Internationalisation in institutions of higher education is occurring at a high pace and includes the following: a) movements of students/personnel, b) research partnerships/ exporting education, c) program and course development becoming ‘international’, d) economic reforms relating to performance indicators and global rankings. This paper presents a heuristic tool for mapping the ethical implications of internationalisation policies which was co-created through a comparative project involving 28 universities in 9 countries on 5 continents. The project examines how internationalization processes in higher education construct ideas of epistemic difference (Mignolo, 2002), transnational literacy (Brydon, 2004; Spivak, 1999), and global citizenship (Abdi & Schultz, 2008; Andreotti, 2007, 2011; Dower, 2003). We use a framework for ethics based on our collaborative work: a) intelligibility: making inequities visible and unearthing the taken-for-granted assumptions at their core, b) dissent: resisting the rules, principles and precepts that reassert inequities, and c) solidarity: coming together as a community of academics across and with difference in an era that is increasingly hostile to dissent. We explore the extent to which internationalisation policies are ethically sustainable and the extent to which they engage with and/or re-frame questions of environmental and cultural sustainability. We also consider implications for other education sectors.