Making International Students Migrants: The History of Differential Fees in Canada

• In Event: An International Examination of Pressing Policy Issues

Abstract

This paper uses archival materials to trace the history of differential fees for international students in Canada. It argues differential fees were only possible once international students were made into a category of migrants, both legally in Canadian immigration law, but also discursively in policy talk. It explains that the Canadian government excluded international students from pathways to citizenship in the 1970s, and that provinces and institutions seized on this to justify charging these students much higher fees. Although there was resistance, policymakers justified the fees on the basis that international students were permanent foreigners. The paper suggests that any effort to make contemporary international education more equitable will require identifying and challenging this discursive and legal framework of exclusion.

Author

• Dale M. McCartney, University of the Fraser Valley