The recruitment of international students has become a global
phenomenon. Prospective candidates planning to study abroad rely on
different sources of information in their decision-making processes,
provided by different national, institutional and private actors. Thus,
more analysis of the mediators facilitating this encounter of recruiters
and students is needed. This study analyses how study choices in
Finland and China are constructed by analysing the embeddedness of
national recruitment strategies in websites, the construction of study
choices as capitals and the trust-building devices (dispositifs)
employed in the websites. Data consist of textual material from four
websites representing educational offerings in Finland and China,
targeted for international students searching for information in their
study-abroad decision-making. This study puts forward three arguments.
First, the analysed websites reflect the national strategies on the
recruitment of international students; however, the approaches the
websites use vary greatly. Second, websites construct expectations that
build on a holistic study-abroad experience. Third, non-governmental
websites employ commercially oriented dispositifs to distinguish or
affirm choices.