Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a massive worldwide increase in the number of migrants. The United Nations estimates that the number of international migrants reached 244 million in 2015, up from 154 million in 1990 (UN DESA, 2016). The scale of the migration flow has necessitated new ways of managing the movement of people between borders. This chapter examines the role that the recognition of foreign qualifications plays in the migration process. It uses the Australian context to outline how educational attainment has become central in the determination of migration outcomes. An analysis of literature on foreign qualification recognition suggests that the growing centrality of qualifications in the migration process relies on a conception of education as a fixed, measurable and tradeable phenomenon. In the Australian migration context, we suggest that foreign qualification recognition is less about determining a person’s capabilities than determining the provenance of their education. Using Foucault’s concept of governmentality, we argue that the linking of migration to educational attainment is an example of the diverse techniques used by various actors “for achieving subjugations of bodies and control of populations” (Foucault, 1978, p. 140). While education is often cited as a meritorious way of determining a migration outcome, the concept of governmentality shows that the institutional imperative is to create ways to ensure the health and vitality of the population through the construction of normalising practices and a regime of surveillance.

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