ABSTRACT
In a climate of ongoing funding cuts for higher education, attracting international students (ISs) has become an economic essential survival strategy for most post-secondary institutions (PSIs) in Canada. Within the past two decades, hundreds of privately funded institutions have emerged particularly in the Greater Toronto Area, offering Canadian training to ISs at a relatively low cost. Within a context of minimal state regulations new and complex partnerships have evolved between various government and non-governmental actors, who work both locally and transnationally to recruit ISs. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 Indian ISs in GTA colleges and 15 KIs in India and Canada, we identify the involvements of these actors in the recruitment process, at various scales and stages of IS migration. Our research demonstrates that even though the roles of these actors may be identified, their responsibilities are perhaps purposefully obfuscated, in order to evade accountability. Using Agency Theory, we demonstrate that, in the context of IS recruitment, “agents” are neither well-defined entities nor positioned hierarchically within the larger system, with fixed roles and influences. Rather, they are highly dynamic and fluid, and their roles expand and contract in response to local and transnational structural differences, relationships with other agencies, and networks.
