International student employability: Narratives of strengths, challenges, and strategies from Global South students

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This panel represents authors from the newly published book International Student Employability: Narratives of Strengths, Challenges, and Strategies from Global South Students (Springer). The panelists will share information on how international undergraduate and graduate level students use their agency to make sense of what they are learning and how to apply that to employability in career pathways. The panel will explore the concept of critical employability (Raby, 2023) which includes three criteria. First, how students make sense of the intersection of their higher educational institutional (HEI) experiences to their employability options. Second, how students use their agency to apply HEI services to meet their needs to gain transversal skills-capabilities. Finally, how students use their agency to envision alternative pathways to anticipate and respond to crisis changes in the economy, environment, and national politics.
The presenters in this panel provide empirical research and case studies that add to the literature by bringing in diverse student voices that are long missing in the field of international student employability (Fakulne, 2021b). The panelists also show how deeply the experiences of study abroad deepen student cultural sensitivity, adaptability, and transferability of skills that are essential to graduate employability. The presentations will show that there is a need to widen our scope of understanding employability beyond current dominant perspectives. In so doing, the panel addresses the conference theme of Power of Conflict.
While there is a growing body of research on international students and employability, there is limited research on student pathways from the Global South. The label of Global South is given to nations that are politically and culturally marginalized as a result of deep histories of colonialism (King et al., 2018) and whose low or emerging economies subject them to choose the dominant Western global imaginary (Bruckner & Stein, 2020) for their educational and economic development. In so doing student from the Global South need to balance their own local imaginaries within the global north construct (Raby & Kamyab, 2023). A focus on the Global South shows a diversity of students and their employability pathways. Presenter # 2 in this panel will explore the experiences of Global South students who study in Malaysia, a Global South country. This presentation represents a growing context in which global south students choose to study in other global south city-hubs. Presenter # 3 will explore how Australian students study abroad, and thus become international students within the global south countries of India and Vietnam. The experiences in Global South countries enhances the Australian student employability when they return to the Global North.
The presenters in this panel will illuminate the topic of understanding employability from a range of perspectives which is important because governments need graduates with skills ready for the labor market, higher educational institutions are measured by the number of graduates who have gainful employment upon graduation, and international students who use study abroad to gain the skills and competencies needed for employability. The presenters critically examine several themes including how students use their capabilities to navigate host country national political policies that define and re-define work permits, visas, and immigration. This includes awareness of national and international employment patterns, wicked problems from globalization, demands of changing labor market, and adaptability for transversal job sectors. Finally, and of most importance is that the various presenters on this panel use the lens of diverse student groups, including undergraduates, graduate, and doctoral students, international and domestic students, students who study in different HEI sectors (aka, TVET Colleges and universities), and in different academic programs, (aka STEAM, nursing, and humanities), and different geographies of where students come from and where they study. Such diversification showcases those experiences and relevance to employability are fundamentally different.
The presenters provide case studies that show that student experiences are not homogenous, a point that needs to be acknowledged by those who study them and those who educate them. All students have a knowledge base prior to studying abroad that enables them to use their agency to succeed while studying abroad. This does not mean that there are no obstacles that international students encounter. The purpose of this panel on examining international mobility and employability is the understanding of how international students respond to those obstacles. This process cannot be done if international students are continually defined as a homogenous group, if influences from systemic inequities are ignored, and if researchers continue to label students in the deficit.
The panel is organized around four broad themes that showcase variability between international students and their experiences: 1) External impacts that include national policy on work policies, visas, migration, and job demands and changing socio-economic conditions that influence a changing job market; 2) Role of the HEI to understand market demands, employers’ needs, and skills shortages which then impacts how they prepare, counsel, provide internships and build work-integrated learning for international students; 3) Bourdieuian Skills and Capabilities Approach that help international graduates build defined skills needed for success; 4) Beyond Skills with a focus on mindset, networking, returnee experiences, and critical assessment of transversal and alternative employability pathways.

Sub Unit

• Study Abroad and International Students SIG

Chair

• Anoo Bhopti, Monash University

Individual Presentations

• Australian students as international students doing a work integrated learning in India and Vietnam - Anoo Bhopti, Monash University; Carajane Millar

• Cultural barriers of international students employability in Japan - Phillip Pappano, Cy-Fair ISD; Shingo Hanada, Toyo University, Tokyo