Exploring Academic Mobility Policies with Policy Integration Concept

This paper considers academic mobility as a transversal issue that raises a complex puzzle of Policy Integration (PI) for the national level of policymaking. Academic mobility clearly reflects the processes associated with the globalization of higher education and is commonly regarded as a pillar of internationalization. Mobility programs are often a milestone in higher education networks, many of which have emerged following mobility pilots. For governments, implementing mobility poses a number of policy challenges that affect different levels of policymaking and policy areas beyond education, such as migration, trade, the labor market, and foreign policy. Consequently, many actors are involved, from several ministries to consular offices, migration offices, universities, companies, and many others. For this reason, there is a dense multi-level, multi-actor and multi-sectoral governance system to steer. Unfortunately, national policies remain as unknown as the dynamics behind them that shape mobility flows. This is mainly due to the lack of comparable data. The academic literature is extensive and broad, but it is highly fragmented within sectoral, geographical, geopolitical, and conceptual boundaries. This paper overcomes such sectoral approaches and proposes to approach mobility with the theoretical toolkit of PI, focusing on the PI dimensions of subsystem actors’ relations, policy goals, and policy frames. The paper shows that such an approach makes it possible to unravel the dynamics of actors, beliefs and policy narratives, rationales, and goals - among and between institutional bodies - and thus shed light on policy dynamics behind national mobility policies.