Paper short abstract:

Our paper addresses the global inequality of access to mobility for researchers. It identifies contradictions between political ideals and bureaucratic barriers, and calls for a transformation of policy institutions to accommodate the goals of fruitful academic cooperation.

Paper long abstract:

It is a truism that most of the policy frameworks and institutional infrastructure for promoting international academic exchange between countries in the Global North and their counterparts in the Global South are skewed in favour of the former. The cross-border movement of people in science and higher education has drawn research interest for decades. However, the definition of international academic mobility and exchange exhibits conceptual and practical contradictions. Our paper examines the discrepancy between the progressive policy discourse towards more egalitarian international academic exchange and the underlying bureaucratic and managerial infrastructure that hinders effective international scholarly collaboration. The paper suggests that the current legacy of policy institutions and practices designed to prevent Southern to North academic exodus or to hinder immigration in general needs to be transformed to reflect an increasingly diverse spectrum of international academic collaboration purposes and traditions. It offers a set of assumptions on international scholarly collaboration and, more broadly, proposes a fresh point of entry for the field of academic mobility to contribute to higher education and migration and mobility studies.