Revisiting International Student Mobility Under New Geopolitics: Stratification, Conditionality, and Uncertainty

ABSTRACT In the 21st century, the governance of international student mobility has undergone a fundamental transformation, driven primarily by securitization, geoeconomic competition, and domestic political pressures that conventional market‐based frameworks such as the push‐pull model and human capital theory cannot adequately explain. Drawing on new geopolitics as the theoretical framework and employing interpretive policy analysis as its methodological framework, this study examines how the governing logic of international student mobility has evolved in a global context. The analysis traces five cumulative stages of governing logic from 2000 to 2025, revealing a shift from market expansion and revenue optimization toward securitized scrutiny, conditional regulation, and domestically driven restriction. From this trajectory, three analytical concepts are proposed to capture the emergent patterns of mobility governance: stratification, conditionality, and uncertainty. Stratified mobility illustrates hierarchical differentiation of access by nationality, discipline, and study level. Conditional mobility captures the expanding and constantly shifting regulatory conditions that students must navigate. Uncertain mobility refers to the structural instability generated by contradictory policy signals. These three patterns of mobility are not mutually exclusive but coexist in different proportions across national contexts. The findings suggest that the critical variable shaping international student mobility is no longer the relative strength of push and pull factors but the stability of the institutional environment itself and that new geopolitical pressures operate not only from above through interstate rivalry but also from below through the pressures of domestic governance.