A commonly used method of analysis, PESTLE looks at the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Ecological elements that could be potentially faced at any point of a process. Thinking this can be a useful lens for my research question, I used the PESTLE Analysis in order to further examine the factors that may affect my project.
Research Question:
How can industry growth in relation to creative self-employment be more leveled for international students to match that of domestic students?
POLITICAL
One of my project’s targets is to expand self-employment rights for international students in the US and the UK. For this to occur, some immigration laws impacting student visas would need to be altered in order to allow self-employment. In both the US and the UK, immigration is an important issue many politicians debate for in their platforms. Depending on which end of the political spectrum a politician, or anyone, finds themselves, it could reflect if they could potentially support easing restrictions on student visas, or not. As a known generalization, more liberal politicians tend to favor looser immigration reforms than more conservative politicians (Daniller, 2019). With this in mind, campaigning for easing self-employment restrictions for international students may be more likely to be supported by a liberal administration rather than a more conservative one.
ECONOMICAL
Although the US’s and the UK’s economies were both impacted by COVID-19, they both remain at the forefront of the economies in the world. My project focuses on the economic sectors dealing with creative self-employment and the extent to how much international students contribute to the economy. In the US, international students contributed over $45 billion to the economy in 2018 (Bustamante, 2020). And in the UK, international students make up nearly 20% of the total student population in higher education institutions (Study in UK, 2020).
Looking at the creative economies in such countries, it is also evident that there is great room to further contribute to an economic sector that is so rapidly growing. In the UK, the creative sector has grown five times as much compared to UK’s economy as a whole and accounts for 5.8% of the Gross Value Added (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 2020). In the US, the creative sector is the second sector adding the most value to the Gross Domestic Product, accounting for 4.3% of total GDP (National Assembly of State Arts Agency, 2019).
SOCIAL
My project’s demographics are creative international students in the US and the UK. In the year 2019/2020 in the US there were over a million IS, with 64,501 studying in the Fine and Applied Art field (Open Doors, 2020). According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, in the year 2018/2019 there were 485,645 IS in the UK, with 32,890 students in the Creative Arts field (Study in UK, 2020).
With the data available being pre-COVID, it is hard to tell if the same level of student population has been upheld in both countries, but one thing is certain – the many challenges imposed by the pandemic increased the hurdles for students to study abroad. For instance, in the US it had been proposed that students studying solely online were not going to be able to have a student visa issued to them (ICE, 2020), which, during a pandemic, had a great impact on students wishing to do their studies in the US. This occurred during the Trump administration, not exactly known for making immigrant’s lives easier.
On the other hand, the UK’s response to declining international enrollments during COVID was rather to make the process easier for people to study in the country. Occurring during Brexit, the simplified process may also be in preparation for a spike in ISs as EU nationals, who used to be classified as domestic students in the UK, will now have pay international tuition fees and get Student Route visas in most cases (Oliver, 2021).
Part of my project is a platform that allows creative international students to “sell” their work in exchange for a donation. Opposite from the international students who wish to “sell” their works, there are the art “buyers” and commissioners. In the art world, there’s a historic problem with artists not always being paid for their work, or art buyers not being willing to pay for an artwork thinking it’s not worth their money, although they want the art piece right, more often that it is fair they expect the art for free. I’ll just leave this Twitter page here: twitter.com/forexposure_txt
TECHNOLOGICAL
Technology has simplified reaching wide groups of people. For example, my project is largely based on Instagram, which is accessible to many students from all over the world who get interested in Inter.work. When a campaign to promote freelancing rights for international students launches, Instagram and other social media platforms have made it easy to find outlets to promote it.
Same goes for fundraising; with websites such as GoFund Me, JustGiving Campaigns, and even Facebook funding, it’s never been easier to raise funds for a cause you care about. These platforms are relatively easy to set up and share with others, so if I ever chose to raise funds to kickstart the campaign, I could turn to these websites for help.
LEGAL
The legal aspect of the analysis is perhaps what will be the most challenging part of my project given that campaigning to make self-employment legal for international students largely deals with immigration law.
In the UK, the Minister of State for Immigration, whose senior official is currently Caroline Nokes, oversees most regulations pertaining to immigration. The specific department that influences my project the most is UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), directed by Mark Owen (GOV.UK, no date). It may be hard to imagine that the UK government would simply change immigration law if asked, but recently they introduced the Graduate Route visa, which allows recent graduates to stay in the UK for 2 years after their studies without a restriction to what they can do, meaning recent graduates can become self-employed if they wish. This change came as the government seeks to expand education exports, wanting to increase the IS population in higher education to 600,000 by 2030, which is currently 485,645 based on 2018/2019 figures (Home Office News Team, 2019).
The UK’s goal to strengthen their education sector and attract more ISs demonstrates room for them to be open to allow self-employment for those who currently hold a Student Route visa. This since more students may be willing to come if they know that they can support themselves with their works given that in the last year it’s been shown that job security is fragile when impacted by a pandemic, and students need an income.
In the US, US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS, no date), led by Tracy Renaud, is the office that oversees working in the US for students and exchange visitors. While on a student visa in the US, such as the F-1 visa, there are a couple of ways to engage in work. If it is required by your program of studies to participate in a work experience for academic credit, then you’d be engaging in Curricular Practical Training (CPT), and it must be related to your area of study. If it isn’t for academic credit then you’d be engaging in Optional Practical Training (OPT), which requires you to apply for Employment Authorization and is granted for 12 total months. You can apply for OPT either before you graduate (Pre-completion OPT) or after you graduate (Post-completion OPT), and, similar to CPT, you can only work somewhere related to your field of studies while on OPT.
OPT actually allows students to be self-employed, however, the 12 months must be kept in mind because if you engage in self-employment during Pre-completion OPT, then you’re subtracting time from the 12 months that you could also use OPT time after graduation. If a student’s goal is to stay in the US for as long as possible after their studies, freelancing while studying is not ideal and Pre-completion OPT is generally not recommended (Myra, no date). But if freelancing while studying is a good fit for you, you just need to make sure you comply with 3 requirements according to USCIS; you must have a business license, be actively engaged in your business, and it must be related to your degree (Pandev, 2019). Given that the US has not introduced any new changes to student visas in recent years, it may be more difficult to reach real change to regulations, but the new administration, which favors immigration much more than the previous one, might be more willing to hear and enable changes to student visa laws.
ENVIRONMENTAL
For most students who wish to study abroad in the US or the UK, it means that they’ll be taking flights back and forth from their home countries. Flying long distances for studies and whenever you wish to go home is not the best for the environment as aviation industry contributes 2.4% of all CO2 emissions and 5% of global warming (Timperley, 2020). According to Jocelyn Timperley for the BBC, a flight from London to San Francisco, CA, emits around 5.5 tones of CO2 equivalent, which is over twice the CO2e emitted by a family car in a whole year.
In their article, Timperley references sustainable tourism specialists Stefan Gössling, who “asked 29 international students in his class [at Lund University, Sweden] to rate the importance to them of different flights they had taken – just 58% of the flights were rated “very important” or “important”.” Demonstrating that about 42% of flights could be avoided by international students in Sweden. Depending on where an IS is located in the US or the UK, it could be worth the effort to swap a flight for a bus or train trip whenever possible. If a flight can’t be avoided, if possible, students can choose to travel with an airline committed to be carbon neutral such as Delta, the first one to announce such commitment which started in March 2020 (Calma, 2020). Another way to offset your carbon footprint is to use websites such as bulb.co.uk; Bulb is a UK energy provider that also helps you calculate your carbon footprint and gives you different environmental projects you can donate to in order to offset it.
Reference List:
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Daniller. (2019). Americans’ immigration policy priorities: Divisions between – and within – the two parties. [online] Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/12/americans-immigration-policy-priorities-divisions-between-and-within-the-two-parties/ [Accessed Day 7 June 2021]
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