International opportunities : searching for the meaning of Student migration

Abstract. This paper explores aspects of the geography of international Student migration. By listening to the voices of British students we make a methodological contribution in terms of extending understanding of the intentions and values of Student migrants as developed over their life course. On the one hand, students stressed the social and cultural embeddedness of their actions, while on the other hand interviews with university staff and mobility managers pointed to the existence of other social structures that shape the networks of mobility that are available to students. Policy makers seeking to re-shape the geography of international Student mobility need to address the deeper socio-cultural forces that selectively inhibit movement although European integration processes have long paved the way for international living and work experience.


Introduction
Researchers interested in human mobility, particu¬ larly those investigating international migration, have been slow to appreciate the importance of interna¬ tional Student migration.This article seeks to illustrate the importance of understanding Student migra¬ tion by drawing on qualitative aspects of an extensive survey of Student mobility (King et al. 2004a).In par¬ ticular, we ask questions such as: What values underpin the meaning of international migration to the Student population?How do students experience mobility and what are the main benefits that they associate with it?And what can researchers gain from mapping the meaning as well as the spatiality of Student migra¬ tion?
To answer these questions, we hear the voices of stu¬ dents as well as staff and what we call «mobility man¬ agers».Selection of these voices only occurred after the authors had already undertaken large-scale ques¬ tionnaire surveys on the topic (King & Ruiz-Gelices   2003; King et al. 2004b).Thus in the academic arena, the qualitative contribution of the paper is nested within a multi-method approach to studying migra¬ tion (Findlay & Li 1999).The research is also set in the policy context of the United Kingdom.Here the key concerns are the impact of recent outward Student mobility trends for the British economy, and whether the United Kingdom's somewhat limited «mobility culture» (compared to other European countries) dis- advantages potential migrant students by biasing their outlook on «international» matters in general, and «Europe» in particular (King et al. 2004b).

International Student mobility: reviewing what is known
Most textbooks on human migration say absolutely nothing about students, a remarkable oversight given students' propensity to be spatially mobile and the justifiable claim of the OECD that any «panorama of [contemporary migration] flows cannot ignore inter¬ national Student mobility» (SOPEMI 2001: 93).In the United Kingdom, as in some other countries, many more migrants enter each year on Student visas than under any other legal visa category.When attention is paid in the literature to students, the key issues referred to are usually those of «brain drain» and the international «business» of studying abroad, particu¬ larly within the Asia-Pacific region (Castles & Miller   1998:157; Skeldon 1997:108-112; Kuptsch 2005).
Some have argued recently that Student mobility is a particular type of migration (Murphy-Lejeune 2003; King & Ruiz-Gelices 2003), paralleled by other dis¬ tinctive group mobilities such as the international migration of the elderly (King, Warnes & Williams   1998).For some, Student mobility arises from per¬ sonal choices, such as the wish to enhance foreign lan¬ guage skills, career prospects, cultural experience and personal development (West et al. 2001).For others, Student mobility is influenced by background factors, such as the socio-economic environment of the Student (Schnitzer & Zempel-Gino 2002)       1997: 39-40) attesting the need for more research in order to achieve a better understanding of the forces underpinning Student mobility.It is not our intention to offer an extensive review of the literature here since we have done this elsewhere (Ruiz-Gelices et al. 2003).Instead we focus specifically on the concep¬ tual geography of international Student migration.
Within geography, the small number of studies of Stu¬ dent mobility can be grouped into three categories (King & Ruiz-Gelices 2003).A first perspective views students as a subset of skilled migration (Findlay   2002); more precisely students can be seen as a poten¬ tial flow of future qualified workers, either during a course of study or, more likely, through subsequent recruitment (SOPEMI 2001: 93).Second, increased Student mobility has been conceptualised as a product of globalisation, both generally (increased global flows of goods, capital, people, ideas) and of higher edu¬ cation (Altbach & Teichler 2001; Kwieck 2001).A subset of this approach relates to «Europeanisation» and the role of mobile, multilingual students/graduates as agents of European integration -the new Profes¬ sionals or, as Favell calls them, «Eurostars» (Favell 2004;King 2003).In this approach, students wish, or are persuaded, to be mobile because they will be more internationally competitive in seeking employ¬ ment, they will develop linguistic skills and intercultural awareness, and perhaps see themselves as more «European» or «cosmopolitan» and less «nationalistic» in their identities.A third interpretative Strand places international Student mobility within «youth mobility cultures».Here.«going abroad» (to study, travel or do voluntary work) is motivated less by tradi¬ tional economic migration factors (to find a job, better income) and more by experiential goals.At a higher conceptual level this fits with the notion of the «doit-yourself» biography of the young, post-modern indi¬ vidual (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2002).
Key purposes of this paper therefore include listening to Student voices to test the validity of the three-fold typology described above, and to ask whether other readings of Student mobility are needed.Analysis of the transcripts of our Student interviews allows us to ask several important questions.These include: Is Student migration something that can be understood only in the context of the moment of movement or is it more deeply embedded in the social framing of the life course?And is there any evidence to justify treating Student migration as different from other forms of mobility?That is to ask, is Student mobility generi- cally different from other mobilities or just a sub-set of what the academic literature has already made known?
Kingdom has experienced growing upward outward Student mobility, but at a slower pace than most other advanced countries, and a very rapid increase in inward mobility of foreign students.International students made up 11 per cent of the Student pop¬ ulation of the United Kingdom in 2002-3 (Higher Education Statistics Agency.HESA. 2004).but as Figure 1 shows there is a major imbalance between the numbers of Erasmus-sponsored international stu¬ dents entering the United Kingdom and the number of UK students seeking to study or work abroad under this scheme.
Student mobility within the Erasmus scheme does not fit neatly within the global trends in Student mobility described above.In most countries (and especially Germany.France.Italy and Spain) Eras¬ mus exchanges remain very populär.In some others.especially in the United Kingdom, there has been a very marked decline in outward Student mobility to other EU countries since the late 1990s.This downward trend in the United Kingdom was a major cat- alyst behind government funding for the research reported in this paper.
3 Setting the context Student migration is defined in the literature in many different ways (Lanzendorf & Teichler 2002).Here we define a Student migrant as someone who leaves his or her country of usual residence to enrol at a higher education institution, or to pursue some other academically or vocationally recognised activi¬ ties abroad, for at least a term (around three months) within their overall programme of study in higher education.
This definition hides many particularities.Mobility can differ in duration, occur at different times during a student's degree and involve either large inter-institutionally organised mobility schemes of study or work abroad or be initiated by the student's department or on a more individual basis.It can include academic study, independent research, teaching, work experience (industrial placement, internship, clinical practice) or more unstructured «life experiences» not necessarily connected to any higher education qualification.The best-known European Student mobility scheme is the Socrates-Erasmus exchange programme, but there are many other schemes operating at different levels and serving a diversity of purposes.
Secondary data show that Student mobility.in global terms, has grown considerably over the past decade from 1.6 million tertiary-level students studying abroad in 1996 to 1.8 million in 2000 and a projected 2.8 million by 2010 (Brush & Barty 1998).The United 4 Methodology Our research involved a large representative question¬ naire survey of 1200 students.as well as interviews with students.academics and mobility managers.Details of how the survey was designed to represent different higher education institutions across the United King¬ dom, different types of courses.and students from diverse backgrounds, have been reported elsewhere (King et al. 2004b) and are not repeated here.Our research focused especially on the experience of finalyear students who had been abroad, whom we define as «mobile», but the survey also involved first-year as well as non-mobile students in order to make compari¬ sons of the perceived benefits of and barriers to inter¬ national migration.
We conducted face-to-face interviews with 140 stu¬ dents spread across 10 institutions.Focus-groups con¬ ducted with about five students in each university, raised the total number of voices to 180.Whereas the interviews were balanced between 67 mobile and 73 non-mobile students.focus groups were intentionally biased to capture the shared and divergent views of mobile students.Interviews were also conducted with a total of 46 academic, managerial and administrative personnel: the objective here was to find out how mobility is perceived, organised and promoted at the institutional level.The voices of all students were ano- nymised.but an indication of their course and migra¬ tion destination is given after each quote as part of the contextualisation of their comments.Inevitably, only a few excerpts from the interviews can be reproduced here; fuller details can be found in the final research report (King et al. 2004b).
Some basic statistics from the questionnaire survey help to frame the context of the qualitative data which constitute the remainder of this paper.Amongst finalyear students for whom mobility was voluntary (i.e.excluding groups such as language students for whom study abroad was a prerequisite of their course), some 5.5% had engaged in international mobility.For lan¬ guage students the rate was 95.5% (the remainder largely exempted because of having foreign experience prior to taking up their studies).Amongst those who had been away, 54% had been on Erasmus exchanges.Whereas language students favoured Socrates-Eras¬ mus mobility (61%), most other students went on institutionally-organised exchanges (26%), Erasmus (24%) or work placements (19%).Overall, France was the most populär destination (42%), followed by Spain (20%) and Germany (16%).But the subset of nonlanguage students was very different.with the USA being by far the most populär destination.
Debbie -History and French, 1 Elaine -Geography, 1 year spent Callum -Journalism, 1 year spent in France in France Semester spent in Spain «... yeah, we always went on «I think it was clear since the «...I had always wanted to live holidays abroad with my parents beginning.I had always wanted abroad for a while and learn when we were little, to France, to live abroad and experience a another language and stuff, so Spain, Malta and we also different culture.Also, I had I went to see him [the Erasmus visited my uncle in the US a studied French at school and I coordinator] in the end it couple of times.My parents went to France a couple of times was quite easy because they would always take us to visit on school trips and liked it there organised everything ....» places there, and we heard the I thought that if I leamed locals speaking their own The in-depth interviews provided much more nuanced accounts that located the meaning of Student migration within their wider life-course and mapped it relative to social values absorbed from the social discourse of family, friends and Community (Findlay & Stockdale   2003).Consider the excerpts listed in Table 1.
All three voices remarked that they had «always» wanted to live abroad.Clearly this turn of phrase is somewhat misleading since people are not born with the desire to migrate, but it points to the deeply-rooted nature of the causes promoting mobility.Many stu¬ dents (not all) stressed that the underlying motivation (or resistance) to migrate pre-dated their arrival at University.Some traced the longing to childhood expe¬ riences with parents (Debbie) or their upbringing in families that looked positively on international oppor¬ tunities.For others their relative fixity was contingent on the immobility of their home backgrounds.
«Of course all our parents didn't get this opportunity to go abroad So. for lots of my friends who are from farm¬ ing backgrounds.their parents are like [saying]... <Bul why do you need to go away?>It's kind of that mentality as well, because they never got lo» (Joanna -Geography).Some mobile students, such as Elaine (Table 1), attrib¬ uted their mobility to the influence of teenage foreign travel with school friends.Even where school had not formally organised international travel, it was often the social milieu in which students had first discussed going or living abroad.For example, discussion of Gap Year options prior to Coming to University pro¬ duced a significant discourse amongst young people that established social attitudes to international mobil¬ ity.The questionnaire survey also revealed that those who chose to go on a Gap Year before University were 50% more likely to re-engage with the international opportunities offered later by the Higher Education System.
Although many students had the «seed» of migration (Findlay & Li 1997) planted prior to Coming to Uni¬ versity, it was the networks of mobility opened up by the education System that made the mechanics of Stu¬ dent migration possible (Callum, Table 1).This is a point to which we will return.
To summarise, the interviews attested the socially and historically embedded nature of many students' values in shaping their intentionality with regard to Student migration.Inversely students from backgrounds with greater relative «contingent fixity» (Clarke 2004), by which we mean students from backgrounds that were less open to international experiences, were much less likely to subsequently engage in international migra¬ tion. 5.2 Perceptions ofthe value of Student migration As well as pointing to the need to interpret migration as reflecting values built up over the life course, rather Tab.2: Student voices discussing the meaning of their international experiences Temoignages d'etudiants quant au sens de leur experience internationale Aussagen von Studierenden zum Sinn ihrer internationalen Erfahrungen than as an event set only in the immediate context of the Student at the point of departure, the interviews also illustrated the instrumental value of mobility in the eyes of students.The longer-term meaning of their international experiences is evidenced in three Student quotes in Table 2.
There seems support here, and in the wider ränge of interviews, for the view that students interpreted time abroad as potentially valuable for their future career development (Annie), for language acquisition (Gabri¬ elle) and for personal enrichment (Barbara).These views relate to aspects of King and Ruiz-Gelices' ( 2003) typology of the benefits of Student migrations, although it should be noted that students often expressed a complex intertwining of experiences.In reality, Student migration seems to be driven by a diversity of intentions rooted in past experiences and also linked to a colourful tapestry of imagined future benefits.
Future labour market prospects, identified by several students we interviewed, were recognised as a social and economic benefit.Employers were perceived as equating international travel with positive attributes such as «open to new ideas» (Annie) and «open to Stimulation» (Barbara).Such interpretations are clearly culturally embedded, and speak also to stu¬ dents' perceptions of the negative attributes associ¬ ated with immobility.
The interviews revealed many shared views on the cul¬ tural geography of the United Kingdom as understood by students.Explaining why he thought so few British students sought outward mobility during their studies, Harry notes: «I think Britain is a very insular country.We're an island and people just come to us, which is a very stupid attitude.
Also, probably there's an element of <everybody speaks English.so what's the point»» (Harry -Geography -first- year Student).
And Joanna too, commented on the restrictive mobil¬ ity culture in which British students are embedded: «... you know differences are always picked up as neg¬ ative...I think there isn't an appreciation of difference I think there's an element of British people just not wanting to experience or look past their own culture before I went away.I worked in an office with about twenty women, sort of middle-aged.and none of them could understand why I wanted to go -none of them.not one of them in fact they said to me <why are you doing this?>I said «because you've got to experience different things>.andthey were like <why?> ....» (Joanna -Geogra¬ phy -first Semester Student in Canada).
Harry and Joanna's comments reveal the awareness of some students -especially those interested in interna-tional mobility -that their views were out of line with dominant understandings of the meaning of migra¬ tion.They point to the deep-seated cultural barriers that form a much more profound deterrent to Student migration than the factors elicited by our question¬ nairebarriers such as the cost of living abroad, linguistic insecurity, lack of information about inter¬ national opportunities, wishing to stay close to a boy/ girlfriend and the risk of prolonging their degree (King et al. 2004a and b).These barriers were also picked up on by the interviewees, but were not interpreted as problematic in the same way as a student's cultural ori¬ entation towards mobility as developed over the life course (quotes by Debbie and Elaine).While Uni¬ versity or Government policies might be devised to mitigate factors such as language skills, finance or information, it was less clear how «negative» parental influence or the absence of a «positive» mobility cul¬ ture could be addressed in such a way as to encourage a Student «to experience or look past their own cul¬ ture» (Joanna).
These comments attest the purposive nature of the Sys¬ tems established to encourage Student mobility.The networks through which students move are not neutral ones, but shaped and managed to achieve particular ends.Thus while students assert their agency in migrating to study or work abroad, they do so in circumstances that have been developed by others with specific goals.In Ian's terms these are not only to do with «core skills» but are also informed by issues such as political and cul¬ tural awareness, and the priority to bring the students back home for the benefit of Northern Ireland.
University staff charged to organise Student exchanges also recognised that study locations were constantly under review in relation to the Institution's financial, research and graduate employability targetsThus Jean explained: «We have.in fact.narrowed our list of contacts.Once we had a network which embraced a lot of European coun¬ tries most of our exchanges are now with French busi¬ ness schools» (Jean -Erasmus exchange coordinator).

Mobility networks
It would be easy to conclude from the above that a füll understanding of Student migration can be achieved purely from in-depth Student interviews.In practice such an interpretation would be just as incomplete an interpretation of the geography of Student mobil¬ ity as would be an analysis resting only on question¬ naire returns.Other qualitative research we carried out revealed the importance of key structural factors in shaping Student mobility patterns.Here we bring in our interviews with «mobility managers».There is only space here for a few quotes to illustrate how national, regional and institutional factors structure Student migration choices.
Consider the comments of an employee of an Organisa¬ tion seeking to promote Student mobility from North¬ ern Ireland to North America: «The programme is to develop future managers.to develop the business and management skills of our pre-final year degree and diploma students from any discipline.to improve the core skills of all participants.to provide stu¬ dents with an outward-looking international experience.and to raise the economic, political and cultural awareness of Northern Ireland Our aim is not that these people go and see America as a land of opportunity and the place they want to make their future life We want them to bring it home.and that's why we take them out at undergraduate level.they must come back to do one final year of their degree programme.If that wasn't there.I think you might find some of them staying on. in large num¬ bers.Of course.that would be contrary to our goals ...» (Iangovernment-sponsored Student mobility manager -Northern Ireland).
Another mobility coordinator remarked: «... to get our students to go I have to be very careful.I mean.there's no point in me taking an offer from Kazakhstan because nobody will go to Kazakhstan.... Our stu¬ dents are very reserved.... all my students.it sounds awful.are while and British ...» (John -exchange programme coordinator for an agency funding Student exchanges).
Thus mobility managers establish mobility and ex¬ change structures often governed by the financial frameworks laid down by institutions, governments or inter¬ national organisations (such as those underpinning the Socrates-Erasmus System), but these structures are in turn affected by agency (student willingness to migrate to certain destinations).So, structure affects agency which in turn affects structure in a recursive inter-linked pro¬ cess of the kind anticipated by structuration theory (Gid¬ dens 1984).This is a simple, yet powerful point -Student mobility is organised by a System that is governed by mobility managers located in a higher education System, but the patterns of mobility are structured geographi- cally not only by what those managers interpret to be appropriate educational and cultural goals (Ian's quote), but in line with what are imagined to be the desired des¬ tinations of British students (John's quote).
6 Refiections on research praxis and policy dimensions of Student migration We started by arguing that international Student migra¬ tion is neglected relative to the attention given to other forms of mobility.Elsewhere the authors have used quantitative evidence to extend understanding of the determinants of Student mobility (King et al. 2004b).
Such work has value both to geographers, and also for policy-makers eager to promote greater Student migration by manipulating financial and educational Parameters.Our purpose here, however, has been to demonstrate that, without understanding something of the nature of mobility cultures, many dimensions of international Student mobility will remain inacces- sible both to academics and policy-makers.And to achieve this qualitative methods informed by structu¬ ration theory have proved invaluable.
From the perspective of researching the geography of international migration, this paper has provided ample evidence that the drivers of Student mobility are differ¬ ent from those influencing labour migration or housing market moves.Our perspective has not only recognised the social embeddedness of migration processes but has also illustrated the interweaving roles of structure and agency in shaping migration patterns.Those who structure international Student mobility networks (e.g.politicians promoting pan-European ideals or univer¬ sity deans pursuing the internationalisation of their fac- ulties through targeted Student exchange programmes designed to maximise research benefits to staff) define geographies of mobility that are condilioned by very dif¬ ferent imperatives from those that structure, for exam¬ ple, international labour migration.Furthermore, the structuration of Student mobility occurs within a short time-frame that is itself nested within the transitory Stu¬ dent experience of higher education.All these factors contribute to the distinctiveness of this form of mobil¬ ity and to the value of pursuing further geographical research in this area.We therefore conclude that geog¬ raphers have much to gain from mapping the meanings as well as the spatiality of Student migration.This is not to say that the methods we have used are unproblematic.We are reflexively self-critical of the way in which our research agenda has inevitably influenced our selection of voices in the preparation of this paper.
In re-reading the many quotations from our interviews, we have asked ourselves to what extent we have unjustifiably reified some concepts (e.g.seeds of migration, the openness that comes from Student mobility) at the expense of others (Potter et al. 1990).And we are well aware of the dangers of fossilising students' interpreta¬ tions of the meaning of their experiences by recording them at only one point in time.We recognise that in practice individuals draw differently on their migration biographies as their contexts change over the life course (Findlay & Li 1997).What we would stress is that, in our judgement.while bearing these critical reflections in mind, the value of the methods we have used in our understanding of Student mobility not only far outweighed the problems.but they open up insights which otherwise would not have been achieved.
The policy implications of our findings are several.
We can dwell on only three key points here.First, the research highlights the challenge to policy-makers wishing to make a rapid change in the scale of Student migration.While better financing of mobility schemes and wider awareness of the benefits associated with international opportunities may have some effect on the number of UK students participating in exchanges, the Student voices signal a much longer-term dimen¬ sion to migration, necessitating implementation of strategies targeted to prepare school pupils for the possibility of international mobility during higher edu¬ cation.This proposal is given voice by Barbara: «... it's about going into the schools.and starting there to promote it get them young.I think.Because then their mentality is different» (Barbara -Nursing -Finland).
As she notes.this is not just a life-course issue, requiring long-term perspectives in planting potential seeds of migration.but it is also a mentality issue.Is it possible that the evolving social discourse in the United Kingdom increasingly militates against international mobility?
Second.many of the Student voices signalled the pow¬ erful role of culture (in the United Kingdom's case perhaps a «culture of immobility») in governing atti¬ tudes to movement.Migration research that examines only an individual's behavioural decision-making proc¬ ess and ignores cultural elements outside this «box», will fail to address fundamental policy questions such as why a society should embrace (or resist) the poten¬ tial global interactions offered by international Student exchanges.Identifying such cultural drivers is improb¬ able in quantitative surveys examining the personal characteristics or ecological correlates of migrant propensities.Our qualitative analysis suggests that stu¬ dents' intentions are socially embedded and cannot be meaningfully separated from wider discourses on the meaning of international opportunities.While these seem to support Student mobility in countries like Germany.Spain, Italy and France (Murphy-Lejeune 2003).this is not the case in the United Kingdom.To change a prevailing mobility culture is a much greater challenge than most regimes at State or institutional level wish to tackle, yet it is at this level that the most fundamental parameters of Student mobility are set.
A third policy issue worth highlighting is the emphasis placed by many students on the value of working (as opposed to studying) in another country (quotes by Barabara and Gabrielle).This valuable insight leads to a questioning of the balance within the current British structure of Student mobility opportunities (and indeed the thrust of the Socrates-Erasmus pro¬ gramme) in favour of study exchanges as opposed to work placements. 7

Conclusions
This paper has explored the under-researched topic of Student international migration.It has done so by lis- tening to Student voices in an attempt to extend geo¬ graphical understanding beyond what is knowable from secondary data and structured questionnaire surveys.Students, like other potential migrants, live their lives amongst other people, and so their biographies are not only socially embedded, but the choices they make are socially referenced and involve an understanding over the life-course of social norms and cultural practices (Erben 1993).
We have argued that Student mobility cannot be under¬ stood solely in terms of the conscious values and intentions of students as expressed in questionnaire surveys.Qualitative research also reveals the interaction of Stu¬ dent agency and structural influences operating at insti¬ tutional, regional and national levels.For this reason we have advocated, and partially illustrated, a structurationist perspective to the study of Student mobility.This involves analysing the relations between structure and agency in a way that interprets the properties of social Systems (in this case the social contexts and structures of international Student migration networks) as being «both the medium and the outcome of the practices that constitute those Systems» (Giddens 1979:69).This paper explores aspects of the geography of inter¬ national Student migration.By listening to the voices of British students we make a methodological contribu¬ tion in terms of extending understanding of the intentions and values of Student migrants as developed over their life course.On the one hand, students stressed the social and cultural embeddedness of their actions, while on the other hand interviews with university staff and mobility managers pointed to the existence of other social structures that shape the networks of mobility that are available to students.Policy makers seeking to re-shape the geography of international Student mobil¬ ity need to address the deeper socio-cultural forces that selectively inhibit movement although European inte¬ gration processes have long paved the way for interna¬ tional living and work experience.nale estudiantine.En donnant la parole ä des etudiants britanniques.I'enquete menee cherche ä elargir la con¬ naissance des motivations el echelles de valeurs deve- loppees par les etudiants migrants au cours de leur trajectoire.Les etudiants ont demontre que leurs actions s'inscrivent dans leurs valeurs sociales et culturelles.Quant aux interviews conduites aupres d'enseignants et co-ordinateurs de mobilite, elles ont permis de rele¬ ver d'autres structures sociales qui influencent le com¬ portement des etudiants.Les personnaiites politiques.qui entendent promouvoir Texperience internationale de leurs elites formatrices en matiere d'etudes et pro¬ fessionnelle.doivent prendre notamment en consi¬ deration les influences socio-culturelles qui reduisent la mobilite, des influences qui persistent encore, en depit du fail que les processus europeens d'integration ne cessent de faciliter les echanges internationaux.

Fig. 1 :
Fig. 1: Net balance of Erasmus students across the EU in 2001/2 Balance nette d'etudiants Erasmus dans TUE, 2001/2 Erasmus-Studierende in der EU in den Jahren 2001/2Source: Socrates-Erasmus Council for HigherEducation (2003) education 36,4:443-458.Teichler,U.&F.Maiworm (1997):The Erasmus expe¬ rience.-Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications ofthe European Commission.West, A. et al. (2001): Higher education admissions and Student mobility within the EU -ADMIT.-Final report of the Targeted Socio-Economic Research Pro¬ gramme, London: London School of Economics.Summary: International opportunities: searching for the meaning of Student migration Teichler &   Jahr 2001).Others have found it harder to define the drivers of Student migration (Commission of the European Communities 2000; Student reflections of the origins of their interest in international migration Reflexions d'etudiants quam aux origines de leur inierei pour la mobilite internationale Studentische Überlegungen zu Hintergründen ihrer internationalen Mobilität their migration movements(Halfacree & Boyle 1993).