The political and public rhetoric around overseas students is ever-changing. What has remained unchanged, however, is the way in which overseas students have consistently been drawn into the management of net migration within the discursive lineage of Britain’s immigration governance. The language of fraud and illegality runs throughout this discourse, from Theresa May’s comments about ‘bogus students studying meaningless courses at fake colleges’ in 2011 to more recent invocations of restoring control over the immigration system. Such preoccupation with ‘cracking down on bogus students’ can be traced to post-war administrative discourses that emerged as overseas student numbers steadily rose.
Drawing primarily on political speeches and administrative records, this article traces how politicians and policymakers have shaped public opinion about overseas students as a shifting category. Changes in rhetoric exemplify the liminal position of overseas students throughout history, as they have neither been entirely rejected nor genuinely accepted. This ‘mixed messaging’ was reaffirmed in 2024, when Labour Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson stated that international students are treated as political footballs, not valued guests, with fees welcome but their presence rejected. Although her message was unambiguously welcoming, it was set against the backdrop of the current government’s commitment to reducing net migration, increases in unregulated overseas student fees, tightening of student visa sponsorships, and discussions about overseas students displacing domestic students for university places. These current political representations of overseas students, at times framed as potentially bogus or illegitimate, are shaped in part by the influence of populist far-right narratives, but are also outcomes of a longer process of categorisation whereby welcome and suspicion always coexisted.
This coexistence was assembled through early administrative discourses surrounding colonial students in the post-WWII era. Official surveys, conducted by the Political and Economic Planning (PEP) think tank in 1955, examined the educational and social experiences of colonial students and documented the disillusionment of Britain’s ‘disappointed guests’ against experiences of discrimination. By the late 1950s, the government’s discourse became increasingly marked by suspicion. The Secretary of State for the Colonies recommended that arrangements for placing overseas students in UK universities should involve ‘carefully sifting’ candidates before they were put forward, warning that failure to do so might prejudice the ‘goodwill’ of universities (TNA FCO 13/1058).
Notably, 60 per cent of overseas students during this period came from Commonwealth countries. The mobility of these students in particular played a crucial role in maintaining educational partnerships and cultural ties in a period of relative economic decline and growing processes of decolonisation. During this period, quasi-independent public bodies such as the British Council, which embodied British values and represented diplomatic and cultural ambitions, maintained Britain’s soft power through higher education and training programmes to strengthen ties with Commonwealth nations.
Nevertheless, the British Council reflected the same ambiguity in the positioning of overseas students as government policies. On the one hand, overseas students were welcome, as it was expected that they would thrive through diligent study and, ideally, return to their home countries after completing their education. In doing so, these students would become friends of Britain and foster post-imperial and Commonwealth ties. On the other hand, overseas students were framed as an ‘inconvenience’ subject to extensive rules and regulations. These dynamics were made clear in numerous handbooks published by the British Council.
An information booklet titled How to Live in Britain, first published by the British Council in 1952 and reissued until 1970, reflected the cautious tone of the period. The booklet emphasised the importance of comportment and adaptation to life in Britain, while also preparing readers for the financial and social realities of living here.
These seemingly practical guidance materials operated as discursive mechanisms through which the British Council reinforced and normalised exclusionary narratives about cultural differences and integration challenges. They repeatedly articulated concerns about housing, conduct and everyday behaviour, which linked the presence of overseas students with broader anxieties around overcrowding.
This narrative surrounding overseas students underwent a further significant shift with the introduction of the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962. During the House of Commons reading on the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill in 1961, the then Home Secretary, Conservative MP R.A Butler, justified the legislation by stating, ‘It cannot be denied that the immigrants who have come to this country in such large numbers have presented the country with an intensified social problem. They tend to settle in communities of their own, with their own mode of life, in big cities. The greater the numbers coming into this country, the larger will these communities become and the more difficult will it be to integrate them into our national life.’ Students, although considered somewhat more desirable than the rest of the immigrant population, faced similar experiences of othering and discrimination.
The Commonwealth Immigration Act was further reinforced in 1966 through the introduction of differential student fees between home and overseas students, a measure that further politicised the presence of Commonwealth students in the UK. European Community students were exempt from overseas student fees, distinguishing their experience from that of non-European Community international students during this period.
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The Home Office argued that the repatriation of students was difficult to justify if they were able to establish themselves in full-time employment in the UK (FCO 13/1058). Consequently, it was considered desirable to establish stringent admissions requirements early on. Documents such as the Commonwealth Students Recommendation Report, published by the Home Office, Immigration and Nationality Department in 1965 (TNA FCO 13/1058), revealed how the government exercised even greater caution in ensuring the legitimacy of students, with part-time students no longer considered ‘bona fide’. On a similar note, to prevent the ‘wrong kind of people’, the ‘unqualified’ and ‘bogus students’ from being admitted to less reputable institutions, in this same report the Department of Education recommended that Commonwealth students be confined to institutions maintained by public funds or approved by the Secretary of State under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act (TNA FCO 13/1058).
These measures prompted sustained discussions in parliament of the contested image of the bogus student, a category that was applied disproportionately to students from non-European countries. Perceptions of legitimacy became increasingly shaped by intersecting categories of race, ethnicity, social class, as well as where and what students were permitted to study. In this way, policymakers drew overseas students into discourses of descent, belonging and nationality, making higher education a site where migration and identity were negotiated.
Economic narratives around international students changed with the neoliberalisation of British universities in the late twentieth century. The neoliberal university came to be driven by market principles – prioritising efficiency, competition, and profitability – and characterised by privatisation, deregulation, and globalisation. Within this framework, international students increasingly became financial units crucial to university funding.
By the turn of the new century, there was a paradigm shift in the internationalisation of UK higher education. The Prime Minister’s initiative for international education, launched in 1999 under the Blair administration and extended as PMI2 under the Brown ministry in 2005, positioned Britain actively as the ‘first choice for quality’ in the global higher education market. Led by the British Council alongside other stakeholders, this campaign sought to differentiate the UK from competing markets, such as the USA, Canada, and Australia, by extending New Labour’s ‘Cool Britannia’ campaign as a dynamic and welcoming invitation to international students.
Yet this openness coexisted with persistent regulatory anxieties. Over the following two decades, policy and rhetoric oscillated between recruitment and restriction, particularly in relation to non-EU students and mainly those from the Global South. This culminated in the introduction of the Tier 4 visa route in 2009 within the Points-Based System (PBS), which sought to control student migration outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and restricted permission to work alongside studying.
The introduction of the graduate route in 2021 marked another shift, offering eligible students the opportunity to remain in the UK for two or three years to search for employment. This policy emerged in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, amid uncertainty, and renewed efforts to increase the UK’s education exports. As student numbers increased, debates over migration levels intensified, with calls to cap international student numbers and assertions that student visas should not serve as a ‘back door’ to the labour market, particularly within the gig economy. These narratives echo familiar historical distinctions between ‘bona fide’ and ‘bogus’ students who supposedly ‘abuse the system’, despite limited evidence.
While this article has focused on political and administrative discourse, these debates were concurrently produced and contested by other historical actors like university staff and journalists, and by students themselves in negotiating and resisting these institutional narratives. As the sector continues to be shaped by anti-immigration policies, pressing questions arise about the ethos of global higher education itself and how universities might continue to function as spaces of learning and belonging, rather than as contested sites of surveillance that reflect long-standing anxieties about immigration governance.