ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses on a specific tool of statecraft: scholarships. In this chapter, the authors, all of whom are scholarship students from the Pacific Islands region who have received scholarships, analyse scholarships as a tool of statecraft. They describe how scholarships have increasingly come to be seen as a key element of ‘soft power’ because of their capacity to develop people-to-people connections between their recipients and populations of their donor country. They then describe their reasons for applying for scholarships to study in Australia, their experiences of holding scholarships and studying in Australia, and how these experiences have shaped their opinion of Australia (and Australians). They conclude by arguing that, while their scholarships have improved their perception of Australia, and consequently have been an effective tool of Australian soft power, their experiences in Australia have not been unproblematic, and they therefore make recommendations for how scholarships could become more effective tools of statecraft.
