The international student safety debate: moving beyond denial

Abstract

In 2009 international student safety became an issue of immediate concern to Australian international education exporters following a series of demonstrations by Indian students and interventions by concerned foreign governments. With these developments the ‘industry’ became fixated on how best to secure Australia’s share of the international education market in a context in which it was impossible to deny international student safety is a systemic problem. This paper contextualizes this development by utilizing a stigma management framework to review the unfolding debate on international students and safety in the USA, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. We argue that in all four cases it took an exogenous shock to convince education exporters to acknowledge student safety as an issue that needs to be openly debated. We also suggest that Australian officials were slow to make this acknowledgement because they mistakenly believed the industry was shielded by its link to the immigration program.