Reframing the Metricised Self of the International Student: A Sociohistorical Reinterpretation

Sophia Deterala, University of Makati

This paper puts forward the case of international student visa policy as part of a modern field of audit that subjects international students to what Foucault would call governmental management. I contextualise a ‘reframing’ of historical changes to the Tier 4 Student Visa policy from 2005 to 2024 and the introduction of the points-based system in 2009. These two policy amendments introduced monumental restrictions that delineated between those who are able to avail of UK education from the Global South and those who cannot. This policy change is part of a wider global tendency towards metricised evaluations of the self in various aspects of performance and identity, including an ‘internationalisation’ through audit. However, discourses in this regime are incapable of representing the embodied effects of measurement. To respond to this lack of representation, I put forward a comparative analysis between audit representations and poetry. I use a poem I composed during the time of my visa application in 2014 as an empirical contrast to policy. A distinction is made between modern processes of categorisation as ‘dead’ and poetic inclusion as ‘alive’. Poetry exists as a counter-representation to the rather decisive and exacting requirements of audit. Visa policies are changed from one ‘dead’ document to another, as each version is a pillar that is irrevocable and absolute. In contrast, a poem is a ‘living’ representation in relation to its alterability, which is inherent in its genre and operation in the world. Open to further and multiple (re)interpretations, a poem is predisposed to further creation instead of compartmentalised differentiation. More importantly, poetry is ‘alive’ because it cannot separate itself from our perception of tactile sensations as a synthesis between students and policy.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 3. Media and Technocracy