International student mobility (ISM) has become central to higher education, yet its relationship with climate change remains insufficiently researched. This paper argues that existing scholarship concentrates on two limited approaches, quantifying student travel emissions and celebrating ISM as fostering climate awareness, whilst reproducing analytical blind spots characterising mainstream ISM research for decades. Both ainadequately address social inequalities and colonial legacies, while neglecting how climate change itself may be reshaping ISM patterns. We propose a research agenda centred on two priorities: (1) adopting intersectional analysis to examine how multiple inequalities shape students’ differentiated relationships to climate change, and (2) integrating decolonial perspectives that challenge Northern epistemic dominance and reposition Global South students as knowledge producers. Pursued alongside engagement with climate mobilities scholarship, this reorientation positions equity at the centre of ISM-climate research, moving beyond reductive framings toward understanding educational mobility within systems of inequality and ­environmental transformation.

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Climate change,ISM,Social inequality,Carbon emission,Sustainability,Climate mobilities

• Educational Sciences - Social Sciences
• Sociology - Social Sciences