International students are increasingly governed through policy frameworks that extend beyond higher education. In recent decades, internationalisation and student mobility have grown in strategic importance as higher education has become more closely aligned with national economic goals, and perceptions of international students have gradually shifted from a source of income to potential human capital (de Wit & Altbach, 2021). In this scenario, host countries develop policies to attract and retain international students (Lomer, 2018; Findlay et al., 2017) and support graduates’ transitions into the labour market (Riaño et al., 2018). As international student mobility (ISM) has become increasingly prominent in policymaking, questions arise about how ISM policies are developed, how they intersect with other policy domains, and how they position international students within national contexts. These processes and their effects remain largely underexplored (Riaño et al., 2018).

This study investigates how international students are represented within the policy architecture of Finland’s talent-attraction agenda, Talent Boost. Employing Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach, it aims to uncover the rationales and discourses that underpin ISM-related policies to understand how international students fit within a national policy framework. It responds to a need for more consideration of policy texts in ISM research (Lomer, 2018) and contributes to broadening the spatial scope of ISM studies (Riaño et al., 2018). Moreover, a national focus provides a basis for discussing how broader European constructions of ‘the mobile student’ are integrated, adapted, or reworked within a national policy context (Brooks, 2018). As such, this study looks to answer the following main research question: How are international students represented in Finnish policy? In addition, the study addresses the following supporting questions: (a) What discourses underpin the construction of international students? and (b) How are education, migration and integration policy positioned within a vision of the future?

The analysis is supported by a contextual framing of internationalisation of Finnish higher education and Talent Boost, and theoretical engagement with anticipatory governance and policy discourses on international students. Over the past decade, Finland has aligned more closely with marketised models of higher education from English-speaking countries and begun positioning students as consumers (Jokila et al., 2019). Furthermore, policy and discourse have produced the commercialisation of international degree programmes (Jokila, 2020). Such developments are in line with a paradigmatic shift occurring in Finnish society from a welfare system based on solidarity and emancipation to one directed by competition and responsibilisation (Kananen, 2014). Further change in policymaking in Finland has come through the adoption of anticipatory practices of governance that seek to foresee and manage the future (Kallo & Välimaa, 2025b). Often manifesting as visions and roadmaps, anticipatory governance remains speculative and often blind to alternatives, yet works to produce the future it envisions (Kallo & Välimaa, 2025a). As policy increasingly governs through imaginaries, representations of students become performative, shaping the futures they invoke. Riaño et al. (2018, p.285) have identified five coexisting and often competing policy discourses on international students: (a) as economic agents or drivers of knowledge and economic growth, (b) as sources of income for the higher education sector, (c) as temporary subjects, (d) as immigrants of doubtful value and (e) as part of soft power. Drawing on Cerna and Chou’s (2023) four scenarios of outcomes of internationalisation, I also theorise the tension between the drive for internationalisation and the simultaneous desire for migration control to discuss contradictions that emerge from the policy analysis.

This research draws on the analysis of five policy documents to understand the processes and discourses that shape higher education internationalisation policy, and representations of international students in Finland. These documents are the Programme of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s Government, Talent Boost 2023-2027, Roadmap for Education-based and Work-based Immigration 2035, Vision for Higher Education and Research 2040, and the Government Integration Programme 2024-2027. Constituting a set of measures to strengthen the economy, the Roadmap for Education-based and Work-based Immigration 2035 provides an operationalisation of the strategy and vision outlined in Talent Boost. It also provides an overview of the policy architecture, which includes (higher) education and integration policy. The Programme of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s Government is also included in the analysis as it has a steering role in creating a national vision. As such, these documents stand as examples of anticipatory governance. Anticipatory governance often shapes policy to forestall perceived future challenges (Anderson, 2010). Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach (WPR) is well-suited to this context, as it systematically interrogates how policy constructs problems and the assumptions embedded within. The WPR approach is built on the idea that policies contain problems and often reduce complexity (Bacchi, 2009). Therefore, Bacchi (2009) suggests that rather than thinking about the problem (as it is represented to be), we try to uncover the underlying rationales and assumptions upon which a policy problem rests. In a more practical sense, WPR provides a six-step approach to reverse-engineer policies through critical discourse analysis to reveal and scrutinise the ways of thinking that shape governance. Thus, the WPR approach allows for Finnish anticipatory governance to be problematised and interrogated. It positions students and ISM in a political context, thereby distinguishing itself from traditional push–pull models in ISM research. The push-pull model emphasises the individual, framing students as economic actors (Van Mol & Timmerman, 2014) and overlooking discourse and its potential effects (Marginson, 2014). Applying the WPR approach also responds to the argument presented by Findlay et al. (2017) for more consideration of supply-side factors in ISM studies, of which policy is a core element.

Preliminary findings show no clear distinction between international students and work-based migrants across the policy documents. Thus, student mobility resembles a form of labour migration. The policies stress the need to support students’ transition to the labour market, but do not elaborate on how higher education institutions can enhance graduate employability. The integration programme makes integration contingent upon work, yet does not define integration. The programme also appears to contain internal contradictions, claiming government supports migrants’ integration while emphasising migrants’ duties and their own responsibility in finding employment. This indicates the presence of individualisation and responsibilisation discourse, which, along with the economic subjectification of students and migrants, indicates a further entrenchment of neoliberal directives in policymaking. The documents also reveal a tension between aspirations of international openness and the desire for migration control. While the government communicates—and has since enacted—plans to tighten legislation on residency and citizenship, Finland is simultaneously portrayed as an attractive place to live, work, and study. However, the policies show no consideration for the perspectives of migrants and students. Instead, Finland’s attractiveness is framed in terms of work and structural advantages. More broadly, the policies appear to lack a coherent guiding ethos. Both the Prime Minister’s Programme and Talent Boost prioritise strengthening public finances and assert that work-based immigration must contribute to this objective. Inadvertently, framing belonging predominantly in economic terms may prompt the emergence of a disenfranchised group existing in a form of parallel society that the Finnish government seeks to avoid. This study will be followed by an examination of the effects of these policies on international students’ experiences in Finland.

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