International Student Mobility within Europe: Responding to National, Regional and Global Challenges

In many European nations, governments have placed considerable importance on processes of internationalisation within the higher education sector and, in particular, on further enhancing international student mobility (ISM). Attracting inward mobility is seen as an effective means of: developing more diverse campuses, furthering the inter-cultural experiences and skills of ‘home’ students; bolstering the financial position of higher education institutions through the fees paid by incoming students; and exerting ‘soft power’ when graduates return home. Outward mobility has also increasingly come to be prioritized as a means of enhancing the inter-cultural skills of students (and thus, it is assumed, their employability).

Nevertheless, at the present moment, ISM within Europe faces a number of important challenges associated with:

• the changing political context – related to, for example: Brexit; the growing significance of China as an increasingly popular destination for mobile students; and the emergence of various ‘regional hubs’ which offer a cheaper international alternative than Europe to prospective students;

• increasing awareness of the environmental costs of physical mobility and the responsibility of HEIs with respect to climate change, alongside the impact of global health concerns, brought into sharp relief by the COVID-19 pandemic; and

• the socio-economic characteristics of mobile students – despite some initiatives to widen participation, those who move remain more likely to be from socially privileged families and, where opportunities have been opened up more broadly, they have tended to become stratified, with those from lower income families clustered in lower quality schemes.

This seminar will engage directly with these challenges.

The seminar will consist of two online sessions as follows:

1 July -  12.30-15.15 (UK time)

2 July - 10.00-12.40 (UK time)

Zoom presentations are available here:

Zoom Link for Day One: Passcode: pb&v4Cc@

Zoom Link for Day Two: Passcode: 10ONRj*Z

A Policy Brief which outlines some of the key research findings reported at the workshop and makes some recommendations for policy and practice based upon them is available here.

ORGANISERS

Prof Rachel Brooks, Department of Sociology

Prof Amelia Hadfield, Dean International, Department of Politics

Prof Matthias Parey, Department of Economics

Dr Anesa Hosein, Surrey Institute of Education

Dr Sazana Jayadeva, University of Cambridge

CO-ORGANISERS

Prof Johanna Waters, UCL

Dr Daniel Faas, Trinity College Dublin

Prof Maria Slowey, Dublin City University

Dr Suzanne Beech, University of Ulster

Dr Georgina Mihut, University of Warwick

Dr Aline Courtois, University of Bath

Dr Kirsty Finn, Manchester Metropolitan University