Artificial intelligence, multilingualism, and career sustainability: International students’ educational and career trajectories in AI-mediated recruitment

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming educational investments, professional competencies, and career opportunities in contemporary labor markets. For international students, these transformations extend beyond employability and economic returns to encompass multilingual identities, technological adaptation, global mobility, and participation within increasingly AI-mediated recruitment systems. Guided by Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), Human Capital Theory (HCT), and Bourdieu’s theory of linguistic, cultural, and social capital, this integrative literature review synthesizes interdisciplinary empirical literature, workforce reports, and policy analyses to examine how language ideologies, amplified by AI-driven labor market transformation and algorithmic hiring practices, shape educational decision-making, career development, and career sustainability among international students. The findings suggest that comparatively resilient educational pathways are characterized not solely by disciplinary affiliation but by their capacity to support technological adaptation, career sustainability, and lifelong learning. STEM and healthcare disciplines emerged as comparatively resilient pathways because of projected labor market demand and opportunities for AI complementarity. The review also highlights how Applicant Tracking Systems, predictive hiring algorithms, and native-speaker language ideologies embedded within AI-mediated recruitment systems may unevenly recognize the credentials and communicative practices of multilingual candidates. International students should therefore not be conceptualized primarily as repositories of human capital but as multilingual, culturally situated learners, whose educational and career trajectories are increasingly shaped by AI-driven systems and unequal distributions of technological, social, cultural, and linguistic capital. Career sustainability ultimately depends on equitable access, linguistic legitimacy, and opportunities for lifelong learning alongside disciplinary preparation.