Economic Units or Rights-Bearers? Who is the International Student under the Australian Strategy for International Education (ASIE)?
Continuing our theme on young people’s rights, Zaina Zulfiqar, Policy Advisor for FORE Good and recent Master of Public Policy (RMIT) graduate, argues for the need for Australian policy to uphold international students’ rights by ensuring that they are provided with appropriate support, protection and care.
Australia puts forward its vision for the international education sector in the form of the Australian Strategy for International Education 2021-2030 (ASIE). Underpinning the Strategy is the aim to provide a “connected, creative and caring” experience for international students. The Strategy not only seeks to transform its priority areas of (1) Diversification, (2) Meeting Australia’s skills needs, (3) Students at the centre, and (4) Growth and global competitiveness, into several actions, but it also constructs a distinct identity for international students which has profound implications.
This blog post explores how ASIE, as a national policy, shapes this international student identity. After analysing this identity construction and its real-world impacts, this post calls for a broader rethinking of how international students are perceived within this policy landscape, advocating for a shift that views them not merely as consumers, but as rightfully residing temporary residents who are entitled to robust protection and care. This focus is significant because it demonstrates that policy representation and the consequent identity framing are just as vital as tangible actions and structural measures.
The Policy Lens: Constructing the International Student Identity
How international students are perceived and positioned within national policy dictates exactly what a strategy chooses to do as well as what it decides to ignore. Applying Carol Bacchi’s “What is the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) framework allows us to deconstruct the policy text and interrogate how the student identity is shaped. Through this lens, the identity exhibits the following features:
· Naturally Self-Sufficient Beings: By proposing no financial protection for international students, the Strategy assumes international students are a naturally wealthy, and self-sufficient cohort that is immune to financial burdens.
· The Individualisation of Distress: While the Strategy addresses well-being, it limits its interventions to expanding cultural counselling services and raising awareness of international students’ rights and responsibilities, such as abiding by the 48-hour fortnightly work restrictions. This framing reduces systemic hardship to isolated mental health issues, treating the students only as individuals experiencing personal issues, rather than someone navigating a systemic trap.
· Shifted Responsibility: The Strategy relies heavily on individual and institutional responsibility, identifying international students as the ultimate burden-bearers. For instance, it places the responsibility on educational institutions to ensure student wellbeing by maintaining campus safety, managing incidents, and providing essential support services. This brews a culture of forced personal adaptability that shifts the burden of survival from shared systemic accountability onto the students themselves.
The Real-World Impacts: What Happens When the Policy Ignores Reality?
When a national strategy frames international students as universally wealthy and self-sufficient, it conveniently dissolves the need to implement financial protection for them during their stay in Australia. Consequently, students are often forced to choose between violating the working hour limits or accepting underpaid employment. This traps them in a cycle of workplace exploitation as they struggle to meet Australia’s high cost of living.
The damage does not stop at financial distress. The combination of time poverty and physical exhaustion inevitably compromises academic performance, undermining their primary motive: quality education. By shifting the entire burden of survival onto the students, the Strategy creates a huge accountability gap that shields institutional structures responsible for planning and regulating the international education sector.
Beyond Consumers: Rethinking the International Student
The need of the hour is to stop viewing international students strictly through lens of “economic and sector resilience ”. Framing these individuals as mere consumers allows the decision-makers to ignore the harsh realities they face on the ground. To bridge this gap, strategies and frameworks must bring a fundamental shift in perspective: viewing and framing international individuals as humans who require institutional support, fair labor conditions, and holistic systemic protections during their time in Australia.
This diagram illustrates the proposed pathway to securing the status of international students in Australia through accurate identity framing, policy representation, and accountable protection.
Content Moderator: Alexa Ridgway
Photo by Zaina Zulfiqar