Imagined Mobility: Migration and Transnationalism Among Indian Students in Australia

`In the context of declining fertility rates, a wide range of OECD countries are constructing "study-migration" pathways, with international students a prized but contested human capital resource. Michiel Baas's ethnographic analysis of Indian students in Australia provides fascinating insight into this phenomenon, researched on a participant-observation basis. Baas's book will appeal to readers of Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. Imagined Mobility is a timely, intimate and engaging global study, addressing international education, migration, and integration policy issues.'---Lesleyanne Hawthorne, Associate Dean International, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne

`Imagined Mobility is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent troubled history of the tens of thousands of Indian students attracted to study in Australia.'---Bob Birrell, Reader in Sociology, Monash University and editor of People and Place

With its close analysis of the phenomenon of the migration of Indian students to Australia, Imagined Mobility: Migration and Transnationalism among Indian Students in Australia critically approaches the entanglement of the education industry with migration opportunities, and looks into the goals and aspirations of the Indian middle class. It discusses the overlaps of studies on migration and transnationalism, and raises questions on skilled migration.

Michiel Baas is a researcher with the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam. His work focuses on India, the middle class, migration, transnationalism and mobility.