Duped by Dream Sellers: A Case Study of Student Immobility, Precarity, and Profit in Northern Cyprus

Abstract

Young migrants arrive in Northern Cyprus seeking opportunity and safety through international higher education. Instead, they find themselves in a state of continuous precarity as financial benefactors sustaining complex legal liminalities of a de facto state. What happens when systemic marketing of an affordable, internationally recognized education and work opportunities targets individuals from countries in active war, extreme poverty, and political unrest? With safety concerns in their home countries, low-ranking passports, and limited international options, student migrants continue to arrive in Northern Cyprus despite its difficult living conditions. Drawing on 29 qualitative interviews, this thesis examines how student migration both responds to and sustains the political and economic structures of Northern Cyprus. It shows how education, labour, and legality intertwine to produce a system that depends on students’ presence and their restricted mobility. By situating student migration within the political economy of an unrecognized state, this thesis contributes to empirical research on the governance of mobility and the production of precarity for non-elite, de facto refugee students, facilitated through higher education and its institutions.