More than three million students globally are on the move each year, crossing borders for their tertiary education. Many travel from Asia and Africa to English speaking countries, led by the United States, including the UK, Australia and New Zealand where students pay tuition fees at commercial rates and prop up an education export sector that has become lucrative for the provider nations. But the 'no frills' commercial form of tertiary education, designed to minimise costs and maximise revenues, leaves many international students inadequately protected and less than satisfied. International Student Security draws on a close study of international students in Australia, and exposes opportunity, difficulty, danger and courage on a massive scale in the global student market. It works through many unresolved issues confronting students and their families, including personal safety, language proficiency, finances, sub-standard housing, loneliness and racism.

International student security" refers to the international student's maintenance of a stable capacity for self-determining human agency. The article focuses on the role of English-language proficiency in the security of students from English as Foreign Language countries, drawing on evidence from a program of semistructured interviews with 200 international students. The interviews show that language proficiency is a pervasive factor in the human security of the international students in all domains inside and outside the classroom. There is a strong link between language proficiency and the capacity for active human agency. Both findings confirm prior research literature. The article concludes with implications for practice and for further research. In this program human security is defined as "maintenance of a stable capacity for self-determining human agency" (Marginson et al., 2010, p. 60). Human security has two aspects, encompassing on one hand the protection of persons, on the other hand their capacity to act. This notion extends beyond a subsistence, protective, or welfare model of person, and beyond the notion of consumer in a market, to envision the person as an active self-determining agent, albeit subject to the external conditions of life. It embraces both negative freedoms and positive freedoms. This concept of human security draws partly on the work of Sen (1985Sen ( , 2000 on freedom and capability. It also extends ideas about the human security of the globally mobile developed by agencies of the United Nations. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 1994) formalizes human security as "protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life; whether in homes, jobs or in communities"; and "safety from chronic threats such as hunger, disease and repression" (p. 23). This encompasses security in relation to food, health, personal safety, and the political economic order. However, it suggests active human agency only in relation to economic sustenance. Mobile refugees are modelled as persons needing protection alone with little focus on proactivity. In contrast, our definition imagines mobile students as active agents and bearers of full human rights (United Nations, 2010). This is consistent with the widely understood mission of higher education as forming selfactualising individuals."Security" in this sense is manifest in all domains of student life. The study gathered data in relation to personal safety, freedom from discrimination and abuse, consumer information, financial viability, safety at work, housing, health and welfare services, personal and social networks, relations with public and university authorities, and cross-cultural relations on campus and outside. One specific focus was students' competence in and confidence with the use of the English language. Language proficiency was assumed to be a keystone attribute that affects human security in all domains. This assumption about the role of language proficiency was grounded in the literature on internationa...

In the period immediately preceding the 2007 Australian election, much attention was accorded to the impact of the nation's labour laws on vulnerable employees. This debate centred on specific groups including women, youth, migrants and workers on individual employment contracts. International students, by contrast, were ignored in the debate. This omission reflects the fact that though three million students study outside their home country, this community has not previously made an appearance in the labour studies literature. In this paper, we address this omission by depicting the work experience of 200 international students studying in Australian higher education institutions. We argue that a much greater proportion of international students participate in the labour market than earlier research has indicated and that in many cases they are compelled to accept very poor conditions of employment. Furthermore, we suggest that as major sponsors of international student visas, universities should inform and protect students' labour rights and that given the dire situation of many they must become a recognised part of the vulnerable-worker debate. IntroductionOver 519,000 international students were enrolled onshore in Australian education institutions at the end of 2008, an increase of 20% over the previous year. These visitors tend to remain for one to four years and through this period have long had the right to be employed for 20 hours per week during semester and an unlimited number of hours at other times. In September 2007, these work-time stipulations were modified to permit international students to obtain up to 18 months work experience on completing their studies. The large and growing number of international students and the 2007 extension of the time they can remain and accept employment are of significance. This is not least because research by Forbes-Mewett et al. (in press) has revealed that many international students experience severe financial difficulties while studying in Australia with a significant proportion having a non-wage income less than half the Henderson Poverty Line. Despite their consequent vulnerability,

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Since the early 2000s, reports of increased rates of mental ill health among young people worldwide have received much attention. Several studies indicate a greater incidence of mental health problems among tertiary students, compared with the general population, and higher levels of anxiety, in particular, among international students compared with domestic students. Australia is host to many thousands of international students of an age when mental illnesses are most likely to surface. However, this issue has received little attention from Australian researchers. This article reports on in-depth interviews with 16 professionals working with international students at an internationalized university.