Student housing as social opportunity: external influences on international students' housing decisions

© 2014 Simon KuestenmacherThe thesis examines how and when external factors influenced international students in Melbourne, Australia, in their decision making regarding housing. Understanding why the student body of Australian universities is housed in a segregated manner, in which ‘international’ students rarely live in housing with ‘local’ students, is important because international students’ wellbeing is enhanced when they engage in meaningful cross-cultural contact. Interviews with 30 international students from two universities in Melbourne were conducted to examine how they chose their accommodation. An international student housing timeline was created based on these interviews, which shows when housing decisions were made and what external influences impacted housing decisions. Educational agents routinely channelled international students into segregated purpose built student accommodations. Both sampled universities heavily influenced housing decisions through their housing websites, online housing boards, and personal consultations. International students found these services very valuable. Surprisingly, the resulting housing outcomes at the two universities did not differ significantly. International students are not eligible for concession fares on public transport in Victoria. Therefore, many only considered housing in walking distance to campus. This limited the choice of housing types, as purpose built student accommodations dominated the areas around the universities. Visa regulations required underage students to move into homestays, which always resulted in low housing satisfaction. Further, visa regulations limited working rights which forced some international students to move housing when experiencing financial difficulties. Parents preferred booking initial housing from overseas. Only segregated purpose built student accommodations or expensive residential halls and colleges could be booked from overseas. Many had distant relatives offering temporary housing during international students’ first weeks in Australia. International students routinely followed their friends’ housing advice without considering alternatives. Therefore they reinforced existing, segregated, housing patterns. Only a few international postgraduates made some housing decisions based solely on their own preferences and prior experiences. In most cases external factors strongly impacted the housing outcome. This thesis contributes to urban geography literature by showing when external influences impacted international students’ housing decision making. Such information will also be valuable to university housing offices or policy makers interested in mitigating housing segregation between local and international students. Inquiring when such influences occurred allowed for the possibility that some international students purposefully chose segregated over cross-cultural housing options. However, no evidence was uncovered that any of the interviewees intentionally self-segregated. Also, focussing on decision making of international students showed that some interviewees made their housing decisions free from external influences and solely based on their own experiences and preferences. The number of students who made their housing decisions without external influences was small, but their housing outcomes could not have been explained by examining external factors alone. However, the results of the thesis also suggest that the urban geography literature’s concentration on external influences on international student housing is in most cases sufficient