Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

April 15, 2016

Summary:

Student migrants from former sending regions now form a substantial share of non-European Union migration flows to Europe. These flows represent the convergence of extensive internationalisation of higher education with increasing restrictions on family and labour migration. This article provides the first examination of student migrants’ early socio-cultural and structural integration by following recently arrived Pakistani students in London over an 18-month period. We use latent class analysis to identify both elite and two ‘middling’ types – middle class and network-driven – within our student sample. We then ask whether these types experience early socio-cultural and structural integration trajectories that differ in the ways that the elite and middling transnational literatures would suggest. We find differences in structural, but less in socio-cultural outcomes. We conclude that to understand the implications of expanding third country student migration across the European Union, it is important to recognize both the distinctiveness of this flow and its heterogeneity.

Published in

Ethnicities

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 16 , p.316 -344

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1468796815616155

ISSN

14687968

Subjects

#523610

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