Thinking with four non-EU academic migrants from the global South, and their experiences of working/studying or starting to work/study during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are unravelling the current geopolitics of the internationalised higher education in the global North. Our central argument is that COVID-19 has not simply affected the national and…

This article focuses on how local institutions in three rural areas in Sweden organised education and work to assist adult immigrants' integration. We particularly analyse how local officials in educational institutions, employment offices and local governments attempted to support adult immigrants' education-to-work transitions, using a…

As immigration polices increasingly entangle with those of higher education (HE), institutions are being positioned as migrant surveillance actors. HE's participation in state-managed international student compliance regimes (ISCRs), for example, raises political and ethical questions, including those concerning the core mission of HE. This paper…

In a competitive international education market, the opportunity to gain post-study work experience in the host country is one of the key drivers of international students' decision making and critical to education export, especially in top destination countries, such as Australia, Canada, the UK and US. Understanding the impacts of post-study…

The current literature of school education, transnationalisation and migration explores actors, structures and social mechanisms, however, tends to focus on these analytical levels separately. This article advocates a more explicit analysis of the interconnections of structures, actors and mechanisms within and across schools and wider national…

Anti-immigrant hostility continues to rise throughout multicultural societies. Building on segmented assimilation theory, in this manuscript I examine whether anti-immigrant sentiment might decrease school performance of immigrant children using the case of California, the state with the largest population of immigrants in the United States. I…

This article argues for a more nuanced view of mobility through education within an era of increased globalisation. We explore questions of transnational mobility through the lens of underexplored Bourdieusian concepts, specifically transnational habitus and habitus clivé. Our analysis shows how one's perception of a "better life" and…

This paper looks at how cosmopolitanism is practised amongst Singaporeans who have experienced Singapore's education reform in the 1990s. Cosmopolitanism in Singapore is tied to state-intervention with a national orientation. To complement Singapore's push towards cosmopolitanism, the education reform in the 1990s promoted the idea of a national…

Taking the migration-higher education nexus as an analytical entry point, we address the question: How can we account for different internationalisation outcomes? We focus on three actors involved in the global race to internationalise higher education activities: higher education institutions (HEIs), states, and migrants. We argue that the…

While attracting international students is the declared objective of many countries of the global North, the regulation of movements of this migrant group does not escape the tensions that characterise policymaking on migration. This paper compares the evolution of student migration policies in three major European destinations--France, Spain and…

This special issue showcases ethnographies with young people in the Global South which draw on the common conceptual umbrella of the 'identity of the educated person' to unpack novel intersections between mobility, migration and education in the context of globalisation. Overarching themes include how definitions of the educated person are shaped…

Since the 1990s, Swiss immigration policies have placed increasing restrictions on non-European Union (EU) immigrants. However, in 2011, based on the initiative of Jacques Neirynck, the Swiss Parliament approved a law facilitating the admission and integration of non-EU nationals with a Swiss university degree. How can this policy openness in…

In this paper, I will explore how links between migration, official language proficiency and labour market needs are being forged within the context of an increasing neoliberal agenda for immigration. Specifically, I will examine how the stated need for immigrant labour has made the official language proficiency of newcomers a site of increasing…

Internationalisation of higher education in Ireland has been identified as a pathway to economic recovery through encouraging student mobility and attracting highly skilled human capital. International students constitute one element of recent Irish immigration trends, presenting new challenges for a society in which diversity is a relatively…

In Japan in recent years, there has been much discussion of the need for global human resources alongside criticism of Japanese youth as having an "inward-looking" ("uchimuki") orientation. Drawing out the contradictions apparent in a youth apparently reluctant to leave Japan and companies, universities and government seemingly…