ABSTRACT
The increasing presence of international students on campuses worldwide is becoming the norm rather than an exception. For instance, according to the latest OECD (2012) report, ‘the number of foreign students increased from 2.1 to 4.1 million, an increase of 99%. Consequently, the share of tertiary students who are foreign students grew by more than 10% between 2000 and 2010’ (362) due to the globalisation and internationalisation of higher education systems. While the structure of higher education institutions is transforming into what could be called corporate machines, with students as their customers and the corporations as their clients, this globalised knowledge economy has led to spatial disparities and has caused the universities to recruit an increasing number of international students under the banner of internationalisation (Bolsmann and Miller 2008; Stromquist and Monkman
2000). International students play a crucial role in these processes, and the policies to recruit them extend beyond the economic sphere to include political, social and cultural elements (Brooks and Waters 2011). However, the ever-increasing number of international students has attracted the interest of academics, universities and policy makers because they are also attributed and studied as belonging to a highly skilled and mobile demographic. Although Germany has a long tradition of international students attending its institutions of higher education, recruiting such students has become a major issue over the past few decades, particularly since the introduction of new measures designed to promote the Europeanisation and internationalisation of institutions of higher education.
