Cultivating managed dependencies in Dubai: education consultants in a stratified international student mobility brokerage market

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Publication Date

12-28-2025

Abstract

This article examines the functioning of educational consultancies in Dubai and their impact on international student migration. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews and grounded in a meso-level analytical framework, the paper explores how relatively new educational consultancy firms cultivate what we term ‘managed dependencies’ to assert authority and legitimacy within a stratified and highly competitive migration brokerage landscape. Moving beyond depictions of brokers as mere facilitators or exploitative intermediaries, the article reveals how consultants embed themselves in students’ decision-making processes through affective labour, moral framing, and curated, long-term guidance. These consultancies strategically expand the temporal and emotional scope of their services, from early-stage profile building to family mediation and aspirational recalibration, to position themselves as indispensable architects of educational mobility. In doing so, they operationalise neoliberal ideals of self-responsibility and informed choice, while fostering structural reliance on commercialised expertise. Situated in Dubai’s unique context characteried by entrepreneurial governance, education marketisation, and a transnationally mobile population, the article contributes to migration infrastructure literature by foregrounding the relational, moral, and competitive dimensions of brokerage in global education migration.

ISSN

1369-183X

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

Educational consultants, educational migration, migration brokerage, migration industry, migration infrastructure

Scopus ID

105026791571

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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