International Student Mobility and Societal Impact: Reframing the Civic, Political, and Institutional Reach of Global Higher Education

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

International student mobility is under pressure. In many countries, international students are no longer framed as contributors to knowledge, capacity, or public life, but as burdens to infrastructure, threats to sovereignty, or temporary labourers whose presence requires justification. At the same time, universities and policymakers frequently frame international students as revenue sources—students who pay full tuition, often at the master’s level, and help subsidise strained institutions (Kim, 2023; Yao & Mwangi, 2022). These narratives are not merely rhetorical shifts. They reflect deeper transformations in how mobility is governed, how universities are positioned, and how international education is understood (Brunner et al., 2024; Chankseliani, 2025).
This panel addresses what is being lost in that shift. It brings together five papers that examine how international student mobility contributes to civic, political, and institutional life across diverse contexts. Some explore the democratic and developmental commitments returnees bring home. Others examine how international students shape host institutions, reframe migration policy, or expose gaps in inclusion efforts. Taken together, the papers move beyond instrumental framings of international education to consider how mobility shapes responsibility, affiliation, and public purpose.
At the heart of this panel is the claim that international student mobility has societal effects that cannot be captured by graduate earnings or net migration figures. These effects are relational and contextual. They unfold over time and are shaped by how mobility is received, recognised, and made meaningful in institutions and public discourse. They may take the form of civic presence at home or, as Campbell (2020) notes, through cyclical engagement and transnational contribution that challenge narrow expectations of permanent return. This panel responds to calls to better understand such effects by offering empirical and conceptual perspectives while remaining attentive to difference. Not all students move with the same resources or into the same institutional and national conditions, yet across difference mobility still opens a contested field of civic possibility.
The first paper grounds the panel in the civic afterlives of international study. Drawing on interviews with returnees across democratic and politically restrictive settings, it examines how international education reshapes stance, including how individuals come to understand public life and how they position themselves in relation to the institutions they return to. The analysis introduces the concept of civic translation to describe the situated adaptation of civic and democratic commitments. What is at stake is not the transmission of ideology but the formation of presence, understood as the moral and strategic positioning that makes public action possible under different conditions.
Other papers extend this conversation across institutions, policy systems, and regions. One contribution develops a design-based approach to scholarship programmes, arguing that current models are too often retrospective and uncoordinated. It draws on critiques of how funding structures can mirror geopolitical hierarchies and reproduce historical dependencies (King et al., 2023), and proposes a framework that links scholarship design to national development plans from the outset. Another examines how national policy shifts, such as Canada’s recent reversal on international student migration, reveal deeper tensions in the higher education and migration nexus. By tracing how legitimacy and belonging are redefined, it highlights the political stakes of who gets to move, study, and stay.
The panel also addresses the civic responsibilities of host institutions. One paper reviews how higher education systems have supported forcibly displaced students in the Global North, identifying structural exclusions even where access initiatives exist. It builds on scholarship showing that institutional responses remain fragmented, underfunded, and uneven in implementation (Aguiar et al., 2024). It argues that mobility must be paired with serious institutional commitments to equity and social inclusion if it is to support broader civic outcomes.
One paper turns inward to the university itself. Drawing on empirical evidence from an international education programme, it examines how international student presence transforms the learning environment. It considers not only the perspectives of international students but also those of their peers and professors. It makes the case that international diversity is not an add-on but foundational to critical reflection, comparative reasoning, and democratic formation within the university.
Across these contributions, three themes emerge. First, international student mobility produces civic and institutional effects that are often overlooked and rarely measured. These include the formation of democratic sensibilities, the adaptation of global frameworks to local contexts, and the creation of new public vocabularies. Second, the value of mobility depends on structure. It is not enough to create access. Terms of participation—legal, institutional, or symbolic—shape who benefits, how, and with what consequences. Third, mobility is not one thing. It spans regions, political systems, and institutional forms. Its meanings vary across place and time, but the questions it raises are shared: who belongs, who speaks, and what kind of university and society are being imagined.
This panel does not treat international student mobility as a self-evident good. It examines its conditions, contradictions, and potential. It engages critically with scholarship design, migration regimes, and university practices while holding onto the possibility that international education might still serve a public purpose. That purpose may not be easily measured, but it is enacted daily in classrooms, ministries, research collaborations, civic networks, and contested policy spaces.
At a time when international students are being asked to prove their economic value, this panel asks a different question. What kind of intellectual and civic loss are we willing to accept if their contributions remain unrecognised? What might we learn, empirically, conceptually, and institutionally, if we took their societal presence seriously?
The panel brings together researchers in higher education, comparative and international education, and migration studies. Using methods such as interviews, policy analysis, programme evaluation, literature review, and case studies, the papers share a commitment to rethinking the purpose of international education and whom it serves.
This is not a panel about student choice or market positioning. It is a panel about presence, recognition, and contribution. It offers evidence and argument for why international student mobility deserves renewed scholarly attention. And it shows why it should be defended not only on economic grounds, but as a site of civic possibility.

Sub Unit

• Higher Education SIG

Chair

• Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford

Individual Presentations

• Return and Presence: How International Study Shapes Civic Contribution across Political Contexts - Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford

• The conflicting aims of higher education admission and immigration selection criteria - Lisa Brunner, The University of British Columbia

• Fostering Peace through Mobility: Institutional Pathways for Forcibly Displaced Students in Higher Education - Cristina Mazzero, University of Trento; Thais Franca; Joyce Aguiar, Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies

• Beyond Borders: The Transformative Value of International Student Mobility for Professional Preparation in the field of Education Policy - Fernando M. Reimers, Harvard University

Discussant

• Noah W Sobe, UNESCO