Mutually beneficial cloak with a hidden complexity

International education has been touted globally as a win-win situation not only because it offers students in developing countries a chance to build themselves professionally but also as an economic and cultural boosts to a host countries. Yet, behind this mutually beneficial cloak I have noticed a hidden complex formation largely identified by social injustices, economic blackmail, coercive labour and multi-level hypocrisy. International education in industrialized countries appears to be a new form of moral and semantic slavery pending ethical investigation.  Arguably, the analogy of modern slavery is not only inappropriate and offensive but also one that runs the risk of watering down recorded pain that has been experienced under chattel slavery.

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It is a legitimate concern that the society must take care not to equate with others. However, invoking such in this context is not to equate but rather to expose the asymmetries of structure and human expense in the global education economy. As Palumbo stressed, modern slavery has to be understood as a legal and sociological category that is to be applied to all forms of extreme exploitation, including forced labour, debt bondage, and human trafficking, that are possible even in legally sanctioned contexts.

The other day I checked the ILO and The International Labour Organization (ILO) (2022) defined modern slavery as a "situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, or abuse of power”. Although international students are not imprisoned and shipped or even sold to other owners as enslaved people, they undergo circumstances that limit freedom and trap them in horrific machines. Challenging this could sheds some light on systemic problems that defy the concept of free and informed choice in education.

Despite the choice of studying abroad being voluntary to individual students, socio-economic pressures and working conditions within the destination countries can supply exploitative results that resonate with specific aspects of contemporary slavery as outlined under international labour regulations. For instance, in an international education destination country like Australia, foreign students borrow vast sums of money to be to pay for their tuition fees, some reaching up to AUD 30,000 yearly without knowledge of either agents or family members this is supported by articles of researchers including Lungu.

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As a result, foreign students are exposed to irregular labour markets with some having to engage at work more than 48 hours per week during semester periods limiting the time they both spend on studies and their personal life. Besides, the tight "loan repayment" plan allowed by lending institutions leave some of these students with little to spend on basic house expenditure leading to miserable life. If you are not ready to rock and roll in these kind of pressure please, go back to your family.

I have engaged in some conversations where I found out that in some other international education destinations such as Canada, foreign students pay considerably higher amounts of tuition fees than domestic students - upto three to four times as much. Such an imbalance in tuition fees is not accidental btw; it is a determined funding system that sustains the economic sustainability of Canadian universities at the expense of international learners. This same group of students are ones who are largely exposed to low-income, cash-in-hand jobs that may subject them to wage theft, and unsafe workstations, because they fear losing their visas, facing deportation, or have few viable alternatives - refer to Canadian Council on Refugees 2021.

Even more, employment rules in some international education destinations such as the United States, the land of milk & honey makes the matter worse for international students. In the US, on-campus work is only allowed under the F 1 visa, I missed this approval twice in 2022 in Kenya. Anyways off-campus employment can only be done with special approvals (Curricular Practical Training (CPT) or Optional Practical Training (OPT)) that often are time-restricted and bureaucratic - by hear say. Consequently, a high number of students end up in illegal employment and are therefore open to exploitation with no legal safeguard.

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A report by Park and Shimada (2022) found out that a significant portion of foreign students in the U.S. having problems of mental health, proper housing and reported discrimination of various forms relative to in-born students. Despite being touted as the upholders of the global citizenship status and diversity drivers, these systematic and bureaucratic tendencies on foreign students exposes them to slave-like conditions while abroad. Still Reading? Don't cancel that visa application.

These conditions in industrialised foreign countries establishes a paradox of international education as a vehicle for empowerment and upward mobility becoming an instrument of commodification and economic dependence. As such, the rhetoric of "choice" hides the systemic coercion inherent in the process because for the majority of students especially from the Global South, the decision to study in foreign countries is driven by socio-economic inequalities, limited opportunities within their homelands, and the necessity to support families through remittances—a factor that also limit their agency in any form of the term. In such situations, "choice" is made under constrained freedom, reflecting what the International Labour Organization identifies as abuse of vulnerability—a feature of twenty-first-century slavery (ILO, 2022).

Cumulatively, with the temporary status of their visas, there is all too much financial pressure to reverse the trap of coercive dependency by foreign students. A more nuanced elaboration follows –international institutions in high-income economies habitually facilitating situations tantamount to contemporary slavery. Invariably, the big issue is not the involuntariness of the migration but institutionalised exposure, as well as regulatory arrangements that disproportionately expose students to harm. This includes, temporary visa arrangements and fee policies that treat international students as cash cows rather than as learners are all part of this calculation.

Systemic change must come to reinforce international education as a vehicle for empowerment and upward mobility. Removing limits on work hours, providing more effective regulatory systems to check employers and educational agents, and providing obvious means to permanent residency are among the policy recommendations that many stakeholders think can supress emerging slavery.

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Unless such reforms are instituted, the rhetoric of international education as a an instrument of commodification and economic dependence, particularly among the students whose international education experience is working more on survival than on learning.

Although the analogy of international education and modern slavery is entrenched with ethical issues, it is a powerful tool in scrutinizing the exploitative terms of modern global mobility. International students contribute to the economies but they are not usually safeguarded against the systematic weaknesses that undermine their independence, security and integrity. The conceptualization of international education as a place of potential modern slavery makes us reconsider not only the existent global inequality but also the ethical contributions of both host countries and educational establishments towards a better future in the 21st century.

Edited/Published by Nehemiah Kipserem MEd-MBA 2025