Category: Research Highlights

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Mulvey, B. (2019). International Higher Education and Public Diplomacy: A Case Study of Ugandan Graduates from Chinese Universities. Higher Education Policy, 1-19.

This article addresses the recruitment of international students by Chinese universities as a means of public diplomacy. The Chinese government invests heavily in recruiting international students to study in Chinese universities, with the rationale that this will lead to improved relations between China and students’ respective home countries. However, empirical evidence for, and understanding of, the mechanisms through which international study leads to improved relations between host and sending country is weak (Wilson, 2014). Whilst there is a consensus in the scholarly literature with regard to China’s intention to use international student recruitment ion order to meet foreign policy goals, there has been very little empirical research carried out with the aim of exploring how China may be accumulating influence through international student recruitment in individual countries.

Students from Africa appear to be of particular importance within China’s international student recruitment. In total during 2018, the Chinese Ministry of Education indicates that 81,562 African students studied in China (Ministry of Education, 2019). This means that the number of African students in China is now greater than the number in the UK or USA, making China the second largest destination country for internationally mobile African tertiary education students. With this in mind, one country in Africa with particularly close relations with China – Uganda – was chosen as a case study of interest. The Ugandan government is almost unique in that it was one of the first African governments to follow China’s development model (Waldron, 2008; Shen and Taylor, 2012). It is also a member state of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced in 2013, which has rapidly become the dominant representation of China’s foreign policy practices. International student mobility is therefore just one facet of an expanding network of social, political, and economic ties between Uganda and China.

The case study uncovered common experiences of social alienation as a barrier to ‘deep’ social interactions that appear to be an important means of change in attitude towards the host country (Lomer, 2017a). Participants generally reported experiences of discrimination on the basis of race in China, and this emerged in the interviews as an important potential barrier to positive social interactions and a sense of community between participants and local people. It is important to note, however, that these negative interactions were largely outside of the university, rather than with faculty or local students. These perceptions and experiences of isolation were common. Most cited examples of what they perceived to be anti-African racism in everyday interactions, or when trying to find part-time work—this echoes some previous studies on African students in China, and research on anti-African racism in China more generally, in which there is a common argument that the Chinese perception of Africans is essentialized and racialized, creating a negative image of Africa in China, and often leading to negative experiences for Africans who study or work there (e.g. Cheng, 2011; Haugen, 2013; Ho, 2017; 2018; King, 2013). In particular, Ho (2018, 20), exploring the gastronomic practices of African students in China, echoes these findings, writing that ‘[t]he “Western” experience continues to hold allure for the African student migrants in China, reinforced by their encounters with prejudice and social exclusion in Chinese society’. In other words, the experiences of social exclusion highlighted in both Ho’s study, and this one, effectively act to subvert Chinese soft power.

Although the participants in this study expressed how feelings of social alienation and discrimination shaped their experiences in China, when asked to reflect on how attitudes towards China had changed over the course of study, most participants focused on academic experiences, which were largely positive, and on a sense of ‘understanding’ of Chinese society. Participants often mentioned learning not only from faculty members but also from the attitudes of Chinese students. A previous survey of African students in China highlighted that a constant refrain from students was the impact and transfer of Chinese attitudes towards work and study (King, 2013). Similarly, participants in this study emphasized learning from Chinese counterparts.

However, most participants were somewhat sceptical about Chinese involvement in Uganda, despite the fact the majority received full scholarships from the Chinese government. The following quote is fairly typical in that it highlights graduates’ sceptical attitudes towards Chinese involvement in Uganda:

“Most of the time they look at how to promote their business. I think we can call it a sweet colonial ideology. Like they are colonising us softly, and in a very sweet way and a polite way… they win favour with your government.” (Participant 9)

Waters (2018, 306) writes that a result of the soft power rationale for international higher education provision is ‘the dehumanizing of the international student’ which ‘means that they are rarely seen as political or social actors in their own right’. This flaw within the rationale is highlighted by the excerpts above. Students left China with a better understanding of relationship between the two countries, but ultimately held critical views towards their host as a result of this understanding.

Despite reporting some negative or alienating experiences in China and scepticism towards some aspects of Sino-Ugandan bilateral relations, participants found that undertaking employment related to China’s interests in Uganda was also a means to gain economic advantage. Engaging in mobility to China allowed participants to accumulate a variety of resources which, due to the relationship between Uganda and China, are increasingly easily convertible into advantages in the labour market. The rapidly changing position of China in relation to Uganda means that credentials which theoretically offer proof of the holders’ China-related competencies (in this case an understanding of Chinese language and culture) are highly valued by employers and can be utilised for economic gain through trade or business consulting. This incentivises Ugandan graduates to leverage their China related competencies for their own benefit—as opposed to a desire to forward China’s national interests. These participants perceived that Chinese language ability and, more broadly, an understanding of the nuances of Chinese culture gained whilst in China have been important in post-graduation career trajectories. Strikingly, all other than one who had studied medicine and worked in a Ugandan hospital corroborated claims here about the value of understanding Chinese language and culture in the Ugandan job market.

The article concludes by highlighting two apparent flaws in China’s assumptions about higher education as a means of public diplomacy. Chinese policy towards international students fails to account for firstly, the individual agency of students, and secondly, for how students’ agentic decision-making is related to the structure of the global political economy, and the sending and host country’s relative positions within it. The evidence presented highlights the nuanced and complex views of graduates towards their host and demonstrates that students are in fact political actors in their own right, rather than passive diplomatic tools, as policy texts in many destination countries sometimes imply.

Author bio

Ben Mulvey is a PhD candidate at the Education University of Hong Kong and visiting research student at University College London Department of Geography. Ben’s research focuses on sub-Saharan African students in China, and what this student flow can reveal about China’s attempts to (re)shape the global “field” of higher education. He can be contacted via the following email address: bmulvey@s.eduhk.hk

Over the past decade, a wave of Chinese international undergraduates has swept across American higher education. From 2005 to 2015, the number of these largely self-funded students in the US jumped from 9,304 to 135,629, a more than tenfold increase. And despite the Trump administration’s chilly immigration policy and the overall decline in international enrolment during 2017-18, Chinese undergraduate enrolment still grew by another 4 per cent, according to data from the Institute of International Education.

This conspicuous presence of Chinese students in the US has given rise to major headlines in the media, usually with a strong focus on the students’ falsely assumed universal wealth. More recently, Chinese students have been politicised and labelled as spies by the Trump administration. As a result, the voices of these students have been silenced and their experiences obscured.

My research, at both Chinese high schools and American institutions of higher education, reveals a diverse set of Chinese students, with varying resources and different educational journeys. Their accounts illustrate that studying in the US is no longer reserved for academic or economic elites, and they reflect the increasing ambition and ability of China’s burgeoning middle and upper-middle classes to obtain for their children a credential from what they take to be the best higher education system in the world.

My research also reveals the very complicated and sometimes contradictory desires and behaviours of Chinese international undergraduates in the US. They complain that their previous education in China posed a threat to their creativity, yet they credit the Chinese system for their tenacity in learning and their solid training in mathematics and science. They appear to like hanging out among their Chinese peers, yet the presence of so many other Chinese students in their classes makes them question the point of studying in the US. Many are silent in the classroom but quietly fret about the potential damage this does to their grades. And while they often desire a liberal arts college education that is not test-oriented, they still work their hearts out to take the SAT and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) multiple times, as if scores on these exams were the only thing that mattered when applying to their dream schools.

All this highlights the fact that the US and China are very different societies with distinct education systems, cultural values and social norms. Because Chinese students are steeped in the test-based university admissions system that operates in their own country, they are placed in a cultural bind by the holistic admissions criteria that characterise US college admissions.

These criteria are also disconnected from the everyday realities of Chinese schooling. Few people in a typical student’s social network in China can write recommendation letters in English, and school counsellors are beyond the reach of many. However, to be competitive, Chinese students have to learn quickly how to equip themselves with interesting experiences and present themselves in a way that meets the expectations of American institutions. This entails a dramatic change of behaviour and a steep learning curve – and incentivises Chinese students to resort to the billion-dollar industry that has emerged in China to help them navigate US college admissions, with specialist agencies offering everything from test prep and essay-writing to extracurricular, internship and research opportunities.

As for which college to choose, rankings light the way. Their straightforwardly hierarchical nature mirrors the scoring system of the gao kao, China’s national college admissions exam, offering convenience and comfort to anxious Chinese students and their parents who are otherwise grappling in the dark with the unknowns and unpredictabilities of the US admissions system.

To improve this, US institutions need to invest more in direct recruiting in China, disseminating information about themselves that goes beyond the rankings and sharing knowledge about how to navigate the application process. This increased investment in direct recruitment – which could be achieved by networking and partnering with local Chinese schools – would help to yield better-prepared and better-qualified students. It would also help Chinese students and their families to identify the programmes and schools that fit with their abilities and interests – rather than leaving them to the mercies of the third-party agencies and the testing rat race.

Once the students have arrived, US institutions need to do more to integrate them. Contrary to widespread perceptions that Chinese students want to remain within their own groups, I found in them a strong and sometimes explicit yearning to make American friends. Yet they struggle to overcome barriers that include the individualistic orientation of American society, the excessive partying and drinking that marks the social scene on US campuses, and the lack of Western-based cultural knowledge and capital. All this leaves them feeling marginalised and excluded, contributing to a process of withdrawal into their Chinese peer groups for comfort and support.

Chinese students need their US institutions to provide diverse networking opportunities for them. For example, international student offices, which typically serve as little more than places to rubber-stamp visa paperwork, need to reimagine themselves as social homes for international students and as forums to bring them together with US students. I have found that participation in campus organisations gives a strong boost to friendship formation with Americans.

The disadvantages faced by first-generation Chinese students, whose parents have never been to college, are particularly severe. They are more likely to have poor English and less likely to have close American friends. Their marginalisation is sometimes masked by their economic resources, but it is no less real for it. Institutions need to be acutely aware of their predicament and provide targeted support to help them integrate.

Until institutions make systematic and sustained efforts, the cultural and social benefits to American higher education brought by Chinese students will not be realised – and Chinese students will leave American institutions feeling disappointed.

*Note: This article was initially published in Times Higher Education here.

Author Bio

Yingyi Ma is associate professor of sociology and director of Asian/Asian American studies at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Her book  Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education will be published in February by Columbia University Press.

Xu, C. L. (2019). ‘Diaspora at home’: class and politics in the navigation of Hong Kong students in Mainland China’s Universities. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 1-18. doi:10.1080/09620214.2019.1700821

Watch a lecture video based on this paper. 

Abstract

This paper draws on ‘diaspora at home’, a concept that encapsulates the unique dynamics between Hong Kong and mainland China, as an analytical tool to explore the cross-border experiences of 23 Hong Kong students at 11 universities in mainland China. It empirically ascertains how the made and imposed claims and identifications of these Hong Kong students resulted in inclusion and exclusion as their interactions with their mainland peers and institutions deepened. Specifically, it highlights how their ‘diaspora at home’ status offered exclusive access to privileged higher education opportunities, preferential treatments and opportunities for upward social mobility. Meanwhile, such a status also resulted in an overwhelming sense of political liability as they unwittingly became ‘political tokens’ and suspected political subjects amid the increasingly tense political atmosphere between mainland China and Hong Kong. This paper pinpoints the relevance of class and politics in understanding how diasporic groups engage with higher education.

This article examines an understudied population in migration studies – cross-border students who are neither international nor domestic but have a unique ‘diaspora at home’ status. Through the ambiguous status of such students, the paper examines a central research question: what roles do class positions and political stances of Hong Kong students play in their experiences of mainland universities? Furthermore, this article illustrates both positive and negative roles the ‘diaspora at home’ status plays in these Hong Kong students’ educational and occupational navigation in mainland China. The paper sheds important light on rethinking the notions of border, citizenship, and nation-state in migration studies, and contributes to an expansive understanding of international students and cross-border education.

More specifically, I have drawn on data to argue firstly that the experiences of these Hong Kong students have been deeply politicised due to their ‘diaspora at home’ status; and secondly, that their class positions in Hong Kong have uniquely oriented them to take up the opportunities offered by the politically-motivated preferential higher education admission policies of the PRC government, due to the prospect of upward social mobility which was much less accessible in Hong Kong.

In navigating their journeys in mainland China, these students’ ‘diaspora at home’ status interplayed with the special ‘diasporic space’ in Beijing and resulted in these students’ exclusive access to an elite circle of Hongkongers made up of top-rank government officials and business elites. Such social connections would not have been possible had they stayed in Hong Kong, and enabled these students to accumulate social capital that facilitated subsequent competitive internship and job opportunities. Getting admitted to prestigious mainland universities also provided these Hong Kong students much-needed institutional and professional prestige and channels to secure ‘dignified’ employments, either in mainland China or in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, the highly politicised nature of their ‘diaspora at home’ status has been characterised by their simultaneous roles as ‘political tokens’ for conveying political unity messages and as potentially ‘dangerous’ and ‘suspicious’ political others, subjecting them to intense public scrutiny, hostile political confrontations and surveillance on campus. While these Hong Kong students took advantage of the higher education and upward social mobility offered by the PRC government and institutions, they became unwittingly committed to serving as subjects (or indeed ‘tokens’) for fostering political integration. In these senses, the Hong Kong students could be considered as becoming ‘political sacrifices’ for the PRC government’s ‘state driven strategy…toward eventual political integration’ of ‘disarticulated political entities including Hong Kong’ (Lan and Wu, 2016, p. 745).  

Adopting ‘diaspora at home’ as an analytical lens has made it possible to tease out the nuances of the types of exclusions and navigations that these Hong Kong students as ‘strangers-within’ (Charusheela, 2007) have experienced, pertaining to politics and politicisation, and class and social mobility. As members of the ‘diaspora at home’, these Hong Kong students embodied and became impacted by many of the tensions and efforts that traditional diasporic groups have experienced when migrating abroad, e.g. exclusion and suspicion based on assumed and imposed political beliefs. Importantly, these Hong Kong students are dissimilar to their peers from middle-class backgrounds (Waters, 2007) and/or of higher academic achievement levels (Te and Postiglione, 2018); instead, their working-class background and/or academic standing inclined them towards such cross-border higher education moves. Distilling such embedded nature of class and politics thus allowed me to follow Brubaker’s (2005, p. 13) argument and focus on their ‘disaporic stances, projects, claims…practices’. Such an analytical orientation thus resonates with the consensus among migration scholars regarding the pertinence of departing from methodological nationalism and becoming sensitive to internal heterogeneity of the diaspora groups (Anthias, 1998; Brubaker, 2005; Kleist, 2008).

Author Bio

Dr Cora Lingling Xu(PhD, Cambridge, FHEA) is Assistant Professor at Durham University, UK. She is an editorial board member of British Journal of Sociology of Education, Cambridge Journal of Education and International Studies in Sociology of Education. In 2017, Cora founded the Network for Research into Chinese Education Mobilities. Cora has published in international peer-reviewed journals, including British Journal of Sociology of Education, The Sociological Review, International Studies in Sociology of Education, Review of Education, European Educational Research Journal and Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. Her research interests include Bourdieu’s theory of practice, sociology of time, rural-urban inequalities, ethnicity, education mobilities and inequalities and China studies. She can be reached at lingling.xu@durham.ac.uk, and via Twitter @CoraLinglingXu.

Lan, S. (2019) Youth, Mobility, and the Emotional Burdens of youxue (Travel and Study): A Case Study of Chinese Students in Italy. International Migration. doi: 10.1111/imig.12676

Dr Shanshan Lan, University of Amsterdam

Abstract

Sato, Y. (2019). Asian students’ brain circulation and Japanese companies. Asian Education and Development Studies. Vol. & No. ahead-of-print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/AEDS-02-2019-0044

Dr Yuriko Sato, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

Return of the international graduates to home countries has been called brain circulation in contrast to brain drain/gain, the traditional one-way mobility from developing countries to developed countries. Brain circulation is said to bring benefits to both their home countries and study destination countries. However, the role of study destination companies in relation with students’ brain circulation has not been studied enough. In this regard, this paper explores the benefits and constraints of study destination companies in relation with international students’ brain circulation based on empirical study, picking up the case of Japanese companies.

Japanese companies are picked up considering their strong overseas business expansion tendency: the number of Japan-affiliated companies overseas has increased by 42% from 2008 to 2017 and the overseas production ratio of Japanese manufacturing companies rose to 25.4% in 2017. This has been promoted by the prospect of shrinking domestic market because of the aging of population. This business tendency created the greater need of personnel who manage overseas subsidiaries in close communication with the headquarters in Japan; graduates of Japanese universities who understand Japanese culture and language will be ideal staff in such positions. Japanese government has also prompted the employment of international students by Japanese companies. Japanese government’s “Revitalization Strategy 2016” set a goal of raising the international student employment rate in Japan from the current 30% to 50%.

This paper focuses on the Chinese, Thai, Indonesia and Vietnamese students who graduated from Japanese universities and now work for Japanese companies after graduation. Chinese students have constituted the largest groups in Japanese universities, followed by other Asian countries including the three remaining target countries. Their home countries have also hosted large number of Japan affiliated companies.

To explore the reason of their choice of workplace, satisfaction with working environment and future plan, online questionnaire survey was conducted to them from 2016 to 2018. 283 responses were collected and compared among the four country graduates and among those who work for Japanese companies in Japan and in their home countries. Interviews of some of these graduates and human resources (HR) managers of Japanese companies who hire them in Japan and in their home countries were also conducted.

As the result of the analysis, it was found that these graduates tend to choose to work for Japanese companies with the expectation of career development. Japanese companies have a tradition of spending considerable amounts of cost, time and energy to train new recruits; it is natural for the international graduates to choose employment at Japanese companies in order to develop their career and capacity. However, more than two thirds of them who are employed in Japan don’t plan to work there for a long time. This is partly because of the slow promotion derived from Japanese style HR management.

Satisfaction with working environment of those who work for Japan-affiliated companies in their home countries tends to be higher than those who work for Japanese companies in Japan. Since there is not much difference in actual salary considering the commodity price level, or even higher as is the case in China, it is natural for the graduates to choose to return home and seek employment in their home countries, where they can have better prospects of promotion, better care for their parent(s) and less work stress. They can also directly contribute to the development of their home countries. So, in the countries which enjoy economic development and increase of Japan-affiliated companies, a mobility of Japanese university graduates from Japan to their home countries has been prompted by the above factors.

Then, does this kind of brain circulation benefit both home countries and study destination country? If the returned graduates are willing to seek employment in Japan-affiliated companies in their home countries, it could be the case. However, the choice of workplace in their home countries includes not only Japan-affiliated companies but also other multi-national companies and local companies. Since many Japan-affiliated companies still adopt semi-Japanese style HR, it is not easy to adopt “fast track” system, which would enable the recruitment and retention of returned graduates of Japanese universities. A Thai graduate who had worked for Japanese companies and now work for a Thai company, an affiliate of a Thai financial combine, attested that his company offers a better salary and position than Japan-affiliated companies. Another Thai doctorate degree holder of a Japanese university, who now work for a Japan-affiliated company in Thailand, says that she is looking for another job since she is not happy with the unpaid overtime, which seems to be transplanted from the head office in Tokyo.

The above analysis indicates that Japanese companies which have expanded overseas business and recruited Asian graduates of Japanese universities need to provide better working conditions to secure their retention. Since it is not easy to change the Japanese-style HR management at head offices for a short period of time, it is suggested that the HR management of Japan-affiliated companies overseas should be reformed first to provide more attractive working conditions for the talented local staff, including the returned graduates. It will also facilitate the earlier overseas assignment of Japanese university graduates recruited at head offices in Japan by decreasing the possibility of friction with the local staff employed at the overseas subsidiaries. Earlier overseas assignments will also increase their retention rate since it is an ideal career path envisaged by many international graduates. By taking these measures, it would be possible to realize the brain circulation which is beneficial for both Japan and their home countries.

Author Bio 

Yuriko Sato is an Associate Professor at the School of Environment and Society, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. She works in the fields of educational sociology and development economics, with specific interests in the intersections of international student policy, migration policy, and economic development.

She received her Ph.D.in Educational Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology. She is currently the principal investigator of a research project on “International Comparative Study on the Mobility and Career Development of International Students: Considering the Relation with the Overseas Expansion of Study Destination Companies” supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).