Predatory Inclusion and Educational Migration: Residency Status, Debt, and Post-graduation Employment among International Students in Canada

This article considers how terms of access to international education and pathways to permanent residency can interact with post-graduation employment in a labour market segmented by gender and race. Applying statistical modelling to the National Graduates Survey (2018), it finds that residency status, or whether international students are work permit holders or permanent residents in the years following graduation, has a clear relationship to employment outcomes; work permit holders appear to face higher odds of insecurity in employment compared to their permanent resident peers. Analysis of occupational skill level in relation to certification level also shows that whether a recent graduate is overqualified for their current job is similarly linked to residency status as well as educational debt. Together, these findings suggest international students’ conditions of inclusion—that is, relatively high international tuition fees, potentially fostering transnational debt relations, and employment experience criteria for transitions to permanency—are poised to reproduce socioeconomic inequalities related to gender, class, race, and country of origin among migrant workers.