Navigating education-migration nexus in the global and everyday power hierarchies: Lived experience of educational migrants in Germany

Abstract (English)

International student mobility is not merely as a domain of higher education policy but a critical site within the broader political economy of neoliberal globalization and immigration governance. The global race for talents in the neoliberal era has propelled the emergence of the education-migration nexus, wherein post-industrial states leverage higher education as a strategic tool to attract and retain international students as future skilled migrants. Simultaneously, higher education has become one of the few socially and politically legitimate pathways to permanent settlement in host countries—primarily those in the Global North—resulting in a blurred boundary between educational mobility and labor migration. However, the instrumentalist framings of educational migrants as "highly skilled" labor or "ideal immigrants" effectively neglect the lived and embodied dimensions of their migratory trajectories.

This study therefore offers an empirical investigation into how educational migrants from non-EU countries navigate the education-migration nexus in Germany. Drawing on the capability-aspiration framework (de Haas 2022) and agency theories (Giddens 1981, Emirbayer & Mische 1998, Katz 2004), the analysis of 30 biographic-narrative interviews uncovers how state migration policies—such as time-restricted residence permits and stringent financial requirements—engender significant economic precarity and psychological stress, often compel educational migrants into low-skilled, low-wage employment. Meanwhile, the findings highlight educational migrants’ capacity for critical reflection, learning, resilience, and strategic maneuvering within restrictive legal and labor regimes. Their life-course experiences cultivate a dynamic repertoire of aspirations and coping strategies, from reinterpreting adversity to actively resisting and circumventing structural barriers. By centering the voices and experiences of educational migrants, this study challenges dominant top-down frameworks that present transnational education mobility as a neutral or benevolent process.