Construcción de métricas de copa

An important component of Mumbai as the ‘sending site’, as discussed above, is the international education industry that services prospective students and their families. As Chapter Five will discuss further, the international education industry is central to the experiences of many individuals and families as they seek to understand and make decisions about international education. It is therefore important to understand what role class – namely localised micro categories of class – plays in how the industry operates. Specifically, I argue that an individual’s class status not only impacts their individual aspirations and experiences pertaining to international education, but that the industry that is largely responsible for facilitating student mobilities is also impacted by (assumptions about) class status. In this section I therefore attend to existing literature concerning the international education industry. In this section I seek to highlight that, despite a large body of literature devoted to the study of migration and mobilities, we know relatively little about how mobilities are shaped by the mechanisms that enable the movement of people across borders (Findlay et al., 2013). Discussion is however emerging around how to conceptualise the spaces in which actors such as education agents and counsellors operate, which I discuss below.

The mobilities paradigm – outlined earlier in this chapter – provides an opportunity for migration research to become more sensitive to the actors and networks that facilitate mobilities (Cranston, Schapendonk & Spaan, 2018). However, existing work does not grapple with the function of these industries and is instead interested primarily in migratory flows and experiences (Cranston, 2017; Hernández-León, 2013). Seeking to address this gap, Sophie Cranston’s recent work makes an important contribution towards theorising migration industries. With Schapendonk and Spaan,

Cranston (2018: 543) argues that focusing on migration industries not only allows us “to gain empirical insights into the mechanisms by and through which people move, [but] also provides us with an analytical lens to better unpack the social, economic and geographical complexities of migration processes.” By considering the function of class status in the context of Mumbai’s international education industry, I attend to some of these socio-economic complexities that are embedded within migration processes.

Migration brokers are a crucial component of many migration industries. Migration industries encompass the facilitation and control of migration and provide assistance at various phases of migration, including resources and services that facilitate movement across physical and regulatory barriers and borders (Cranston et al., 2018). While there is a growing body of research examining the activities of brokers within migration industries, especially in relation to labour and skilled migration (Harvey, Groutsis & van den Broek, 2018; Lindquist, 2012, 2015, 2017; Xiang & Lindquist, 2014; McCollum & Findlay, 2018; Žabko, Aasland & Endresen, 2018; Linquist, Xiang & Yeoh, 2012), comparably little is known about the brokerage of international education.

Existing research relating to the brokerage of international education varies in focus but tends to examine how brokers produce and mediate student mobilities in specific ways. Some studies highlight the exploitative potential of education brokers, such as Adhikari’s (2010) study how of international education consultants in Nepal are involved in producing the transnational mobility of nurses who are potentially vulnerable to exploitation. Other studies, however, view the role of education brokers as more ‘ambivalent’ than ‘malevolent’, and consider their embeddedness into wider structures and networks of relations. Beech (2018), for example, importantly highlights how brokers exist in a network of relations with staff in receiving universities and Thieme (2017) details how agents in Nepal professionalise the brokerage of international education by establishing associations and codes of conduct. Collins (2012) argues that agents in New Zealand act as “bridges” between students, families and their places of origin and their study destinations, thereby traversing a divide between the profit-oriented education industry and the social lives of students and their families. The data presented in this thesis, specifically in Chapter Five, adds significantly to this existing work by bringing a class perspective to understanding the mediation of international education. Specifically,

it seeks to address how the mediation of international education and the roles of education brokers are differentiated along distinctions between localised micro-categories of class.

Incorporating the concept of class into discourse about international education industries not only aids understanding of individuals’ expectations and experiences of mobility, but also provides an opportunity to contribute to discussion around the reproduction of inequality via migration industries. In his conceptual paper, Faist (2014) contends that brokers do not exist in isolation but are embedded within social patterns that potentially (re)produce inequality. However, the ways in which migration industries contribute to the reproduction of inequality in specific local contexts require further empirical analysis (for an exception, see Cranston, 2018). Migration industries, like migrants themselves, are entangled in social and cultural processes that structure inequalities (Findlay et al., 2013; Cook and Butz, 2016). As Lin et al. argue (2017: 168), migration industries create “unequal categories of migrants” by giving certain mobilities significance and status. In this sense, the role of international education industry also impacts how class status is (re)produced via international student mobilities, as I will discuss further in Chapter Five. This study is also unique in that I include perspectives of students as well as international education brokers (agents and counsellors) in the sending country, by which I aim to provide a more nuanced and holistic approach to discussion of the international education industry in Mumbai.