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<p>This study introduces the concept of education arbitrage—the tactical pursuit of academic capital across asymmetric fields of cost, access, and recognition—to theorize South–South student mobility among Chinese learners. Drawing on a longitudinal study of 42 students in Southeast Asia (2021–2024), we trace their trajectories across decision-making, academic sojourn, and post-graduation transitions. Findings show that Southeast Asian institutions are rarely first-choice destinations but function as contingent alternatives when access to more prestigious systems is blocked. Initially framed as pragmatic optimization, arbitrage often unravels through unexpected academic rigor, cultural dissonance, emotional strain, and financial miscalculations. Post-study, students experience layered devaluation via economic exclusion, institutional arbitrariness, and symbolic violence. These dynamics reveal the fragility of arbitrage and its tendency to reproduce global educational stratification. By theorizing education arbitrage as a multi-actor, multi-scalar circuitry of power that mediates policy asymmetries, institutional dynamics, and social imaginaries, this study advances a critical framework for understanding how international student mobility simultaneously enables and constrains peripheral integration in a hierarchized global system.</p>

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Education arbitrage in Southeast Asia: Chinese students as a case of South–South educational mobility

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月20日

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  • Jiankun Gong,
  • Weishan Miao,
  • Amira Firdaus,
  • Wenqing Shen

摘要

This study introduces the concept of education arbitrage—the tactical pursuit of academic capital across asymmetric fields of cost, access, and recognition—to theorize South–South student mobility among Chinese learners. Drawing on a longitudinal study of 42 students in Southeast Asia (2021–2024), we trace their trajectories across decision-making, academic sojourn, and post-graduation transitions. Findings show that Southeast Asian institutions are rarely first-choice destinations but function as contingent alternatives when access to more prestigious systems is blocked. Initially framed as pragmatic optimization, arbitrage often unravels through unexpected academic rigor, cultural dissonance, emotional strain, and financial miscalculations. Post-study, students experience layered devaluation via economic exclusion, institutional arbitrariness, and symbolic violence. These dynamics reveal the fragility of arbitrage and its tendency to reproduce global educational stratification. By theorizing education arbitrage as a multi-actor, multi-scalar circuitry of power that mediates policy asymmetries, institutional dynamics, and social imaginaries, this study advances a critical framework for understanding how international student mobility simultaneously enables and constrains peripheral integration in a hierarchized global system.