Migration and higher education was a key topic of conversation and debate at this year’s Times Higher Education Europe Summit in Bremen, Germany.
In this blog, Professor Chris Whitehead, Dean of Global - Humanities and Social Sciences, reflects on the summit’s key insights and discussions, highlighting the crucial role universities play in addressing migration challenges and fostering global understanding.
Fostering global citizenship and awareness
Universities are undeniably international, multicultural, and intercultural spaces.
International students are an essential part of life in Newcastle: each year, the city welcomes thousands of students from across the world to study here, attracted by the world-class education provided by the two universities, the rich heritage of the city and wider region, vibrant cultural life and a lower cost of living compared to other major UK cities.
Between them, Newcastle and Northumbria universities host almost 18,000 overseas students from more than 140 countries. Studying alongside domestic students at all levels, they bring a range of global perspectives, not just to our lecture halls and labs, but also to our wider communities.
Many of our graduates continue their careers outside of the UK, and the global citizenship and awareness that we foster has a wide reach across the world.
More fundamentally, through teaching and research, universities are engines for engagement with diverse global contexts and communities, working to enrich understanding of the world and to respond to global challenges.
Understanding migration through history
Migration is a key dimension of social dynamics and a core facet of human experience. In an uncertain and volatile world, we could all feasibly be refugees at some point in our lives.
For an engaged university that takes its position in society seriously, it is not an option to disengage from this.
Our research can highlight that from a historical perspective, migration is a constant. People have always migrated, even if borders, geopolitics, and laws change the meanings and conditions of migration. We are hubs of expertise, providing insights into these historical, cultural, political, and experiential dimensions of migration, with the potential to influence both public perception and policy on a topic of intense societal relevance. This is especially relevant in times when it is a focus of xenophobic nationalism, and subject to misinformation and disinformation.
Our recently formed Migrations Collective demonstrates how universities can catalyse new interdisciplinary groupings that help us to better understand our places in the world and the fundamental significance of migration as part of global order and everyday life.
Place-based participation
Higher Education institutions are also hubs for positive civic participation, with this proactive work often undertaken by students themselves. Students can and do play a crucial role within the local ecosystem.
For example, our student-led initiative North East Solidarity and Teaching (N.E.S.T) aims to educate, empower, and integrate the forced migration community in the region, supporting some 700 asylum seekers and refugees annually through language learning and social and cultural activities. This practical initiative helps migrants and refugees adapt to new realities, contexts and cultures and forges greater links between the work of universities and local authorities in supporting these groups.
Supporting our global communities
Universities are key institutions in supporting forcibly displaced students and academics. In 2019, the United Nations Refugee Council (UNHCR) set the goal to achieve 15 per cent enrolment of the estimated 4,000,000 global refugee youth in higher education by 2030, because post-secondary education is essential for society to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. SDGs 4 and 16) and for refugees to develop skills, build livelihoods and transition to independence.
Newcastle is a University of Sanctuary, offering sanctuary scholarships every year and hosting fellowships as part of our decade-long membership of the Council for At Risk Academics, which supports scholars in danger. This is one of a range of national and international mechanisms that recognise the crucial place of higher education in this space.
Continuing to be part of the conversation
Universities can respond constructively to migration dynamics. The question ‘How can the HE sector get better in addressing the issues surrounding migration?’ usefully acted as a roundup to the wide-ranging panel discussions at the event, with key points for us all to consider including;
- the value of university networks and collaborations to share models of practice and expertise, locally, nationally and through international co-ordination and shared commitments
- the importance of multilateral and multi-stakeholder partnerships, including links with local authorities, but also with student communities comprising of migrants and refugees as well as peers from host countries with strong senses of civic responsibility and willingness to help others
- working together as a sector to go beyond ‘response mode’ by embedding long-term, durable capacity to welcome and support migrants and refugees
- and better communicating our research – beyond academic jargon – to help inform public opinion and to influence responsible policymaking
Recent trends at the government level in the UK and elsewhere (e.g. Canada) have been challenging for national higher education sectors open to international students, with the risk our countries can seem less attractive.
In this context, Newcastle University welcomes the outcome of the UK Migration Advisory Committee’s 2024 report on the Graduate Route. This resonates closely with our belief in the economic and cultural benefit of migration to society, with our core values of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, and as a global university.
We are pleased to see the new Labour Government fostering a culture of welcome through practical measures to enable international students to thrive in our universities, as recently outlined by Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson:
We, for our part, will do all we can to make great international study experiences for all students and foreground the value of global and intercultural encounters.
My experience of migration
I remember once visiting the Migration Museum in London. There, after reading a number of people’s migration stories, a question printed on the wall asked me how my own life had been affected by migration.
An aunt of mine had recently managed to chart our family history going back to the late 1600s. The family tree showed that my ancestors had moved little in geographical terms: a slow drift from North West England to North East England, over many generations.
The answer to the question on the wall seemed to be that migration history meant little to me personally. But then I remembered the seven years – decades ago – I spent studying and working in Italy. I recalled the challenges and opportunities of this and the learning situations to which it exposed me, both in and outside of classrooms.
My time as a migrant was largely enriching, giving me a new language and new understandings of what it is to live elsewhere and otherwise. It was a formative process that made me who I am. I count myself lucky that I was able to migrate by choice and endure few of the hardships that many undergo. My personal experience of being an international student points to one of many aspects in which universities and migration intersect.
Further information
- learn more about Professor Chris Whitehead, Dean of Global - Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of Museology
- find out more about the 2024 Times Higher Education Summit Europe including the Collaborative Strategies panel discussion and speakers
- explore Newcastle’s strong global community and wide array of international partnerships
- find out more about the Migrations Collective
