‘Edugration’ at a distance: Virtual internationalization, migration, and discourses of ‘taking up space’

‘Virtual internationalization’ (Bruhn-Zass, 2023) and the more specific ‘internationalization at a distance’ (IaD) suggest that digitalization enables distinct forms of internationalization (Mittelmeier et al., 2021; Mittelmeier, 2023). In IaD, "students, their respective staff, and institutional provisions are separated by geographical distance and supported by technology," (Mittelmeier et al., 2021, p. 269) so that knowledge is internationally mobile while students stay "‘at home’" (Mittelmeier, 2023, p. 3) whether by choice or circumstance. Although there is no systematic global data available on IaD participation (Mittelmeier, 2023), its most significant expansion likely occurred when international borders closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite restrictive international mobility policies, many countries such as the U.S. and Canada saw only modest decreases in international student post-secondary enrolments due to temporary distance learning uptake from abroad (Buckner et al., 2022). Even with the current general return to in-person instruction, more intentional, long-term implementation of distance learning continues to accelerate in higher education (e.g., Garrett et al., 2023; Irhouma & Johnson, 2022), prompting predictions of increased focus on remote internationalization promotion (Cerna & Chou, 2023). Indeed, both the Australian and Canadian international education strategies highlight growth opportunities through expanding online offerings (Australian Government, 2021; TCS, 2023a; 2023b). Notably, this expansion is positioned strategically to maintain international education as a profitable export industry while reducing "pressure on the capacity of program availability, student service support, and affordable student housing" (TCS, 2023a, p. 3; Thompson, 2023), reflecting political tensions regarding international student migration rates in both countries. At the same time, IaD is linked to the growing higher education-migration nexus, or edugration (OECD, 2022). In a consultative document, for example, the Canadian government posed questions such as: "Similar to Australia, should Canada explore ways to offer work permits programs, that possibly lead to pathways to permanent residency, for students exclusively enrolled in online programs, in areas of labour market gaps?" (TCS, 2023a, p. 4). This presentation examines the emerging relationship between IaD and edugration. Presenting Canada as a case study, it uses critical policy discourse analysis (Mulderrig et al., 2019) to examine the combined governance of migration policy, COVID-19 mobility restrictions, and post-secondary institutional policies (Cheng et al., 2023), paying particular attention to the fluctuating Post-Graduation Work Permit Program eligibility criteria (Brunner, 2022). It demonstrates how international students’ desire for permanent residency is used to govern their physicality on multiple scales (e.g., the national, the regional, and the classroom). Reminiscent of the Swiss author Max Frisch’s famous 1986 description of guest worker programs - "We asked for workers. We got people instead." - competing discourses of desirability and disdain are seen through the lens of ‘taking up space.’ Finally, the presentation suggests that the conceptualization of IaD, and edugration more generally, may benefit from engagement with the notion of motility, or "the way in which entities access and appropriate the capacity for socio-spatial mobility according to their circumstances" (Kaufmann et al., 2004, p. 750), and how this "potentiality of movement can be expressed as a form of ‘movement capital’" (p. 752).