Recently I came across the term Caring Economy in a magazine article I was reading. The term was attributed to Brazilian sociologist and legal expert Roberto Mangabiera Unger. Unger, who currently holds a ministerial position within the Brazilian government, defined the Caring Economy in his Milliband lecture at the London School of Economics as distinct from systems of production. For Unger, the road to social solidarity rests upon the establishment of a universal principle whereby individuals not only hold down a job within the production system but also devote a part of their life to caring for another individual outside of their immediate family.

 

This doctrine pays particular attention to the responsibility of able-bodied adults to directly care for the old, the young and the infirm, establishing the direct connections upon which true social cohesion rests. In the article I was reading, the author suggested that Unger’s principle offered a way to rebuild diminishing social capital and stimulate innovation. Through directly caring for people outside our immediate circle, we become more emotionally engaged members of society and as such, will be willing to take more personal responsibility for ‘fixing the holes in globalisations expanding web.’ I really love that notion, fixing the holes in globalisations expanding web. These are the words of the articles author Joshua Cooper Ramo and they got me thinking about how this principle could be applied to the holes that have been created by the globalisation of education and how they could be fixed.

 

 From an Australian perspective, one of the holes often cited when addressing the issue of the globalisation of education and the influx of international students into domestic universities is the lack of engagement between local and international students. Reports abound about segregation both inside and outside the classroom and the frustrated attempts of teachers and other stakeholders to get these cohorts to interact with each other in some kind of meaningful way. It is towards these holes, the spaces between the international and domestic student communities; that I believe the principles embodied by Unger’s Caring Economy could be directed. By this I mean that the sense of exclusion felt by international students within Australia is not a problem that will be best fixed by universities or governments or other representative bodies, it is problem best solved by direct action from students themselves.

 

I am reminded of a story when thinking about what form this kind of direct action could take. This story comes from a conversation I had with a former student of mine named Jack. Jack had come from Zhejiang in central China and at the time of our conversation had been living in Melbourne for several months. What struck him as strange was that during this entire time, his spoken English had not improved to the extent he had hoped for. He reasoned that this was probably because he had very limited experience interacting with local students and had few chances for any kind of meaningful interaction with English speaking members of the Melbourne community. He had made great friends, but they were all Chinese. He had visited only one family home during his time here, an experience he viewed as important, and this was a Chinese family he had met whilst on the plane from China. Far from being embittered by this experience Jack suggested that the best solution to his dilemma could be to become involved in volunteer work that involved interacting with members of the local community. He understood that language and cultural barriers may be one of the reasons for his limited opportunities to make connections with people his own age but believed that these barriers would not be such an issue for those elderly members of the community more in need of help or social contact. He believed that volunteering for work helping elderly people in Australia would be valuable to both parties, proving him with more opportunities to improve his language and cultural knowledge whilst at the same time providing care and company for those who felt they could do with some.

 

It is Jack’s direct and pragmatic approach to what he saw as the hole in his experience of globalisation that is interesting in this story. That his action took the form of care is inspiring, and repositions the very notion of care; not as a social service provided by the state, but an individual responsibility that works to increase social cohesion and unleash innovation. In Jack’s case his role within a Caring Economy allows him to play a meaningful role in the community, it allows both parties to make the transition from a feeling of exclusion to one of inclusion, from unvalued to valued. What is important for the future of truly globalised education is that all stakeholders follow Jack’s lead and make their own direct action in an effort to increase opportunities for the construction of meaningful individual relationships between members of the international and local student communities.