Organizing Student Mobility: Education Agents and Student Migration to New Zealand

The movement of international students represents an increasing component of contemporary population mobilities. Like other forms of migration, international student mobility takes place through a complex assemblage of actors and networks, including origin and destination states, educational institutions, families, friends and communities, and of course students themselves. In the midst of these arrangements education agents appear to occupy a pivotal position, serving as a bridge between student origins and study destinations in a manner that enables multiple movements across educational and geographic divides. Establishing and maintaining this important position in international student mobilities is a complex endeavour that requires agents to bridge the gap between a solely profit-oriented education industry and the social lives of students and their families. This paper investigates the position of agents in student mobilities by focusing on the development of export education activities since the early 1990s in New Zealand and the changing relationships of agents with the state, education providers and students. I trace the emergence of agents to the early liberalization of student mobility and educational provision but also note how agents became increasingly incorporated into a more formalized education industry as later governments engaged in more direct intervention and regulation of student flows and educational quality. To broaden this general overview of the role of agents the paper focuses on the specific activities and relationships of agents involved in the movement of South Korean international students. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for research on agents and other intermediaries to focus in more detail on the manner in which these actors mediate different sorts of relationships, between migration/education industries and migrant/student social networks as well as between changing state liberalization and intervention and emerging industry formations.