There is growing international interest in how market imperatives interact with the socio-cultural and academic rationales of higher education internationalisation. This study provides new empirical material to examine the core rationales of international student recruitment in Latvia, where international students constitute 10% of the total tertiary enrolments. The nuanced analysis of narrative data from the interviews with university international officers is complemented by the analysis of policy documents and numeric data from the government and the UNESCO Institute of Statistics. By carefully interpreting the evidence, the study shows that international student recruitment has been stimulated by the demographic calculus and driven by the economic rationale. Universities have played an active role in increasing the numbers of mobile students and many institutions seem to benefit from working closely with student recruitment agencies. The scale of university-agency collaboration appears to vary by the type of institution; those with lower entry requirements have more extensive business relations with agencies than the relatively more reputable institutions. The study advances the understanding of internationalisation by arguing that a focus on market imperatives can undermine socio-cultural, academic and political benefits of inbound student mobility, which are viewed by universities as inferior to the immediate pecuniary interest.