Pluralist internationalism, global justice and international student recruitment in the UK

The number of international students in the UK has risen considerably in recent years. These students, now constituting around one-fifth of the student body in the UK universities, are viewed primarily in terms of the economic benefits they bring to the host country, and there has been little explicit discussion around equity principles that might inform international student recruitment. Responding to calls for further consideration of the ethics of this situation, this article offers a novel perspective by drawing on a ‘pluralist internationalist’ theory of global justice. This theory grants unique normative relevance to the state whilst at the same time embedding the state within multiple other grounds of justice that are global in scope, thereby contributing to the disentanglement of some of the normative disagreements that characterise debates about global justice. The suggestions that result from applying this theory offer a substantive alternative both to the nationally oriented assumptions of current policy and to other contributions to the debate within academia which have drawn on the cosmopolitan tradition of global justice.