By Gunjan Sondhi | Issue 26
Covid-19 made clear to international students that while their money was desired, they themselves were not. The pandemic highlighted the cracks and fissures in our social, political and economic systems. Some of these fissures were more visible than others. It is within these moments when the internal contradictions in society, of the systems that are fundamental to our everyday life, are exposed. Such moments opened up the possibilities for revealing what crises are made of and laying bare pre-existing socio-cultural and political formations. But any crisis is also a time of solidarity. For international students, Covid-19 brought them together to plan and organise to protect each other, and this solidarity they cultivated extended beyond the pandemic.
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According to UNESCO Institute of Statistics, in 2021, there were over 6.4 million international students globally. Over 50% of the 6.4 million students were hosted across ten countries: The United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Canada, France, Turkey, China, the Netherlands and South Korea. The top sending countries included China, India, and Vietnam.
International students were among the first groups of migrants to feel the impact of processes that imposed immobility. Some students found themselves unable to leave their home countries to start their education abroad, whilst others found themselves unable to leave to return home. For the most part, international students have been portrayed in the media as privileged and individual migrants, especially when they are considered students within the neoliberal institutions and as subjects of internationalisation and marketisation of higher education.
They have been seen as individual consumers and beneficiaries of education services. Yet, such a perception was always too short sighted. Long before the crisis, many international students have suffered from overpriced housing and campus accommodation, higher student fees (compared to local students) and loans on unfair conditions as well as exploitative work arrangements. Their contribution to national and local economies of the countries in which they study has often been obscured.
Their contribution to the higher education system has also received little attention. International students have long been part of a crucial component of the cross-funding model for higher education institutions especially for countries such as the UK and Australia. In 2018-2019 international student fees made up over 30% of the UK HEI revenue and 40% of revenue for Australian universities. In 2022-2023, fee income from all international students in the UK was £11.8 billion. However, whilst students have been contributing to the national economies of the destination countries, their contributions have not been acknowledged in the media. Instead they have long been demonised and scapegoated as part of anti-migrant narratives within the public and policy sphere. Within higher education spaces, their well-being and rights have largely been ignored and Covid-19 made this neglect visible.
Covid-19 revealed that the challenges faced by international students weren’t individual but rather failures of structures and infrastructures of mobility. Decisions made at the structural level such as those by governments, policy-makers, universities and businesses, led to international students' challenges and struggles.
During Covid-19, there was a noted absence of coordination and dialogue between universities and policy-makers around the needs and well-being of international students. Where dialogue did take place, it was often to make a case for continued mobility of international students into destination countries because of the Higher Education sector's financial dependence on international student fees, which is evident well into 2024. As migrants, international students only emerge as a ‘collective’ group in the oscillating policy framings of either bad or good international students. The absence of any support and collective advice from the government and the university left a void, leaving international students stuck in the middle feeling abandoned and their concerns seemingly inconsequential and dismissed. The most crucial impact of the failure to anticipate and respond to the needs of international students was a critical mass in building solidarity amongst international students and civil society organisations.
The void of support was filled by local actions, such as in Australia, where the Melbourne City Council started an international student hardship fund. In Japan, international student support organisations came together to provide support. In my research on experiences of international students in the UK during the pandemic, students spoke of how the ‘left-over’ international students in the dorm tried to create their own systems to check on each other and set up socially distanced meet-ups. This solidarity amongst international students continued into the post-Covid world leading to resistance, spatial disobedience and collective action. There are remnants of solidarity that seem to continue post-pandemic and that also focused on broader issues.
For instance, in 2023, international students in Canada pitched tents outside of university campuses to highlight the housing crisis. They took a stance against the government when international students were faced with mass deportation due to invalid visas they received through no fault of their own but due to an absence of due diligence from Canadian agencies. In the UK, international students are increasingly taking action by signing up for class action lawsuits to challenge unfair practices and detention by national migration agencies such as the UK Home Office.
All these examples demonstrate solidarity and self-organised collective action undertaken at local levels to push back the neglect of universities and the anti-migrant narratives. International students’ actions demand rights and recognition of their presence within the universities and the wider society of the destination countries in which they are studying, working and living. Such local-level actions demonstrate how COVID-19, through its failure and breakdown of infrastructure, established collective action and solidarity amongst a group that is often seen as privileged and individualised.
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While there was some degree of collective organisation around the needs of international students prior to the pandemic, it seems the neglect international students received during the pandemic had left them with little patience and a realisation that they needed to organise if they wanted to be seen and heard, and have their rights recognised.
Frustratingly, there has been little change in how governments and universities care and treat international students. In the UK, international students are now openly considered an important source of income not only for the universities but also for funding of broader structures in the UK such as the public sector pay rise.
Previously, the contributions of international students to the higher education sector was invisible to the public. However, at the local level, amongst international students, there is increased joint and collective action to ensure their well-being and rights are protected. This hopefully, over time, will grow across the micro-sites into national and perhaps transnational solidarity.
Dr Gunjan Sondhi
Gunjan is the Director of Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice, and a Senior Lecturer in Geography at the Open University, UK. Her research explores the intersections of gender, class, education, and skilled mobility across South Asia, Southeast Asia, North America, the UK and EU. Focusing on international students and highly skilled migrants in academia, IT, and finance, her work employs gender as a lens to analyse global and regional power dynamics in mobility.
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