Racial Capitalism, Neocolonial Wealth Transfer, and Canadian International Student Policy

This paper examines historical and contemporary trends in Canadian international student policy through the lens of racial capitalism, arguing that current policy facilitates a significant neocolonial wealth transfer from Global South families to Canada through processes of expropriation, exploitation, and expulsion. It argues that discriminatory tuition fees effectively function as “education head taxes”, which extract billions of dollars annually from international students. Meanwhile, “gauntlets” to permanent residency have emerged in an immigration landscape where working class migrants have narrower options to regularize, creating a system of labour exploitation where student-labourers face precarious conditions and structural indebtedness. Finally, the constant threat of expulsion through loss of status and deportation is used to discipline labour and enforce nationalist segregation of labour and education markets. Within all three of these processes, race-making and neocolonial relations play a central role in justifying differential treatment, curtailing solidarity, and limiting potential policy changes to curtail abuses.