The Economist article Veronique points to about greater creativity among foreign students is interesting, but probably part of a broader phenomenon. It’s “otherness” as such that’s probably the explanation here. That position of looking at the mainstream from outside at least part of the reason for, say, the disproportionate role of Irish writers and other creatives in English, of blacks and Southern whites in the U.S., Indians (from India) in the West, and Jews and gays in lots of places. Such otherness obviously isn’t the only source of creativity, because we’re not seeing lots of writers or painters or designers coming from, say, the big Filipino communities here and in the Middle East, but it’s clearly part of the equation.