The Mobilities of Microcredentials

This paper presents an exploration of the emerging UK policy discourses on micro-credentials. Drawing on the ‘mobilities turn’ in education research (Waters, 2017), I argue that the learner mobility suggested in policy texts on micro-credentials is used to justify an intensification of the instrumentalisation of education and a critique of the rigidities of current higher education systems. I also argue that the imaginary mobilities of the micro-credentialed student depend on dense network assemblages of credit and qualification frameworks, immutable mobile digital records of individual learning achievements, and inter-institutional and international recognition schemes coordinated through digital platforms. The freedoms and flexibilities promised in the mobilities of micro-credentials are both realised through and constrained by the robust moorings of educational infrastructures.