Creating a Climate for Global WIL: Barriers to Participation and Strategies for Enhancing International Students’ Involvement in WIL in Canada and Australia

Abstract

For the current generation of international students and their families, global career and mobility opportunities are driving factors in their choice of study destination. Whether they are planning to remain in the host country or return home, acquiring overseas work experience to complement their foreign credential has become a key goal for many international students. The link between relevant work experience and graduate employment outcomes has led to growing interest in work integrated learning (WIL) and its role in enhancing the employment outcomes of international students. For international students seeking to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive global labour market, foreign work experience is now an integral part of the overseas study package. WIL is seen to provide critical employability knowledge and skills; however, international students have low participation rates. This chapter reports on a cross national study that examined barriers to participation and strategies for enhancing international students’ involvement in WIL in Canada and Australia. The study explored international students’ perceptions of their WIL experiences in Australia and Canada and investigated how participation in WIL contributes to international students’ attainment of graduate outcomes. Theoretically, the study utilised Bourdieu’s notion of different forms of capital (cultural, economic, social) to understand how WIL is valued relative to other ways of considering employability and the production of a global work habitus. Bourdieu offers significant tools to conceptualise the role of universities in the production of a habitus of graduate employability within specific disciplinary subfields of the field of higher education. Universities can enhance students’ cultural and individual dispositions in terms of particular ways of valuing, thinking and doing. The findings provide rich understandings as to attitudes and perceptions, what is valued and why with regard to WIL and employability.