With the extensive internationalisation of higher education alongside restriction of traditional family and labour pathways to Europe from former sending countries, student migrants now form a substantial share of non-EU flows to Europe. Yet analysis of students as a migration stream is relatively underdeveloped. Using a unique longitudinal data set that provides a large sample of third country student migrants to Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK who are surveyed shortly after arrival and then 18 months later, this paper provides the first examination of the early socio-cultural and structural integration process of third country nationals migrating to Europe as students. We theorise that as well as an elite migration stream, we will also find among these students a group of ‘middling’ transnationals, less highly selected and more closely embedded in ethnic networks and with more equivocal outcomes. Latent class analysis reveals three student types in the UK: an elite and two ‘middling’ types. Ongoing analyses suggest cross-country differences in student types. We also ask whether the types experience different early socio-cultural and structural integration trajectories in the ways that the elite and middling transnational literatures would suggest. In the UK, we find statistically significant differences in structural, but not socio-cultural outcomes. We conclude that to understand the implications of expanding third country student migration across the EU, it is important to recognize both the distinctiveness of this flow and its heterogeneity.
Presented by:
Renee Luthra (ISER)
Date & time:
June 10, 2015 11:00 am - June 10, 2015 12:00 pm
Venue:
Large Seminar Room (2N2.4.16)
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