The View
Democracy and the threat to the internationalisation of European higher education
With a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe, universities must advocate for international openness, inclusion and diversity within higher education.
By Professor Nigel Healey, Vice President Global and Community Engagement, University of Limerick
2024 is set to be the biggest year ever for democracy. In a remarkable milestone in human history, over four billion people – more than half of the world’s population across 40 countries – will go to the polls. Around the world, national elections will be held in the United States, the United Kingdom (probably), India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Taiwan, Mexico and South Africa. Within the European Union, there will be European Parliamentary elections in June, as well as national elections in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland and Ireland.
The dark shadow hanging over this democratic milestone is the resurgence of nationalism and populism. After the far right peaked in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum, it appeared to be losing ground around the world. But their momentum has been reignited by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump’s third presidential campaign in the US, and the electoral success last November of anti-Islamic extremist Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. The ongoing Gaza-Israel conflict is fuelling Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, both “hot button” issues for the far right.
Some of the national elections being held in 2024 are, of course, not remotely free and fair, with the jailing or silencing of opposition parties ensuring “landslide victories” for far-right, totalitarian incumbent governments.
The real danger to open and inclusive societies, however, comes not just from the increasing success of far-right parties in national polls, but from the way that these parties can connect with the fears of traditional left-of-centre voters, forcing social democratic parties to adopt anti-immigrant positions to avoid losing power. While the far-right is primarily concerned with perceived threats from immigration to their sense of national identity, culture and values, they can co-opt working class voters to their cause by emphasising perceived threats from new immigrants to their jobs, access to housing and public services, and personal security.
The Brexit referendum and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign illustrated the way that far-right ideologies can create alliances with working class voters. Even with a huge lead in the opinion polls in 2024, the UK’s Labour Party continues to studiously avoid any talk of re-joining the European Union, for fear of alienating its grass root supporters that voted for Brexit. In Norway, Denmark, Australia and Canada, left-of-centre governments have been forced to talk tough on immigration to fend off the far-right.
The resurgence of the far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe has profoundly negative implications for the internationalisation of higher education. Since the launch of the Erasmus programme in 1987 – which has now funded over 10 million academic mobilities between universities in member states – followed by the 1989 Bologna Declaration, we have been steadily moving towards the goal of a European Higher Education Area in which students can move freely between universities during their academic studies.
The current European University Alliances, set to increase in number from 50 to 60 this summer, were intended to further accelerate the Bologna process. The so-called European University Initiative funds multinational consortia of member universities to identify and overcome the obstacles to allowing students to take credits in multiple universities and using these credits to earn a European-level degree qualification.
The far-right, however, is tapping into popular concerns about the scale of inward migration and the negative impact this is claimed to be having on shortages of accommodation and pressure on public services. By labelling foreign students as immigrants and claiming that they are either using their studies as a backdoor route to permanent residency or that they are crowding out more deserving domestic students from popular courses, the far-right is increasingly successful in including international students in their xenophobic discourse.
Around the world, even in Anglophone countries like Australia, Canada and the UK, where international students pay much higher fees than their domestic counterparts and their fees are a critical component of university funding, anti-immigration sentiment has led to student visa regimes being tightened and post-study work options being curtailed. There are reports of spiralling visa refusal rates in Australia and Canada and a slump in student visa applications in the UK, signalling an abrupt end to the decades of continuously increasing international enrolments.
Within the EU, where most of the international students studying in universities are from other EU countries, governments cannot use study visas to reduce the inflows. Instead, in countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, they are reversing the 35-year-old trend started by the Bologna Process to offer courses in English, by forcing their universities to teach only in the national language. These moves are explicitly calculated to deter students from other countries in the EU, particularly the south-eastern member states like Romania and Bulgaria
This pushback against international student mobility, both globally and within the EU, threatens to undermine the grand project of a borderless, integrated European Higher Education Area. Already, there is evidence that the changing environment is slowing the cross-border enrolment of international students and leading to deteriorating retention rates amongst international students who find themselves the targets of politically legitimised racism and public hostility.
International credit mobility has yielded huge benefits for European universities over the last 40 years, promoting students’ intercultural awareness and competency, their graduate employability and their European sense of identity. Research and education are truly global endeavours – by sharing the advances of others, wherever in the world they live, work and study, each generation stands on the shoulders of the geniuses that have gone before.
Higher education must work harder to counter the negative messaging of the far-right and advocate for international openness, inclusion and diversity in our universities. As Ireland’s recently launched Global Citizens 2023: Ireland’s International Talent and Innovation Strategy argues: “As never before, graduates who have a global perspective are needed to find the solutions to the grand challenges of our time… Today’s international learners [students] are tomorrow’s leaders, employees, researchers, social champions, climate advocates, entrepreneurs and investors. It is essential their learning and living experience in Ireland is inclusive and excellent, fostering enduring relationships that persist long after graduation.”