This edited volume explores core questions on education and transnational mobility in a time characterized by a global pandemic, recasting them through the lenses of regimes, experiences, and aspirations. The volume brings together 20 short essays in the form of letters addressed to the coronavirus and written by international students , together with eight striking illustrations that depict emotive scenes from the essays, and eight academic commentaries that analytically link these personal narratives to broader societal structures. This book represents a timely intervention, providing an intimate glimpse into young people’s hopes and the challenges they face concerning their education and mobility.

Over 2.7m students study in a country other than their own. Most of those students come from the Asia-Pacific region and undertake study in universities in the developed world. This trend is predicted to grow exponentially but features many dilemmas. In the post-9/11 global environment, international students experience hostility and harassment as well as ambivalence about their value to the academy. Some live an uncertain life of poverty and alienation. Many also struggle to come to terms with living and studying in a foreign land where there are concerns about international students eroding academic standards, having poor English language proficiency and being unable to “integrate” and contribute to their new communities. But some also seek to make new homes in their host countries. The contributions in this book explore the complex and diverse aspects of transnational education and propose some pragmatic approaches to these dilemmas. These contributions explore new ways of looking at the phenomena of international students, their social and cultural needs, as well as the challenges for teaching and learning, research supervision and English language in the academy. The book presents case studies and documents initiatives that are positive responses to the dilemmas of global student mobility.

This book offers critical insights into the geographies of the international student higher education experience from initial recruitment, through to the plethora of personal factors which influence their decisions to become mobile and experiences when abroad. From the student perspective these include, but are not limited to, the importance of social networks, desire for a multicultural experience and the attraction to certain locations as discussed in this volume. However, unlike other work, it also reflects on the motivations of the HEIs themselves and their need to continue recruiting students in the face of greater competition from overseas. Recognising this omission, this book also analyses the resulting migration industries and how these are sustained (and even necessitated) by the sector. It is, therefore, the first to bring together these wider institutional narratives with those of the students resulting in a holistic and comprehensive insight into the student mobility process.

This book analyses the multifaceted ways law operates in the context of human mobility, as well as the ways in which human mobility affects law. Migration law is conventionally understood as a tool to regulate human movement across borders, and to define the rights and limits related to this movement. But drawing upon the emergence and development of the discipline of mobility studies, this book pushes the idea of migration law towards a more general concept of mobility that encompass the various processes, effects, and consequences of movement in a globalized world. In this respect, the book pursues a shift in perspective on how law is understood. Drawing on the concepts of ‘kinology’ and ‘kinopolitics’ developed by Thomas Nail as well as ‘mobility justice’ developed by Mimi Sheller, the book considers movement and motion as a constructive force behind political and social systems; and hence stability that needs to be explained and justified. Tracing the processes through which static forms, such as state, citizenship, or border, are constructed and how they partake in production of differential mobility, the book challenges the conventional understanding of migration law. More specifically, and in revealing its contingent and unstable nature, the book reveals how human mobility is itself constitutive of law. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to those working in the areas of migration and refugee law, citizenship studies, mobility studies, legal theory, and sociolegal studies.

This book develops a comprehensive understanding of the motivations and experiences of students who choose to study abroad for the whole or part of a degree. It includes case studies of students from East Asia, Europe and the UK, and considers the implications of their movement for contemporary higher education.

The rise in demand for higher education in the Asia-Pacific region is an undeniable reflection of the growing pace of globalization and the subsequent pressures imposed by it. Aspiring to become globally competitive and to position favourably in the global university league tables, governments in Asia have either engaged in a serious quest to become a regional education hub or they have concentrated on developing transnational higher education to create more opportunities, in order to meet their citizens’ pressing demand for higher education. Internationalization of Higher Education in East Asia critically examines and provides comparative perspectives on the major strategies that selected Asian countries and societies have adopted to transform their higher education sector and enhance their national competitiveness in the increasingly globalized world. This volume by leading scholars in the field of education development and policy studies makes critical reflections on how Asian governments in particular and universities in general have responded to the growing challenges of globalization by promoting more internationalization, student mobility and entrepreneurship in higher education. This book is an essential collection for policy makers, researchers and postgraduate students studying higher education, Asian education and international education.