Internationalisation has been a strategic vehicle to transform higher education and become a prominent trend in universities across the world in the past decades. Internationalisation of higher education is drawing growing attention from the broader community outside the education sector, especially as its rationales, operations and impacts more closely align with social, cultural, economic and political interests. It is increasingly subject to public policy turbulences related to migration, workforce, post-study work rights and economics. In particular, international education has been growingly used as a mechanism to address skills shortage and support nation-building in some study destination countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Germany and the international education and migration nexus or ‘edugration’trend (Brunner, 2023) becomes more visible. Internationalisation of higher education has been affected by the development of digital technologies and both local and global online e-learning markets, while at the same time encountering heightened insecurity and vulnerability to pandemic, financial, geo-political crises and natural disasters. In ‘catching-up’countries in internationalisation of higher education such as Turkey and Poland, political instability, economic importance, socio-cultural norms and historical legacies, and the country’s position as a periphery are seen as national barriers to facilitating international education (Bulut Sahin & Brooks, 2023). These emerging challenges have led to changes and variations in policy frameworks, institutional operations and individual practices in internationalisation of higher education. These issues have significant implications for the quality, recovery, sustainability, and ethical development of international education.

The articles in this Special Issue probe into the re-conceptualisation of international education in diverse ways and to varied extents. However, they underscore a critical need to shed a more humanistic view on internationalisation of higher education. International education should, in essence, be centred around enriching human beings. It is therefore crucial to strive towards humanisation of international education. Humanisation of international education can take place in various forms. First, humanisation of international education underscores the need for the human values of international education to be more explicitly brought to the fore. Scholars have argued for the critical need to move beyond the discourse framing the value of international students predominantly in economic terms and international education as commercialisation, strongly influenced by reputational status and resourcing (Lomer et al., 2023), to acknowledge international students as human beings with potential to contribute to transnational education, culture, society, local communities and politics (Rizvi, 2020; Soong & Maheepalaa, 2023; Tran, 2020).