Doctoral Candidates: Fanta Aw

Moving From the Periphery to the Center: International Students
and U.S. Political Economy in the New Millennium

Dissertation Summary

The purpose of my study is to examine the relationship of international students to changing U.S. political economy. The main research focuses on U.S. economy, changing labor demand and international student flow to the U.S. The central research question is in why is the international student flow integral to the changing U.S. political economy?

The United States holds a dominant position in the global political economy and this dominance is characterized by military, political, economic, and cultural hegemony. However, often absent from discourse of U.S. power is another dimension: power derived from educational knowledge. The U.S. enjoys the lion share of cross-border education, estimated at close to 30 percent of all student mobility (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2005). Students from all over the world land on U.S. shores in pursuit of higher education. Some students upon completion of studies chose to return home while others decide to remain in the U.S. to work and begin a new life. The question of who are international students and how they should be conceptualized in the migration literature and U.S. political economy becomes complicated because of the policy adoption of the nation-state. How the nation state organizes its classification scheme of various entrants is important because it has policy, structural, and process implications.

I advance the following four propositions to frame my analysis of the issue:

International students fulfill several important roles in the U.S. political economy including human, cultural, political and social capital.
International education as it relates to international students is mostly driven by economic and national interests rationales, even when other rationales such as foreign policy or mutual understanding rationales are purported - Given global economic competitiveness and the critical contribution of science and technology in economic development, international students become a major source of labor because of skills that are desirable and in demand.
Immigration and educational policies reflect and/or are influenced by U.S. political economy and therefore are an expression of U.S. public policy goals and mandates. However, the picture is somewhat complex in that the political dimensions in a post 9/11 era have changed immigration mandates in unprecedented ways.
U.S. institutions of higher education are simply academic marketplace charged with putting into practice public policy agendas. In this case, these institutions prepare and train domestic and foreign human capital to serve U.S. economic interests.

Bio

Fanta Aw is currently a doctoral candidate in the Sociology at American University in Washington D.C. She received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Accounting and a Master's in Public Administration both from American University. She was formerly Director of International Student and Scholar Services at American University and is curently Assistant Vice President for Campus Life. Aw is also an Adjunct Faculty at American University and George Washington University.

Aw is originally from Mali, West Africa.