workforces
(Hawthorne, 2010). The increase in the number of international students has been encouraged
by the recruitment efforts of UK universities, many of which have focused on Asian countries,
particularly China. Thomas and Inkpen (2016: 5) argue that for China, in particular, the
attraction to foreign education in the West is partly associated with the country’s transition to
a capitalist economy and its growing need for international competencies.
Students from Asia represent 53% of international students enrolled worldwide, with China
being the first supply country, followed by India. Asia is also the largest region of origin for
international students in the UK, covering 54% of all international students’ origin (OECD,
2015). A statistical release from the Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA 2016)
shows that the number of 3% to 436,585 in the academic year 2014–15. This constituted
almost 19% of all students and 58% of full-time postgraduates. Most students, in fact 13.5%
of the total population, come from outside of Europe, with the number of Chinese students far
exceeding that any other nationality at 89540 students in 2014–15. Indian students form the
next largest cohort with 18,920 students, although their number has systematically dropped
since changes in the UK visa policy (47% since 2010/11).
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The vast majority of non-European mobile students struggle with visa issues and lack of
opportunities to gain valuable post-study experience in the UK. She and Wotherspoon (2013:
11) argued that this relatively high level of openness and control in managing international
student mobility combined with the strategy to recruit international students, in particular
from non-EEA countries, is not well integrated into the UK’s skilled immigration plan
compared with other top receiving countries such as Australia, Canada and Japan might be
seen as countries with a clear study to residence pathway. The country like the United States,
the United Kingdom, France and Germany are characterised by more staggered and
significantly more uncertain journey to the permanent residency (Robertson, 2013; Liu-
Farrer, 2014). Going beyond this view, the next section explains the paradox of national
government seeking to simultaneously remain competitive in the international education
market, meeting the skills demand of the labour market, and appeasing populist and
historically entrenched paradigms of how entry into the nation-state should be managed
(Robertson, 2013: 15)
ACADEMIC CAPITALISM BEYOND THE SCALE OF THE NATION-STATE
The trends in the development of global capitalism and the knowledge economy have
fundamentally undermined the economic (and political) power of the nation-state, as argued
by Rizvi and Lingard (2009). On the other side, global capitalism requires ‘strong, reliable
nations that can influence and co-ordinate the behaviour of their citizens (Rizvi and Lingard,
2009: 29). As Williamson (2015: 22) argues, constructing migration as a national
phenomenon can serve particular interests and justify certain modes of governance for both
progressive and conservative ends. For example, the increasing rhetoric in many Western
countries around the heightened securitization of territorial borders in which migrant subjects
are aggregated to represent threatening flows of human movement. Thus, while the shifting
scales at which human mobility is given meaning in an age of globalisation, the nation-state
undoubtedly remains a powerful scalar lens through which migrant bodies are regulated. The
critical multi-scalar approach proposes the notion of ‘scaling’ (Çağlar and Glick-Schiller,
2011) to study the process through various socio-spatial constructions. The city, the region,
the nation-state, the world region and so forth are positioned as a result of processes of
capitalist restructuring and changing relationships of power between different political
entities (Çağlar and Glick-Schiller, 2011). Some scholars, therefore, have contested that the
state’s capacity to control education has been significantly limited by for example
transnational companies (Ball, 2007). Bauman and Bordoni (2014) suggest that the globalised