Session Information
WERA SES 06 B, Cultural Hierarchies and Colonial Thinking in Education
Symposium
Contribution
Keywords: international students; higher education; internationalization; colonialism In 2012, over 4.5 million students studied tertiary education outside of their country of citizenship, with over 80% enrolled in institutions in the G20 countries (OECD, 2014). However, critical approaches to international student experiences remain scant (Brown & Jones, 2013; Lee & Rice, 2007; Marginson, 2012). Given both the growing numbers and continued negative experiences of many international students, we suggest it is timely to revisit this issue and to broaden our conceptual approaches to research about international higher education. In this paper we review the literature about international students studying in the West in order to consider the links between increasing recruitment and admission of international students in Western universities, and international students’ negative and discriminatory experiences at these universities. We do so by examining the narrative within which both recruitment and racism are embedded: that of Western civilizational supremacy. Using decolonial theories (e.g. Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Silva, 2007; Tlotstanova & Mignolo, 2012; Wynter, 2003) and Osei-Kofi’s (2003) notion of "mythical master narratives", we consider how the narrative of Western ontological and epistemological supremacy not only produces a global hierarchy of ways of knowing and being, but also rationalizes the continued economic and geopolitical dominance of Western nation-states. We describe how this narrative frames both state and university motivations for international student recruitment, and their reception by their host institutions and societies. Specifically, we consider how this narrative operates in ways that frame international students in one (or more) of three ways: as sources of income that supports the continued prosperity of the Western university and nation-state (i.e. as “cash”); as unworthy or lesser participants in the contest for social mobility through educational and employment opportunities (i.e. as “competition”); as objects of development and recipients of the West’s universal knowledge (i.e. as “charity”). After illustrating each using examples from the Canadian context, we conclude by asking how we might theorize ethical internationalization beyond the frames of Western supremacy.
References
Brown, L., & Jones, I. (2013). Encounters with racism and the international student experience. Studies in Higher Education, 38(7), 1004-1019. Lee, J., & Rice, C. (2007). Welcome to America? International student perceptions of discrimination. Higher Education, 53(3): 381-409. OECD (2014), Education at a Glance 2014: Highlights, OECD Publishing. Retrieved from http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-glance-2014_eag_highlights-2014-en Osei-Kofi, N. (2003). Whose" I/Eye" counts?: The reproduction of mythical master narratives. The Review of Higher Education, 26(4), 487-496. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21(2-3): 240-270. Marginson, S. (2012). Including the other: regulation of the human rights of mobile students in a nation-bound world. Higher Education, 63(4), 497-512. Silva, D. F. (2007). Toward a global idea of race. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press. Tlostanova, M. V., & Mignolo, W. (2012). Learning to unlearn: Decolonial reflections from Eurasia and the Americas. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation--An argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257-337.
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