Theme 3: Mobilities and inequalities

Thursday 23 April, 11.45am – 1.15pm

Post-Brexit international student mobilities

Panellists:

• Rachel Brooks, University of Oxford
• Jo Waters, University College London
• Sophie Cranston, Loughborough University
• Suzanne Beech, Ulster University
• David McCollum, University of St Andrews
• Siwan Davies, Swansea University
• Lee Rensimer, University College London
• Aline Courtois, University of Bath
• Sazana Jayadeva, Univesrity of Surrey
• Gregor Schaefer, University of Bath

As has been well-documented in the extant literature, international student mobilities are shaped, often in quite profound ways, by broader geopolitical forces (Mok et al., 2024; Bamberger, 2025). With respect to the UK, the decision to leave the European Union has had a significant impact on such mobilities into and from the UK, with respect to both ‘whole degree’ mobility and stays of shorter duration (Brooks and Waters, 2026).

In this panel, we explore four different components of the mobility landscape, in the UK, post-Brexit. These comprise: (i) the introduction of the Turing Scheme, following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU’s Erasmus+ Programme (paper given by Sophie Cranston, Suzanne Beech and David McCollum); (ii) the Taith mobility programme – an addition to Turing in Wales (paper by Johanna Waters and Siwan Davies); (iii) participation in the EU’s ‘European Universities Initiative’ by some UK universities, as a means of maintaining connections to Europe and facilitating intra-European mobility (paper by Rachel Brooks and Lee Rensimer); and (iv) the rise of ‘virtual mobilities’ in many UK universities as a response to various financial, environmental and policy challenges (paper by Aline Courtois, Sazana Jayadeva and Gregor Schaefer).

Thursday 23 April, 2.15pm – 3.45pm

International student mobility and scholarships in a fractured world: Rethinking purposes, politics, and futures

Panellists:

• Maia Chankseliani, University of Oxford, UK
• Hans de Wit, Boston College, USABrendan Harrison, The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK (CSC) and The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), UK
• Emma Hennessey, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, UK
• Andreas Hoeschen, DAAD UK
• Joonghyun Kwak, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Jenna Mittelmeier, University of Manchester, UK
• Hans de Wit, Boston College, USA

The cross-border movement of students has long been imagined as a symbol of openness, exchange, and shared futures. Today, however, international student mobility and scholarships are caught between competing political, economic, and security claims. Across some of the major destinations, debates have narrowed to questions of migration control, repeated concerns that students and their families might stretch public services, restrictions on work rights, visa routes, and dependants have begun to reshape who can move, under what terms, and at what cost. Yet even as the political climate tightens, governments, universities, and scholarship funders continue to see international education as a public good – not only for cultivating knowledge and networks, but also for strengthening institutional capacity across borders and for developing the civic and diplomatic ties that connect societies over time.

This panel will not follow the usual paper-presenting format. It will take the form of a structured Q&A conversation among scholars and policy leaders, with space for audience engagement. The aim is to bring research and policy perspectives into dialogue, opening up a grounded discussion of the current dynamics of mobility and funding.

The conversation will explore questions such as:

• What kinds of evidence best speak to the societal value of mobility and scholarships?
• Under what conditions do internationally educated graduates become agents of civic and institutional renewal?
• What choices face universities, funders, and governments if openness is to be sustained?

At a time when mobility is increasingly securitised and instrumentalised, this panel seeks to reframe the debate. It will invite participants to consider not only costs and benefits, but also what is at stake for knowledge, democracy, and global interdependence if international education contracts.

Friday 24 April, 9am – 10.30am

Researching transnational mobility and education: Opportunities, challenges and debates

Panellists:

• Susan L. Robertson, University of Manchester/Wolfson College Cambridge
• Jian Wu
• Fazal Rizvi, University of Melbourne
• Yan Guo, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
• Yingling Lou, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary

As globalisation intensifies, the integration of the world economy and advanced transportation technologies have greatly enhanced the mobility of people across national boundaries. As a result of increasing global mobility, we have witnessed the growth of transnational migration, refugee movement, and international student mobility across transnational borders in the world. As a result of growing mobility, the foreign-born population of OECD countries rose to 150 million or 11% of the total population in 2023, up from 9% in 2013 (OECD, 2024). Without any doubt, transnational mobility has brought significant changes to the demographics and socio-cultural fabric of receiving societies.

At a conceptual level, it is claimed that a ‘new mobilities’ paradigm, also known as a ‘mobility turn’, is being formed within the social sciences to transcend disciplinary boundaries (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, 2006). As a powerful discourse that creates its own effects and contexts, the emerging mobility paradigm challenges the ‘a-mobility’ of much research in the social sciences until recently. Furthermore, the transnationalism paradigm, which emerged in the mid-1990s, challenges the rigid, territorial nationalism that defines the modern nation-state (Lie, 1995, p. 304). Under the transnationalism paradigm, mobilities are conceptualised as circulatory and transnational, moving us beyond the framework of methodological nationalism. On this view, many migrants can no longer be exclusively characterised as ‘uprooted’, people who are expected to make a sharp and definitive break from their homelands (Glick Schiller, Basch & Szanton Blanc, 1995). Instead, their daily lives depend on multiple and constant interconnections across international borders and whose public identities are configured in relationship to more than one nation-state. These migrants have lives that incorporate daily activities, routines and institutions in both a country of destination and transnationally and this is referred to by Levitt and Schiller (2004, p. 1003) as ‘simultaneity’.

While there is an emerging scholarship on the transnationalism and new mobilities paradigms, unfortunately little has been done to examine the relationship between transnational mobility and education. Therefore, this panel explores the connections between transnational migration, refugee resettlement, and international student mobility under the integrated framework of transnational mobility. In particular, it focuses on the impact of transnational mobility on education and implications for educational theory and practice.

Collectively, this panel addresses issues of both mobility and immobility from comparative lenses. It reveals that the growing diversity and transnationality of world population posed significant challenges to education, particularly post-secondary education. This panel examines processes of inclusion as well as exclusion. We explore the role of education as mediating force in facilitating the transitions of migrants, refugees and international students as newcomers to the education environment of their host societies. It is hoped that the multiple paradigms and their connections to transnational mobility and education appeal to an international audience of the conference.

Friday 24 April, 11am – 12.30pm

International education, migration, and international student journeys: UK and Australian perspectives

Panellists:

• Gaby Ramia – Professor of Policy and Society, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney
• Marta Moskal – Professor of Migration and Diversity, School of Education, University of Glasgow
• Benjamin Mulvey – Lecturer, School of Education, University of Glasgow
• Siwen Liu – PhD Candidate, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies and School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney
• Isaac Thornton – PhD Candidate, Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, University of Brighton
• Leah Williams Veazey – ARC DECRA Research Fellow, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies and School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney

There is a significant literature within higher education studies on the relationship between international education and migration, and a somewhat separate body of research on the wellbeing of international students. Scholarship also tends to be focused on single-country case studies. This panel combines perspectives on international education, migration and student wellbeing while also offering a comparative perspective between the UK and Australia, which are among the world’s most significant hosts for international students. In addition, the panel will contribute frameworks which together constitute international student journeys from initial motivations for education-driven mobility, through in-host-country experiences, to decisions on whether to stay in the host country after graduation.

The session will Incorporate the expertise of three UK-based and three Australian researchers, and combine sociological and policy studies perspectives with higher education, migration and health studies. Specific themes include: the relationship between student mobility, immigration policies, housing, and labour markets in Scotland; the means by which education-based trajectories for students of healthcare courses intersect with longer-term skilled migration pathways in Australia; resilience and social exclusion among international students in the UK and Australia; and the ‘healthcare-education-migration nexus’. Framing the individual contributions, the panel Chair will introduce the policy and intellectual contexts at the beginning, and offer international implications for comparative research at the end of the session. Throughout, both speakers and Chair will draw out connections and comparisons between the studies and systems. This allows for the analysis of learnings for the higher education studies community and for policy reform.

Friday 24 April, 1.30pm – 3pm

Social mobility and equitable access to international higher education

Panellists:

• Dr Que Anh Dang, Assistant Professor, Coventry University
• Dr. Zhe Wang, Lecturer, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford
• Mark Andrew Elepano, Doctoral Researcher, Coventry University, UK, and Aarhus University, Denmark
• Sarah Patrick, Doctoral Researcher, Coventry University, UK
• Quang Chau, Lecturer, Vietnam National University
• Dr. Que Anh Dang, Coventry University, UK
• Trang Nguyen, Doctoral Researcher, University of Liverpool, UK

This panel examines the complex intersections of social mobility, equity, and international higher education, highlighting how structural inequalities and individual agency shape who gets access to transnational educational opportunities and under what conditions. Focusing on South and Southeast Asia, the discussion interrogates the promises and paradoxes of international education as a pathway to empowerment and social advancement. Our panelists explore how global education opportunities, while promising transformation and upward mobility, often reproduce structural inequalities shaped by social capital, geography, and institutional privilege. Contributors offer insights into innovative models of international cooperation and the diverse roles played by governments, education agents, and individual students in expanding or constraining access.

Dr Zhe Wang examines how young changemakers from less privileged backgrounds in Southeast Asia navigate the transformative yet uneven terrain of international education mobility. Her analysis highlights “agency in motion” – the dynamic strategies through which marginalised youth leverage international study to challenge social hierarchies and enact change in their communities.

Mark Andrew Elepano examines “who gets to go global” by analysing the financial, institutional, and cultural resources that shape access to dual award PhD programmes. Sarah Patrick continues this discussion by questioning whether dual award doctorates genuinely expand opportunity or simply privilege those already equipped with cultural and academic capital to navigate global academia. Drawing on perspectives of students from the Global South pursuing dual award programmes between the UK and India, Indonesia, and South Africa, they illuminate how programme design, funding, and institutional expectations condition participation and belonging in transnational researcher networks.

Dr. Que Anh Dang and Quang Chau present on Vietnam’s bi-national universities – public institutions established through bilateral cooperation with Germany, France, and Japan – as hybrid models that aim to reconcile excellence and equity. Their findings suggest these universities offer affordable alternatives to private international campuses, yet competitive entry and urban concentration continue to limit equitable outcomes.

Finally, Trang Nguyen interrogates how Vietnamese educational agents mediate students’ access to overseas study, revealing how marketized intermediaries may reinforce, rather than reduce, social inequalities.

By situating Asian experiences within global debates on social mobility and equity, the panel offers critical reflections and multi-level perspectives on how actors negotiate the competing demands of equity, excellence, and global engagement, and considers how international education can more effectively foster social change.

View full conference programme for Days 1 and 2.