Thread by @UnisNotBorders

Long 🧵

@UnisNotBorders is deeply concerned with how UK universities are using decolonisation & climate change frameworks to police & limit certain kinds of migrant student enrolment at their respective institutions.

Here are a few examples that point to this worrying trend.

In response to @SuellaBraverman’s keen desire to limit migrant students w/ families in bringing over their dependents, @SOAS has advertised “transnational” partnerships with @WitsUniversity to stop the “brain drain” in Global South countries: theguardian.com/finding-soluti…

VC Adam Habib @SOAS, who was formerly the VC @WitsUniversity (a career VC 😉) maintains that migrant students never return back to their countries of origin because they “fall in love, they have relationships, they have children, then the possibility of them going back is zero.”

Habib goes on to say that UK higher education only privileges “rich students” who have the means to study abroad. Yet, it seems odd that Habib, who himself immigrated from South Africa to the UK, is making them.

If Habib was worried about a brain drain surely then he wouldn’t have left his position at Wits to come to SOAS to make a base salary of £234,099 per year, more than the amount he was making at Wits, which was R4 484 000 or £194,764.78 in UK pounds. Money talks it seems.

As for migrant students being seen as rich and/or deciding to stay and continue their careers in the UK, we’d expect a geographer to have a nuanced understanding of migrant students issues rather than making sweeping & factually dangerous statements.

But this is Habib we are talking about, who in March 2021 used the N-word in a discussion around anti-Black racism at SOAS. If he couldn’t grasp how harmful using that word was to Black students, we doubt he’d grasp how harmful his views are concerning migrant students.

Migrant students being perceived as “rich”, is an incorrect reading of a complex situation. A high percentage of migrant students, like their Home student counterparts, take out enormous & exploitative loans in their country of origin to help them study in the UK.

We saw during the UK Covid-19 lockdowns, migrant students, particularly from India and Nigeria, were the first to be withdrawn from their courses for being unable to pay their tuition fees as a result of their families having no money to send to them: redpepper.org.uk/locked-out-dur…

Re: SOAS/Habib’s initiative, it still creates divisions in that financially disadvantaged students from the Global South will face problems coming to the UK, whether by institution and/or the Home Office, while economically secure peers will be oblivious to these problems.

Moreover, Habib’s plan will include more online teaching which begs the question- who exactly will be doing this teaching? Hint- casual academic staff, who are among the most underpaid & over-exploited within UK higher education. This is why a #ucuRISING #MAB is happening atm.

While Habib is fronting a very convoluted & problematic “decolonial” framework regarding migrant students, @UAL is seeking to become a net-zero carbon neutral institution by 2040- by seeking to limit how many times migrant students travel home.

In @UAL’s Carbon Management Plan – realising a net-zero carbon institution by 2040, it outlines ways that “blended learning or digital-only teaching” can be utilised to limit international travel for migrant students.

This plan as part of UAL’s initiative to combat climate change is shady given that it seems the university is seeking to find new outlets to acquire & get migrant students to pay exorbitant fees & to go around draconian immigration controls, not solely b/c of the environment.

However which way universities are dressing things up, whether by using decolonising &/or the environment, the elephant in the room still remains: UK universities unwillingness to work to end the draconian structures that are creating barriers for migrant students & staff alike.

Protecting the environment and seeking to decolonise from a non-neoliberal and exploitative place are hugely important, but what @UnisNotBorders is seeing is universities creating hollow policies that do little to address structural problems within their institutions.

@threadreaderapp
unroll