Elite or middling? International students and migrant diversification

Abstract

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.