Benjamin Mulvey
Biographic Data
| ID | 357680 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Mulvey |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Mulvey |
| SIGNATURE | MULVEY B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Education University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2847-6604 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
An infrastructural perspective on international students navigating the housing crisis in Scotland
This paper examines the role of the housing sector as a form of ‘migration infrastructure’ which shapes the experiences of internationally mobile students. Drawing on survey and interview data collected in Scotland’s two largest cities, Glasgow and Edinburgh, the study repositions housing access as a core but thus far neglected component of arrival and wider migration infrastructures. The paper conceptualises housing policies, markets and brokers…
Internationalization in higher education beyond the Western horizon: Critical perspectives
This article introduces the special issue, and together with it, addresses the development of a critical turn in studies of internationalization, seeking to highlight its two major issues. First, it has tended to employ a narrow range of theoretical and analytical perspectives, and second, it has been limited in its empirical and geographical scope. A central argument is that, in order to understand internationalization in the context of a rapidl…
Towards a more just global regime of international student mobility
To date, little attention has been paid to the ethics and equity of international student mobility, despite the fact that there are now more than 6 million tertiary students enrolled in universities outside of their home country, and in some systems, international students make up more than 20 percent of the student body. In this paper, I explore what a more just global regime of international student mobility would look like through the lens of …
The intellectual-state relationship and academic freedom in China: A reappraisal
Existing academic literature on higher education in China tends to promote an argument that current norms of academic freedom and the broader intellectual-state relationship can be attributed primarily to Chinese political and cultural traditions, particularly Confucian political thought, creating a false dichotomy between 'Western' liberal individualist and 'Sinic' Confucian collectivist notions of academic freedom.In this article we seek to pro…
Securitising the university: Lessons from China in the Xi Jinping era
This paper explores the extent to which Chinese higher education has become a national security concern under General Secretary Xi Jinping’s leadership. To do so, it draws on ‘second-wave’ securitisation theory, demonstrating the broader analytical value of this framework and highlighting its urgent relevance for understanding how higher education is increasingly being brought under the purview of national security across the globe. The paper ana…
The Negotiation of Socio‐Spatial Background Among Elite Chinese University Graduates
An increasingly rich body of literature focuses on the relationship between socio‐spatial background, emotional attachment to place, and aspirations surrounding higher education. In this paper, we foreground the connections between attachment to place, mobility, education and aspirations—links that are often implicit and seldom highlighted in the Chinese context. To do so, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates Bourdieu's theory of pr…
Tertiary education in China's engagement with Africa: Building epistemic communities
The Chinese state views African countries as centrally important to its geopolitical strategy for several reasons. At the same time, tertiary education – in the forms of both technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education – plays a central role in this strategy. This paper maps these rapidly developing forms of Sino-African ‘people-to-people exchange’ through internationalised tertiary education, contributing to a bet…
The essentialisation of China in ‘Critical internationalisation studies’: A new orientalism
This paper provides a critical perspective on existing academic literature on the internationalisation of higher education in China. The central argument is that much of this work undermines its own aims to contribute to the ‘de-centring’ of the West and to redress epistemic injustice. This is because it tends to engage in ‘re-orientalism’ and ‘Sino-speak’, relying on an essentialist binary of East and West. In doing so, it essentialises and exot…
Differentiated experiences of financial precarity and lived precariousness among international students in Australia
Empirical research on international student migrants has sometimes homogenised this group, framing it as predominantly made up of privileged members of the global middle-class. This has led to calls to acknowledge and address the precarity faced by international students in their respective host countries more comprehensively. This study aims to explore how levels of financial precarity vary among international students in Australia, and how this…
Social inequality in a 'hyper-mobile' society: Intra-national mobilities and formal education in China
This study builds upon existing research on educational mobilities in China by exploring how families from across the socio-economic spectrum have utilised various forms of spatial mobility practices to access educational opportunities and to achieve social mobility through education. We draw on data from forty interviews with Master’s degree students at an elite Chinese university from three social class factions: ‘non-affluent’, ‘lower-middle’,…
The promised capitals of international high school programmes and the global field of higher education: The case of Shenzhen, China
The term ‘international school’ encompasses a broad array of institutions offering a range of different programmes. However, the differences between these programmes have scarcely been explored in the existing literature. This article focuses on three popular international high school programmes (Advanced Levels, Advanced Placement, and International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme) by drawing upon in-depth interviews with international school co…
Pluralist internationalism, global justice and international student recruitment in the UK
Global and local possible selves: Differentiated strategies for positional competition among Chinese university students
The term neijuan (in English ‘involution’) has captured feelings of perpetual competition and anxiety among university students in China preparing for their post‐graduation careers. In this article, we develop a neo‐Weberian reading of neijuan to construct a framework using positional conflict theory and the concept of ‘possible selves’. We investigated how final‐year university students from three social class factions—rural, urban non‐elite and…
Participatory parity as a way forward for critical internationalisation studies
In recent years, there has been sustained criticism of current practices of higher education internationalisation in wealthy industrialised countries. This criticism is underpinned by an increasingly broad range of theoretical perspectives, resulting in calls for change which range from the minimal to the radical. In this paper, I reflect on the current state of the ‘critical internationalisation studies’ literature, arguing that existing critiqu…
It's kind of becoming a culture: How habitus influences the migration trajectories of African students in China
Global flows of international students have diversified in recent years. As a result, the common association of this form of mobility with affluent members of the global middle class increasingly does not hold. This study focuses on one emergent student migration pattern that has been the subject of relatively little empirical research: that of African international students in China. The main aim is to establish how international student migrati…
Global Inequality, Mobility Regimes and Transnational Capital: The Post-Graduation Plans of African Student Migrants
Employing a theoretical framework that draws on the concept of global regimes of mobility and Bourdieu's theory of practice, this article seeks to analyse how African student migrants in China navigate global structural inequalities in planning for post-graduation mobility, while strategising to overcome barriers to mobility and capital accumulation. It argues that China's position within the contemporary global political economy is reflected in …
Conceptualizing the discourse of student mobility between “periphery” and “semi-periphery”: The case of Africa and China
Internships and the graduate labour market: How upper-middle-class students ‘get ahead’
Internships have become an important means to enhance career prospects in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. This article used positional conflict theory to explore how university students from different social class backgrounds experience internships, and the implications for inequalities in post-graduation employment. One-hundred interviews were conducted with final-year undergraduates from three different class fractions at a Ru…
Decentring” international student mobility: The case of African student migrants in China
Despite the growth in numbers and geopolitical relevance of African students in China, research focusing on this body of student migrants remains scarce. This article presents an empirical investigation and postcolonial theorisation of student migration between Africa and China. Drawing on data from semi‐structured interviews with 40 African students, I provide an account of the decision‐making processes that lead African student migrants to stud…
Learning to ‘tell China's story well’: The constructions of international students in Chinese higher education policy
This article takes a policy-as-discourse approach to understanding how Chinese policy texts construct international students. This is important given the growth of China as a study destination, and the fact that the majority of the studies on Chinese internationalisation policy are descriptive, and poorly integrated with literature focused on other contexts. Drawing upon a thematic analysis of 19 policy texts, the article reveals that economic ra…
International Higher Education and Public Diplomacy: A Case Study of Ugandan Graduates from Chinese Universities
Decentring” international student mobility: The case of African student migrants in China
Despite the growth in numbers and geopolitical relevance of African students in China, research focusing on this body of student migrants remains scarce. This article presents an empirical investigation and postcolonial theorisation of student migration between Africa and China. Drawing on data from semi‐structured interviews with 40 African students, I provide an account of the decision‐making processes that lead African student migrants to stud…
International Higher Education and Public Diplomacy: A Case Study of Ugandan Graduates from Chinese Universities
Global Inequality, Mobility Regimes and Transnational Capital: The Post-Graduation Plans of African Student Migrants
Employing a theoretical framework that draws on the concept of global regimes of mobility and Bourdieu's theory of practice, this article seeks to analyse how African student migrants in China navigate global structural inequalities in planning for post-graduation mobility, while strategising to overcome barriers to mobility and capital accumulation. It argues that China's position within the contemporary global political economy is reflected in …
Internships and the graduate labour market: How upper-middle-class students ‘get ahead’
Internships have become an important means to enhance career prospects in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. This article used positional conflict theory to explore how university students from different social class backgrounds experience internships, and the implications for inequalities in post-graduation employment. One-hundred interviews were conducted with final-year undergraduates from three different class fractions at a Ru…
It's kind of becoming a culture: How habitus influences the migration trajectories of African students in China
Global flows of international students have diversified in recent years. As a result, the common association of this form of mobility with affluent members of the global middle class increasingly does not hold. This study focuses on one emergent student migration pattern that has been the subject of relatively little empirical research: that of African international students in China. The main aim is to establish how international student migrati…
Learning to ‘tell China's story well’: The constructions of international students in Chinese higher education policy
This article takes a policy-as-discourse approach to understanding how Chinese policy texts construct international students. This is important given the growth of China as a study destination, and the fact that the majority of the studies on Chinese internationalisation policy are descriptive, and poorly integrated with literature focused on other contexts. Drawing upon a thematic analysis of 19 policy texts, the article reveals that economic ra…
Social inequality in a 'hyper-mobile' society: Intra-national mobilities and formal education in China
This study builds upon existing research on educational mobilities in China by exploring how families from across the socio-economic spectrum have utilised various forms of spatial mobility practices to access educational opportunities and to achieve social mobility through education. We draw on data from forty interviews with Master’s degree students at an elite Chinese university from three social class factions: ‘non-affluent’, ‘lower-middle’,…
Global and local possible selves: Differentiated strategies for positional competition among Chinese university students
The term neijuan (in English ‘involution’) has captured feelings of perpetual competition and anxiety among university students in China preparing for their post‐graduation careers. In this article, we develop a neo‐Weberian reading of neijuan to construct a framework using positional conflict theory and the concept of ‘possible selves’. We investigated how final‐year university students from three social class factions—rural, urban non‐elite and…
Participatory parity as a way forward for critical internationalisation studies
In recent years, there has been sustained criticism of current practices of higher education internationalisation in wealthy industrialised countries. This criticism is underpinned by an increasingly broad range of theoretical perspectives, resulting in calls for change which range from the minimal to the radical. In this paper, I reflect on the current state of the ‘critical internationalisation studies’ literature, arguing that existing critiqu…
International Higher Education and Public Diplomacy: A Case Study of Ugandan Graduates from Chinese Universities
Decentring” international student mobility: The case of African student migrants in China
Despite the growth in numbers and geopolitical relevance of African students in China, research focusing on this body of student migrants remains scarce. This article presents an empirical investigation and postcolonial theorisation of student migration between Africa and China. Drawing on data from semi‐structured interviews with 40 African students, I provide an account of the decision‐making processes that lead African student migrants to stud…
Learning to ‘tell China's story well’: The constructions of international students in Chinese higher education policy
This article takes a policy-as-discourse approach to understanding how Chinese policy texts construct international students. This is important given the growth of China as a study destination, and the fact that the majority of the studies on Chinese internationalisation policy are descriptive, and poorly integrated with literature focused on other contexts. Drawing upon a thematic analysis of 19 policy texts, the article reveals that economic ra…
Conceptualizing the discourse of student mobility between “periphery” and “semi-periphery”: The case of Africa and China
Internships and the graduate labour market: How upper-middle-class students ‘get ahead’
Internships have become an important means to enhance career prospects in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. This article used positional conflict theory to explore how university students from different social class backgrounds experience internships, and the implications for inequalities in post-graduation employment. One-hundred interviews were conducted with final-year undergraduates from three different class fractions at a Ru…
The promised capitals of international high school programmes and the global field of higher education: The case of Shenzhen, China
The term ‘international school’ encompasses a broad array of institutions offering a range of different programmes. However, the differences between these programmes have scarcely been explored in the existing literature. This article focuses on three popular international high school programmes (Advanced Levels, Advanced Placement, and International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme) by drawing upon in-depth interviews with international school co…
Pluralist internationalism, global justice and international student recruitment in the UK
Global and local possible selves: Differentiated strategies for positional competition among Chinese university students
The term neijuan (in English ‘involution’) has captured feelings of perpetual competition and anxiety among university students in China preparing for their post‐graduation careers. In this article, we develop a neo‐Weberian reading of neijuan to construct a framework using positional conflict theory and the concept of ‘possible selves’. We investigated how final‐year university students from three social class factions—rural, urban non‐elite and…
Participatory parity as a way forward for critical internationalisation studies
In recent years, there has been sustained criticism of current practices of higher education internationalisation in wealthy industrialised countries. This criticism is underpinned by an increasingly broad range of theoretical perspectives, resulting in calls for change which range from the minimal to the radical. In this paper, I reflect on the current state of the ‘critical internationalisation studies’ literature, arguing that existing critiqu…
It's kind of becoming a culture: How habitus influences the migration trajectories of African students in China
Global flows of international students have diversified in recent years. As a result, the common association of this form of mobility with affluent members of the global middle class increasingly does not hold. This study focuses on one emergent student migration pattern that has been the subject of relatively little empirical research: that of African international students in China. The main aim is to establish how international student migrati…
Global Inequality, Mobility Regimes and Transnational Capital: The Post-Graduation Plans of African Student Migrants
Employing a theoretical framework that draws on the concept of global regimes of mobility and Bourdieu's theory of practice, this article seeks to analyse how African student migrants in China navigate global structural inequalities in planning for post-graduation mobility, while strategising to overcome barriers to mobility and capital accumulation. It argues that China's position within the contemporary global political economy is reflected in …
Social inequality in a 'hyper-mobile' society: Intra-national mobilities and formal education in China
This study builds upon existing research on educational mobilities in China by exploring how families from across the socio-economic spectrum have utilised various forms of spatial mobility practices to access educational opportunities and to achieve social mobility through education. We draw on data from forty interviews with Master’s degree students at an elite Chinese university from three social class factions: ‘non-affluent’, ‘lower-middle’,…
Differentiated experiences of financial precarity and lived precariousness among international students in Australia
Empirical research on international student migrants has sometimes homogenised this group, framing it as predominantly made up of privileged members of the global middle-class. This has led to calls to acknowledge and address the precarity faced by international students in their respective host countries more comprehensively. This study aims to explore how levels of financial precarity vary among international students in Australia, and how this…
Towards a more just global regime of international student mobility
To date, little attention has been paid to the ethics and equity of international student mobility, despite the fact that there are now more than 6 million tertiary students enrolled in universities outside of their home country, and in some systems, international students make up more than 20 percent of the student body. In this paper, I explore what a more just global regime of international student mobility would look like through the lens of …
The intellectual-state relationship and academic freedom in China: A reappraisal
Existing academic literature on higher education in China tends to promote an argument that current norms of academic freedom and the broader intellectual-state relationship can be attributed primarily to Chinese political and cultural traditions, particularly Confucian political thought, creating a false dichotomy between 'Western' liberal individualist and 'Sinic' Confucian collectivist notions of academic freedom.In this article we seek to pro…
Securitising the university: Lessons from China in the Xi Jinping era
This paper explores the extent to which Chinese higher education has become a national security concern under General Secretary Xi Jinping’s leadership. To do so, it draws on ‘second-wave’ securitisation theory, demonstrating the broader analytical value of this framework and highlighting its urgent relevance for understanding how higher education is increasingly being brought under the purview of national security across the globe. The paper ana…
The Negotiation of Socio‐Spatial Background Among Elite Chinese University Graduates
An increasingly rich body of literature focuses on the relationship between socio‐spatial background, emotional attachment to place, and aspirations surrounding higher education. In this paper, we foreground the connections between attachment to place, mobility, education and aspirations—links that are often implicit and seldom highlighted in the Chinese context. To do so, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates Bourdieu's theory of pr…
Tertiary education in China's engagement with Africa: Building epistemic communities
The Chinese state views African countries as centrally important to its geopolitical strategy for several reasons. At the same time, tertiary education – in the forms of both technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education – plays a central role in this strategy. This paper maps these rapidly developing forms of Sino-African ‘people-to-people exchange’ through internationalised tertiary education, contributing to a bet…
The essentialisation of China in ‘Critical internationalisation studies’: A new orientalism
This paper provides a critical perspective on existing academic literature on the internationalisation of higher education in China. The central argument is that much of this work undermines its own aims to contribute to the ‘de-centring’ of the West and to redress epistemic injustice. This is because it tends to engage in ‘re-orientalism’ and ‘Sino-speak’, relying on an essentialist binary of East and West. In doing so, it essentialises and exot…
An infrastructural perspective on international students navigating the housing crisis in Scotland
This paper examines the role of the housing sector as a form of ‘migration infrastructure’ which shapes the experiences of internationally mobile students. Drawing on survey and interview data collected in Scotland’s two largest cities, Glasgow and Edinburgh, the study repositions housing access as a core but thus far neglected component of arrival and wider migration infrastructures. The paper conceptualises housing policies, markets and brokers…
Internationalization in higher education beyond the Western horizon: Critical perspectives
This article introduces the special issue, and together with it, addresses the development of a critical turn in studies of internationalization, seeking to highlight its two major issues. First, it has tended to employ a narrow range of theoretical and analytical perspectives, and second, it has been limited in its empirical and geographical scope. A central argument is that, in order to understand internationalization in the context of a rapidl…
Political science (19 works) · Sociology (18 works) · China (13 works) · Social science (11 works) · Higher education (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Higher Education Governance and Development (9 works) · Geography (7 works) · International education (7 works) · International Student and Expatriate Challenges (7 works)