ABSTRACT
Bauman argues that ‘mobility climbs to the rank of the uppermost among the coveted values – and the freedom to move, perpetually a scarce and unequally distributed commodity, fast becomes the main stratifying factor of our late-modern or postmodern times’ (Bauman 1998: 2). Is it possible to argue that mobility is emerging as a ‘coveted value’ and a ‘stratifying factor’ in government policies for the university sector and in the university sector itself? In this chapter we consider this question and the possible ways that such mobility might be or might become linked to nation-state and region building policies and practices and to what Mignolo (2003: 160) calls the ‘civilization project’ of contemporary times – neo-liberalism and the trans-national ideology of the market.
