This project focuses on understanding the working experiences of international students. Of particular interest are the intersectional challenges international students encounter while searching for jobs and the ways in which they navigate the challenges of finding work. Due to the cost of living crisis, students increasingly work while studying but little is known about the specific challenges and needs of international students. The project seeks to provide practical guidelines for universities and student unions on how to better support international students who seek work, and guidelines for employers on how they can make their recruitment practices and working environments more inclusive for international students.
Project Team
Dr Chavan Kissoon
Chavan Sharma Kissoon is a Lecturer in Digital Education in the School of Education at the University of Lincoln.
His research is on the sociology of higher education, technologies of governance, and the future of work. He has published on the impact of Industry 4.0 technologies on tourism workplaces and to the university curriculum as well as on the impact of worker management practices related to zero-hour contracts on how student-workers experience work.
Dr Abigail Ehidiamen
Abigail is a Lecturer in Lincoln International Business School at the University of Lincoln, in the UK. She holds a PhD from the University of Huddersfield, UK and her research interest is in behavioural studies and consumer behaviour, marketing and society, sustainable consumption, branding, international marketing, and tourism.
Dr Agnieszka Rydzik
Dr Agnieszka Rydzik is Associate Professor in Tourism and Work at the University of Lincoln. Her research focuses on: i) employment relations and the future of work; ii) the gendered, racialised and precarious nature of work; iii) tourism and hospitality employment; and iv) hospitality, migration and welcome.
Agnieszka’s research is worker-centred and focused on making workplaces more inclusive. She has researched the employment experiences of migrant women in hospitality; experiences of women brewers; the implications of technology-driven transformations on lower-skilled tourism workers; socialisation of young workers through flexible hospitality work, and working students’ experiences of insecure employment. She has published in highly ranked journals, including Work, Employment and Society; Human Resource Management Journal; Annals of Tourism Research; and Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Her WES article on women brewers and identity work was nominated for the BSA’s SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence. She is currently co-editing (with Chanamuto and Chambers) a Special Issue of Hospitality & Society on ‘Migration, hospitality and belonging: Negotiating and enabling belonging in times of increasing inhospitality’.
Agnieszka is the founder of the Hospitality, Now! Students for Hospitality, Hospitality for Students initiative that engages business and education stakeholders, unions and policymakers in working together to bring change in working conditions for working students. In November 2023, together with industry partners, she launched the Good Student Employer Charter, which champions best practice in student employment.
