The Dispossession of International Students by Canadian Higher Education as a form of Imperialist Extraction from the Global South

Abstract

This paper explores the increasing prominence of international students, particularly those from India, in the Canadian labour landscape, and the roles played by higher education and the immigration system in facilitating this trend. International students face a considerable degree of dispossession, firstly, by higher education institutions by being charged exorbitant international tuition fees and often having to invest funds into profit-motivated recruitment agents to facilitate their application process, as well as, secondly, by the immigration system which renders their status in the country subject to stringent requirements, and whose infrastructure falls severely short in supporting them. Consequently, findings show that international students are likely to absorb the costs of these dispossession mechanisms, often by enduring sub-optimal housing, food, and mental health conditions. Furthermore, these dispossession mechanisms create the conditions for the cheapening of these international students’ labour-power, resulting in the creation of an underclass of workers that occupy a significant portion of the low-wage economy in Canada. This paper argues that the dispossession created by higher education and the immigration system constitute a manufacturing of ‘differential surplus rates’ among international students, amounting to a form of imperialist extraction of labour from the global south.