Documentos CIDOB Asia; 4

Through the evaluation of the direct testimony of some thirty Asian students in the main universities and private centres for higher studies in Catalonia, the authors stress the importance of the process of internationalisation in the field of higher education and its weight in the international services market. In this sense, they emphasise that the training of international human capital, which produces a select, elite corps of business people and highly qualified workers, is one of the keys to increasing international trade and the flow of global capital, with direct consequences for the creation of a new transnational class with bicultural characteristics essential for bringing countries and regions closer together, increasing all types of exchanges. Commenting on the meagre appraisal the Administration has given this phenomenon and the inadequate treatment that studies of international migrations have received, they point towards concrete proposals for increasing the presence of Asian students in Spanish and Catalan centres of higher education, both for strengthening this dynamic sphere in the service sector and for going deeper into the benefits that can be derived from this in the future.

Joquín Beltrán Antolín is an anthropologist and a professor at the Centre for International and Intercultural Studies (CEII), Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)
Amelia Sáiz López is a sociologist and a research fellow at the CEII, UAB

issn: 1696-9987 (print edition)
issn: 1697-381X (online edition)

120 pp.

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