Regulating the international mobility of students and trainees: From cosmopolitanism to migration management?
This Discussion Paper assesses legal migration pathways for international students and trainees after the EU’s New Pact on Asylum and Migration. With the adoption of wide-ranging reforms in 2024, EU migration policy has moved further towards ‘migration management’ objectives and greater controls and restrictions. Reflecting broader shifts in the policy and political environment, the international mobility of students and trainees has come to be seen as a form of leverage and a bargaining chip to enhance cooperation with third countries, consolidating a shift away from its traditional focus on cosmopolitanism and development goals. Initiatives launched in the context of the Pact, such as Talent Partnerships, have so far prioritised countries of origin or transit of irregular migration. Meanwhile, security considerations are beginning to drive the implementation of the main framework governing international education in the EU—the Students and Researchers Directive.
In the EU, as at the global level, attitudes toward international students have shifted. In several EU member states international students have been turned into scapegoats and blamed for the general lack of housing. The debate has focused on numbers, increasing control, and restricting entry. Yet, in a rapidly changing geo-political and geo-economic context, another shift is set to leave a mark on international education. The international mobility of students and trainees is to become an indispensable resource to fill gaps in the EU workforce, address demographic challenges, and enhance the EU’s competitiveness. This is illustrated by recent EU initiatives like the ‘Union of Skills’ and ‘Choose Europe’, which embody the economic imperative of attracting talents from abroad.
Traditionally tailored to cosmopolitan and development goals, international learning mobility is now fertile ground for policy contradictions and normative tensions. These tensions are between utilitarian and security considerations as well as between electoral pressure to contain immigration and the growing need to open new legal pathways in the face of demographic transformations. If not better calibrated with other priorities, this Discussion Paper shows that the prevailing restrictive approach will undermine the EU and EU member states’ interests, as well as those of aspiring international students and trainees.
Against this background, this Discussion Paper examines shortcomings in existing frameworks, focusing on Talent Partnerships and the Students and Researchers Directive. At the same time, it advances forwardlooking reflections on how to facilitate international educational mobility, exploring concrete actions to align ongoing and future initiatives with the objective of attracting international students and trainees while also promoting more welcoming learning environments and ensuring adequate living standards, to the benefit of non-EU and EU citizens alike.
Tesseltje de Lange is professor of European Migration Law, Director of the Centre for Migration Law at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
This publication was developed as part of the project “What next for the EU’s migration and asylum system after the New Pact?” which involves a collaboration between the European Policy Centre (EPC) and the Odysseus Academic Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe (Odysseus Network).
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