Marketization, marketing and the production of international student migration
| Author | Allan M Findlay,David McCollum,Helen Packwood |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12330 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
Marketization, marketing and the production
of international student migration
Allan M Findlay*, David McCollum* and Helen Packwood*
INTRODUCTION
The recent pace of growth of international student numbers has been extraordinary. There were
already over two million international students in 2001 and since then the number of people
enrolled for study outside their country of normal residence has more than doubled to 4.5 million,
according to the International Institute for Education (IIE, 2015). Moreover, this significant flow of
students has been concentrated in just a few destination countries. The OECD (2015) suggests that
over half of all international students were enrolled in just seven countries (Australia, Canada,
France, Germany, Japan, UK and USA), with Australia and UK having particularly high ratios of
international to domestic students.
While the reasons for the rapid expansion of international student mobility are complex, research-
ers agree that the pace of growth has been much greater than for other types of migration (King
et al. 2011). In an era of rising political concerns about many aspects of international migration,
this particular form of mobility has proved relatively uncontroversial. This is both because it is per-
ceived as transient, and also because in many countries it is recognised as a means of generating
significant revenues through student tuition fees.
1
A curious feature of research into the drivers of international student mobility is that it has been
dominated by studies focussing on the explanations offered by students and their families for
engaging in international study. This has fostered ‘choice’-based understandings of student mobility
(Alberts and Hazen, 2013; Binsardi et al., 2003; Cubillo et al., 2006; NUS, 2010). Even where
social scientists have theorized the social and cultural drivers underpinning these choices (Brooks
and Waters, 2011), the implicit understanding has been that mobility is “demand-driven”. While
there is great value in recognizing the significance of cultural capital as a force offering deeper
explanations for why those with social power seek to enhance the opportunities for their children
through a search for academic distinction attained via international study, equally important is the
recognition that “supply-side”forces (controlled by those who provide and benefit from promoting
international study opportunities) also shape the uneven pattern of international student flows. It is
in this latter arena that this article seeks to make a distinctive contribution.
By paying attention to the supply-side of higher education in relation to student mobility
(Findlay, 2011), the article maps how universities and other higher education providers attract and
recruit students from a world market place. Within the global education market there are many
intermediaries (just as in any other market). These include state education agencies, international
organizations, recruitment agents and commercial and charity-based sponsors and funders. Not only
is there great inequality between those seeking to purchase higher education (as well documented
* University of St Andrews, UK
doi: 10.1111/imig.12330
©2017 The Authors
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (3) 2017
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
in the student migration literature) but there are also vast differences in power between those sell-
ing study opportunities, not least between those countries who seek to make significant financial
gains from student tuition fees (Felbermayr and Reczkowski, 2014). The fundamental contention of
the article is therefore that the higher education system of many countries is significantly shaped by
neo-liberal economic forces and that to understand international student flows it is necessary to
think of education as a product that is both marketed and marketized. Those engaged in providing
education are social actors whose marketing, recruiting and branding practices selectively mould
the nature of student mobility in the context of the marketization of higher education. Our aim is
therefore to contribute to re-conceptualising international student mobility in relation to marketing
and marketization.
The article opens with a review of recent developments in the theorisation of student mobility in
relation to the key themes of our research. The article is structured around four themes: motivations
for engaging in the marketization of higher education, student recruitment as a social practice,
branding and the differentiation of the higher education market, and resolving tensions between the
state and universities as stakeholders involved at different scales in the provision of higher educa-
tion. The final section asks how the research has helped towards reconceptualizing the business of
selling international study opportunities.
THE MARKETIZATION OF INTERNATIONAL STUDY OPPORTUNITIES
Marketization refers to the process of creating new markets for products (such as health care)
which were previously shielded from market exchange and price mechanisms. Higher education,
like other sectors of many advanced economies, has faced increased marketization over recent dec-
ades in response to neo-liberal agendas. These agendas have been advanced by those believing that
the free flow of goods and services in relation to market price mechanisms was in the interests of
economic efficiency (Castree, 2010). In the process of pursuing this goal there has been a retreat
from the meritocratic belief that Higher Education should be considered a public good available to
all with the ability to study for a university degree (Robbins, 1963) rather than a private good
accessible only to those able to pay (Hall, 2015). We do not devote further attention at this point
to this important philosophical debate. Instead we focus on the consequences of the switch in terms
of analysing the practices that have resulted from the marketization of higher education. In particu-
lar we concentrate on the practice of promoting higher education products to a global marketplace
(Hemsley-Brown and Oplakta. 2006; Scott, 2015).
The academic literature within the disciplines of marketing and business studies have produced
some interesting studies on student migration relative to traditional concepts about markets such as
“product”,“place”and “branding”(Chapleo et al., 2011; Teng, Khong and Chong 2015; Woeraas
and Solbakk, 2009; Binsardi et al., 2003). Perhaps of greatest value from this literature is the
observation that the general marketing literature is ill-suited to research on international students
because the product being sold and the motives of those purchasing the product are very different
from other aspects of “marketing”(Helmsley-Brown et al., 2006). Moreover, most of this body of
research is about “markets”as opposed to “marketization”and lacks critical social theorization.
“Marketization”,asdefined above is distinctive from marketing, because it is a term that implies a
strategy of “creating”markets for products considered previously as public goods.
In what follows we concentrate on social science insights that suggest that the global market
place is highly uneven (Gulson and Symes, 2007) and that the power differentials between those
involved in providing higher education (nationally and internationally) are fundamental to under-
standing the uneven origin and destination patterns of international mobility. This said, we do not
ignore the “marketing”literature because it leads us to two important questions: first what exactly
140 Findlay, McCollum and Packwood
©2017 The Authors. International Migration ©2017 IOM
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