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This paper reflects on the importance of 'time spent' in understanding the international student experience. Short-term mobility programmes (involving stays of between 1 week and 2 months) attracting less privileged students, such as the relatively new Turing Scheme in the United Kingdom, have been hailed as a potential 'solution' to the fact that, traditionally, wealthier individuals have been far more likely to engage in study abroad. However, we do not yet know how short-term and longer duration programmes compare in terms of the "value" they confer to students (in relation to their experiences and outcomes). How likely is it that short-term mobility at undergraduate level is as valuable, according to different measures, as mobility lasting 6 months to several years (as with degree mobility)? This paper reviews some of the evidence to date on shorter duration mobility, addressing how value in international study is constructed and conferred and how this relates to 'time spent'. The paper concludes by arguing that the picture is mixed: although short-term mobility will be beneficial to students, those engaging in longer term exchanges (usually more privileged students) are likely to derive greater benefits.

This paper analyses the way in which 'international' is mobilised in relation to international student mobility (ISM), focusing on three areas in particular: its role in motivating students to undertake ISM; how it shapes experiences of ISM; and, finally, how conceptions of the international influence the impacts of ISM (in terms of students' identities and labour market outcomes -- the dominant themes within the extant literature). It argues that particular ideas of 'the international' determine where students choose to study and how those destinations are framed and positioned hierarchically. Similar ideas also underpin students' experiences of ISM, with social class and family background playing an important additional role. The impacts of ISM are also related to conceptions of 'the international': students' post-study identities were seen as 'international' but also 'transnational', ethnic, religious or racially constructed. Finally, we show how an 'international' degree is seen as a valuable commodity in many labour markets, but that the literature paints a more nuanced picture, where such qualifications are valued in particular employment sectors, attached to particular countries and not, as might be assumed, universally valorised. Furthermore, conceptions of an 'international career' are predictably limited and proxy for Anglophone countries located in the Global North.

This article argues that, to date, debates (both public and academic) around international students and the internationalization of higher education have been overly concerned with economic issues and insufficiently attentive to the political ramifications of associated changes in educational practices. It takes seriously a call made by Madge et al. (2009), in which they assert that notions of "engaged pedagogy" and "responsibility" need to be explored in relation to international student experiences. Debates have thus far neglected the wider "politics" (with a small "p") that underpin the relationship between international students and their "host" university. An awareness of these political relationships has the potential to encourage progressive practices within the institution of the university, including the campus. The article examines the case of transnational education programs in Hong Kong, and considers why a political perspective on international student mobilities is important. The wider goal of this article is to inject some much needed "politics" into discussions of international--and domestic--student experiences.

The term ‘Global Britain’ was widely used by the UK government between 2016 and 2021 to signal its ambition to reorient the nation’s foreign policy on departure from the European Union. There was, however, considerable uncertainty about what the term meant beyond this, with some commentators suggesting that it denoted a de-prioritising of relations with European nations, others arguing that it represented a reassertion of colonial perspectives, and yet others contending it was largely an empty concept, devoid of meaning. In this article, we draw on a range of policy documents to consider whether it can be considered a form of ‘cosmopolitan nationalism’ – i.e. a policy agenda that promoted both a sense of nationalism and a global outlook. In developing our analysis, we focus on education – not least because this was one of the few policy domains where the language of ‘Global Britain’ was, until recently, still used (in the promotion of the Turing Scheme). We argue that while, prima facie, the term seems a plausible case of cosmopolitan nationalism, the significant limitations to the ‘global outlook’ that is deployed suggest that it was far from ‘cosmopolitan’ in its reach and ambition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we foreground the bodies of students and academics in studies of the internationalisation of higher education (IHE) and consider how internationalisation processes are shaped by embodiment and the geographies of (em)placement. Over the past 20 years, IHE has been extensively discussed within academic and policy circles. Such accounts have often been dominated by macro-level concerns. Within these discourses, the international mobility of students and academics have been a central focus. Although scholars within the social sciences are increasingly attentive to the social, cultural, and political dimensions of IHE, there has been little explicit discussion of bodies and the ways in which international mobilities are corporeal, involving in place/out of placeness and the politics and policies governing embodied (im)mobilities. This paper has two main objectives mapping on to two substantive sections. The first is to highlight the importance of the body within recent geographical scholarship and to juxtapose this with a notable absence within IHE research. The second is to consider where the body is present (explicitly or otherwise) in the bountiful literature on IHE and to draw out the meanings of this, arguing that paying attention to bodies exposes the (re)production of exclusionary hierarchies. The paper contributes to a growing corpus of work on the body within geography and extends critical geographies of the internationalisation of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global health crisis initiated by the COVID‐19 pandemic (2020–2021) brought to the fore issues around bodily health and safety within the internationalisation of higher education. Rarely have these concerns been discussed in relation to international students, despite them being a central issue for students themselves and their family members 'back home'. In this paper, we draw upon in‐depth interviews with UK‐based international postgraduate students to discuss how concepts of safety and bodily health are constructed geographically and transnationally, in conversation with family members 'back home' and, conversely, in their embedded and emplaced experiences as international students. The COVID‐19 pandemic provides a useful lens for considering these issues as it brought them into sharp relief as never before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the contemporary relationship between international student migration and diaspora formation. It argues that international students have been largely absent from recent discussions of 'knowledge diasporas', where migrants' 'home' states attempt to harness and co-opt the skills and knowledge of their émigrés. This is surprising, given students' evident role in knowledge circulation and exchange. In this paper, we foreground the significance of international students but also explore their relationship to diaspora formation from a different angle. We argue that some states are increasingly engaging in (sometimes seemingly contradictory) policies designed to "obstruct" overseas diaspora formation, and these policies centre on their international student populations. Through a number of case studies and drawing on the secondary literature, we demonstrate the ways in which states are strategising to repatriate international students following their studies overseas. More broadly, we argue, this represents an alternative to popular notions of brain circulation and knowledge diasporas, chiming with a far more long-standing concern with 'brain drain'.

It is axiomatic that middle‐class Asian migrant families invest heavily—practically and emotionally—in their children's education. Scholarship has linked this investment to strategies of capital accumulation. There has been little discussion, however, about the transformative nature of these strategies and how they might be framed in terms of migrants' whole lives. This paper applies theoretical concepts from migration studies and a framework proposed by philosopher Charles Taylor, to argue that educational migration should be seen as profoundly life shaping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals the complex diversity that underpins ostensibly similar transnational education programmes (TNE), through a comparison of UK TNE in Malaysia and Hong Kong. It draws on data from two different yet cognate studies on the role of UK universities in delivering higher education in Asia. Some fine-grained and informative differences between the ways in which 'value' in TNE is constructed in different host contexts is revealed. The paper brings to light the 'voices' of TNE students and graduates, which are very seldom heard. The arguments adapt and extend the concepts of education as a positional good, and as cultural capital. For various instrumental, intrinsic and personal reasons the authors discuss in detail, UK TNE is more highly valued in Malaysia than in Hong Kong. The paper makes a wider contribution to knowledge on the changing landscape of international higher education and the impact on social and personal (dis)advantage.

This paper is concerned with the nexus between migration governance and higher education. While the intersections between these two societal/policy systems have received attention in existing literature, much has changed as a result of the recent COVID-19 crisis. The global pandemic has introduced spatial and temporal disjuncture that significantly impact how international students navigate these systems. We address this issue through the lens of international student mobility, taking postgraduate international students' perspectives as a vantage point. By drawing on a comparative qualitative study between Singapore and the UK (specifically, London), we focus on how international students experience, first, (mis)alignments between migration governance and pandemic-induced mobility regulation and, second, tensions between mobility regulations and institutional measures adopted by universities in Singapore and the UK. In both contexts, pandemic governance often compounded the complexities of migration policies, creating additional barriers for international students. In navigating these new challenges, international students adaptively draw on various resources while also imagining new possibilities presented by the otherwise challenging circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores English schools' engagement with 'internationalisation' in the context of funding cuts and a highly pressured audit culture. The broader literature suggests two reasons why schools might partake in 'internationalisation'. The first concerns the 'strategic cosmopolitan' – schools are complicit in facilitating cosmopolitanism amongst the pupil body so that young people may attain 'positional advantage' in a crowded international or global labour market. The second invokes a deeper sense of ethics and a more equal 'exchange' of ideas. We use 'art' as a lens to explore this latter conception: proposing that artistic pursuits enable a more dialogic notion of internationalisation to develop. Focussing on international exchanges between schools in the Global North and Global South that foreground specifically artistic projects (involving drama, literature, fashion, textiles, art, creative writing, film making, dance and music), we illustrate a potentially more ethical, rich and meaningful form of 'internationalisation', which does not obviously conform to the notion of inherent and demonstrable (capitalised) value. We propose that educational value might be understood differently: in non-strategic, intrinsic and more essential ways, and that, furthermore, internationalisation can be fun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]