Education policy: internal consolidator or foreign policy vehicle? EU and Canadian perspectives compared.

Education has emerged as an increasingly rewarding, but highly ambiguous form of foreign policy. Shifting from a domestic dynamic, constructed via internal processes for reasons of national self-identity, the internationalization of education has emerged as one of the most salient trends in higher education across the globe (CBIE 2011, 3), and become a clear component in the foreign policies of states and institutions alike. While scholarly investigation into foreign policy and education have in and of themselves remained popular areas of interest within the political and social sciences, exploring ways in which education is operating as a vehicle of twenty-first century foreign policy, as well as looking at how foreign policy content and ambitions are beginning to impact on the substance and structure of higher education is a relatively new field. This paper explores the role of contemporary higher education in European Union, and Canadian foreign policy terrains.