Project

The research on international student mobilities (ISM) has increased substantially since the late 1990s. Following trends in institutional and policy debates on the broader internationalisation of education, scholars have paid considerable attention to questions about why, where, and how young adults engage in educational migration. In this project, we evaluate the extant scholarship on ISM, highlighting that there are significant blind spots in current research and the need for greater attention to interdisciplinary conversations that can address the changing nature of educational migration internationally and locally.

First, we argue that researchers have remained too focused on Westward mobility and have over-emphasised the centrality of talented youth in researching international students.

Second, the growing interest in the geography of higher education, especially regarding the changing nature of urban neighbourhoods within which universities are situated, how these relate to broader residential patterns of different age groups, ethnicities, and/or place-based identities.

We draw on the context of Latvia, which represents a geographically significant case study country, an off-beat destination for ISM, but with a distinctive offer. We will map the ‘spillover’ effects of expansions in strategies to attract ISM and the building of campuses by analysing the geographic correlations among universities and studentification.