International students are a growing population in transnational migratory flows. Such increase has to do with the expansion and diversification of international education. International education has been incorporated into complex agendas by different stake holders— national, regional and local governments, educational institutions, employers, families and individual students, bearing a wide range of objectives. Such developments in recent decades have resulted in differentiated international student population as well as varying patterns of transnational migration. This presentation introduces the main types of mobile students and patterns of transnational mobilities observable in recent decades. It highlights the effect of social class on students’ cross-border mobilities in the increasingly hierarchical global education flow.
Dr. Gracia Liu-Farrer is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, and Director of Institute of Asian Migrations at Waseda University, Japan. She researches cross-border migration and social mobility in Asia, with a focus on the mobilities of students and professional workers. She is also investigating the relationship between global labor mobility and national employment systems in Japan, Germany and the UK. Her recent publications include Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations (Routledge, 2018, co-edited with Yeoh) and Immigrant Japan: Mobility and Belonging in an Ethno-Nationalist Society (Cornell University Press, 2020).
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This public webinar is presented in conjunction with the UCLA winter course Sociology 180A (Asian Community: Border-Crossing, Diasporic Formation, and Social Transformation in Asia), with generous funding from the Eurasia Foundation (from Asia).