Including the other: regulation of the human rights of mobile students in a nation-bound world

Abstract

The world’s three million cross-border international students are located in a ‘gray zone’ of regulation with incomplete human rights, security and capabilities. Like other mobile persons such as short-term business and labour entrants, and refugees, students located on foreign soil do not enjoy the same protections and entitlements as do citizens. International students are affected by two different national regulatory regimes, in the nations of citizenship and of education. But they are fully covered by neither. Their position is vulnerable and uncertain, mediated by non-citizen status and the related facts of cultural difference, information asymmetry and communication difficulties. Referring to research on international education in Australia, which has the world’s fifth largest international student population, the article focuses on the manner in which the subordinated outsider status of international students magnifies the problems they face. It considers what might be done to enable them to access comprehensive protections, empowerment and human rights as defined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.