Conclusion: Precarious Transnationals and the Settler Nation

Abstract

Education-migration nexus policies have existed globally for nearly 15 years. In Australia, as a prime case study of the nexus in terms of the significance of both policy development and student-migrant numbers, a great deal has happened during the rise of the nexus and, indeed, a great deal still continues to happen at the time of writing this book. Although the nexus remains, at its inception and at its core, a project of distinctly neoliberal governance, its effects have been far broader than just economic. Thousands of migrants have entered and remained in Australia through student-migrant pathways. Private colleges have emerged, profited enormously from migration-driven demand, and then folded in the space of a few years. As a migrant group, student-migrants have in some cases been rapidly integrated into labour markets and communities, and in others remained economically and socially marginalized. They have also been subject to racialized forms of violence that have led to questions about whether Australia really offers a safe and inclusive multiculturalism. Investigations, inquiries and the introduction of new regulatory frameworks in both the education and the migration sectors have also taken place at local, state and federal levels. At the time of writing, student-migrants face more changes to policy in 2013, which will ultimately make journeys to residency even more protracted, and as of 2011 over 37,000 category five student-migrants still remained in Australia in limbo at the end of a processing backlog of residency applications (Mares, 2011).