In this paper, an analysis of the spatial production of Chile as an international academic destination for doctoral students is put forward. This arises from the notion of internationalisation as a process of the rescaling of university marketplaces and international students as consumers of global scales of excellence. As such, it proposes the concept of an international academic hub to understand how a space oriented towards a 'global north' is produced and articulated with the guidelines of economic globalisation. Four case studies of interviews with foreign doctoral students in Chile are used to explore narratives of the international in discourses about academic trajectories within the country. The results indicate that Chile is configured as a compensatory destination and that its internationalisation policies indicate a directionality towards globally legitimised destinations.