Chinese international students’ negative feelings are often seen as their difficulties in fitting into the local context. From the perspective of host institutions, the notion of ‘transition’ is often underpinned by the discourse of ‘deficiency’ for Chinese international students lacking the necessary skills to manage their learning experience (Ploner, 2018). However, the discussion of the emotional experiences cannot be reduced to the claim of merely presenting the vulnerable subjects and talking about Chinese international students’ ‘deficiency’ when they enter into an unfamiliar educational context, but it rather a way to expand our understanding of emotions affects/effects and retheorize them when we deal with social difference. Also, it is critical to improve the pedagogical practices in classroom to prevent uncomfortable experiences from international students in the first hand, rather than suggesting them to seek for help after they have negative feelings.

Shame and shaming underlie the lived, embodied and overseas experiences of inequality and exclusion, which seem to be veiled by the mainstream discourse of ‘inclusion’ in the higher education that locate the responsibility of overcoming barriers at the individual level (Burke, 2017). Archer (2003) argued that discourse of ‘inclusion’ implicitly requires that the person must fit into the dominant framework, or be excluded either through self-exclusion or through institutional exclusion. In other words, the discourse of ‘inclusion’ works as a form of symbolic violence to make those who are not familiar with the dominant education system feel excluded, and coerces them to transform themselves into ‘standardized’ personhood. For instance, this includes, becoming ‘adaptable’ to the western academic requirements of being critical and independent, and thus being recognized as a qualified pedagogical participant. Therefore, the discourse of ‘inclusion’ may unconsciously perpetuate the problematic deficit model of Chinese international students that they are often described as silent and passive learners, poor written and oral English, lack of critical thinking and emphasising memorisation (Zhu, 2016; Ye, 2018). Chinese international students are asked to ‘fit’ or ‘adapt’ into the UK educational norms, otherwise, they may feel aliened in the classroom. Experiences of shame may play out in ways that Chinese international students regard these academic deficiencies as their personal failures and simply not being the ‘right’ person to study in the UK, and even not ‘good’ enough to deserve the success.

Meanwhile, diversity is often constructed as a positive characteristic to improve the reputation of a university for its commitment to equity and wider participation, usually accompanied by the discourse of assimilation and acculturation (Burke, 2017). One the other hand, ‘difference’ is usually an unspeakable term in the wild education which may trigger anxieties connected to ‘non-traditional’ identities (Burke, 2017). However, the misrecognition and shame can always be hidden behind the ‘seeming to be’ unproblematic discourse of diversity. Diversity in the higher education should welcome different cultures, values, perspectives, dispositions, customs and learning habits, rather than ‘project all that is bad onto those who are different’ (Barnett, 2011, 673).  Plenty of literature has presented the difficult and painful adaptation and acculturation process of international students that they need to ‘fit into’ the dominant framework. However, sometimes, these transitional processes may be triggered by a fear of difference which may lead to ‘punishments’. This ‘fear of difference’ can lead to the problematic judgements about students themselves and students from the same cultural background. They may feel inferior compared to those who are familiar with the UK educational system.

This paper seeks to contextualize the social nature of emotions of Chinese international students and the classed and gendered conditions that work together in its production. Drawing on the work of Ahmed (2004a), it is important not seeing emotions as things or possessions that a person has, rather to find out the social and relational aspects of emotions. In other words, Chinese international students’ emotions cannot be seen as their personal possessions, instead, emotions are relational and can trace back to the social difference and structures in the UK higher education. Constructionist view can be seen as the ontological foundation to explore Chinese international students’ social and relational aspects of emotions in the UK. Constructionism views the person as a relational being and how the person operates in the social-cultural and institutional context (Cohen et al., 2002). As individuals are constructed by and constituents of society, social constructionism values the way in which persons actively understand themselves and find meaning from their positions and roles within the collective but also recognizes the influence of collective in shaping persons. As emotional transition process is a long-term and dynamic process, this project will adopt a longitudinal approach in following Chinese international postgraduates’ mobility and transition pathways, mainly using qualitative design. As this project aims to get rich and detailed information from participants’ views on their emotional experiences, qualitative interviewing encourages a spontaneous discussion which allow researcher to observe how the interviewees reflectively think and feel about this issue and get deeper insights (Clark et al., 2021). The purpose of this interview is to ask interviewees to talk about their whole transnational stories including their academic situation and social and cultural interaction. By listening to participants’ experiences in this period, the researcher is able to get an overall picture of their new comers’ difficulties and challenges, and how they have been dealing with their adaptation.

Through an exploration of Chinese international students’ emotional experiences in higher education, I have sought to explore conditions under which judgements has precipitated shame for participants in my study. Therefore, shame acts as a sociologically significant roles to feeds back into dominant schemas of evaluation of Chinese international students, reinforcing the ‘deficit’ view of their cultures and values. In this sense, shame is experienced by them as embodied, and is not generated in the moment of a particular encounter or experience, but is capable of making itself felt – sometimes unexpectedly – in other occasions. In this sense, shame becomes a part of the habitus through the implicit or explicit judgement of others and naturalizes person-deficit. Through a focus on the lived experience of shame can help to explain how deficiency becomes embodied and naturalized. Pedagogical practices that against shame and misrecognition are embedded in the notions of connection, rationality and seek to develop the capacity of empathy (Burke, 2017). Based on the principle of an ethics of care and connection, pedagogical participants should share the responsibilities of creating inclusive and equitable spaces. But at the same time, the discourses of ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ should be taken into ongoing and critical consideration. The model of inclusion that advocates fitting in or conforming into the dominant framework is problematic. For the host institutions, they should show the academic hospitality that involves openness and reciprocity towards others by way of sharing and receiving, and by developing meaningful conversations with knowledges that are perceived as ‘other’ (Ploner, 2018). Higher education institutions should create a learning environment for students to express their unique identities freely and respectfully.

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