Globalisation, Societies and Education

Internationalisation is a dominant policy discourse in the field of higher education today, driven by an assemblage of economic, social and educational concerns. It is often presented as an ideologically neutral, coherent, disembodied, knowledge-driven policy intervention—an unconditional good. Mobility is one of the key mechanisms through which internationalisation occurs, and is perceived as a major form of professional and identity capital in the academic labour market. Yet, questions remain about whether opportunity structures for mobility are unevenly distributed among different social groups and geopolitical spaces. While research studies and statistical data are freely available about the flows of international students, there is far less critical attention paid to the High Educ

Heliyon

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, international higher education and student mobility have faced tremendous pressure and challenges. To address COVID-induced challenges and stress, higher education institutions and host governments undertook responses. This article has humanistically looked into the institutional responses of host universities and governments to international higher education and student mobilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Informed by a systematic literature review of publications released between 2020 and 2021 in a wide range of academic sources, we argue that many of these responses were problematic and did not adequately maintain student well-being and fairness; instead, international students were treated to some extent with poor services in the host countries. To situate our comprehensive overview and propose ideas for forward-thinking conceptualisation, policy, and practice in higher education in the context of the ongoing pandemic, we engage with the literature on ethical and humanistic internationalisation of higher education and (international) student mobilities.

This chapter presents a picture of the implications of neoliberal re-structuring, framed as 'academic capitalism', to the erosion of the public role of the university and to understandings and practices of higher education. Drawing from experiences in Canada and Ireland, we offer insights from an international collaborative project on ethics and internationalisation in higher education, invoking its underlying principles of intelligibility, dissent and solidarity. Reflecting upon aspects of education and resistance, and emphasizing the dilemmas of power and complicity, we examine different possibilities for hopeful and ethical academic praxis in times of austerity and glocal crises.

2011

Today’s globalizing world inadvertently creates an imbalance in power relations between the so-called ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ contexts, and discourse about educational excellence often circumvents indigenous paradigms, needs, and ideas about the purpose of education. Further still, the hegemony of western-inspired, industrial-styled education often constrains conversation about the challenges of reforming higher education in ways that suggest a thought-linearity and blindness about the promise of alternatives. In light of the intractable difficulties associated with higher education in the so-called developing world, this paper draws from a post-structuralist, social constructivist, ethos and advocates for a decolonization of the educational milieu. By focusing on examples of unorthodox approaches to education drawn from principally non-western contexts, we support a move towards radical differentiation and pluralisation as a solution to today’s higher education problems. We cla...

The contributions in this special issue share theorisations, auto-ethnographic reflections, and pedagogical experiments of decolonisation, politics of knowledge, and activism informed by Feminist, Gender, and Queer studies but also by non-Eurocentred epistemic geo-genealogies grounded in embodied experiences of racialisation, discrimination, and resistance in the academia. Inserting what are inevitably profoundly political contributions, which question the foundations and limitations of hegemonic knowledge creation, into the mould of an academic peer-reviewed special issue is a complex and, at times, seemingly impossible exercise. As the guest editors and editorial board negotiated the process of this issue’s production, we ourselves were challenged to engage with tensions around what constitutes a ‘proper’ scientific contribution, by which and whose standards. As a reader of this special issue, and perhaps a student, teacher, researcher, activist, or a combination thereof, it is likely that you also find yourself addressed and challenged by some of the critiques and proposals articulated in the articles and essays that follow.

Higher Education Research & Development, 2021

As decolonization of the curriculum in higher education (HE) gains traction, academics may question their positionality and role as actors in the field. The concept of decolonization is contentious, but primarily focuses on uncentering the Western filter through which the world is viewed both socially and academically. Just as Gavin Sanderson has argued, that internationalization of HE requires the internationalization of the academic self, so we discuss how decolonizing the internationalized HE curriculum must begin with the decolonization of the individual. The strategic directions of our three European institutions reflect the tensions reported in international literature between HE as an income generator, and as a public good. In the autoethnographic project underpinning this article, we employed the unconventional Collaborative Analytics methodology and its iterations of share data, share results, share decisions to explore institutional strategy as experienced by academics. Our novel approach may help others reflect on decolonizing as a process of 'forever becoming'.

McGill Journal of Education, 2017

Youth and Globalization, 2019

Amid growing debates about globalization of higher education (HE), an analysis of the onto-epistemic grammar underlying the articulation of this global phenomenon remains absent. This essay posits that our understanding of the nature of globalization of HE cannot be separated from questions of a) emotions, b) temporality, and c) ontology. Drawing on the extant literature on globalization of HE to date and personal experiences, it demonstrates the efficacy of these above three concepts, and argues that our understanding of globalization of HE insidiously perpetuates a geopolitics of being, and constrains us from knowing/embodying inter-being. It suggests pursuing inter-being as alternatives to fixed notions of human progress and coloniality of knowledge embedded in the prevailing onto-epistemic grammar. By refusing to tame uncertainty or provide 'probable outcomes', this essay intends to provoke and imagine alternative ways of knowing/being.

Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2022

Taking the migration-higher education nexus as an analytical entry point, we address the question: How can we account for different internationalisation outcomes? We focus on three actors involved in the global race to internationalise higher education activities: higher education institutions (HEIs), states, and migrants. We argue that the migration-higher education nexus enables us to begin describing and explaining differences in internationalisation outcomes (i.e. greater, limited, or none) by focussing our empirical attention on the interaction between HEI internationalisation strategies, state policies, and migrant agency to move/stay. We delineate various configurations of these interactions and how they determine internationalisation outcomes.

In this article, we complicate common critical narratives about the neoliberalization of higher education by situating more recent trends within the genealogy of a modern/colonial global imaginary. By linking current patterns of “accumulation by dispossession” with histories and enduring architectures of racialized expropriation and exploitation, we consider both the strategic possibilities and inherent limitations of enacting resistance from within this imaginary. In particular, we engage the imperative to contest new configurations of dispossession while grappling with the ways that violent social relations have always subsidized public higher education. We suggest that facing such paradoxes may be instructive and open up new possibilities, and at the same time, this requires examination of existing investments and attachments.

2014

New Agenda, 2018

In the following reflections on the decolonization of higher education, I have three objectives. First, I intend to analyze decolonization discourse both theoretically and experientially. I do so partly on account of what I would call its viscerality but also because lived experience is an essential category of analysis in postcolonial theory. Drawing on theoretical resources as well as several encounters with proponents of decolonization, I argue that the politics of the decolonization movement is in some respects deeply conservative – hence the mischievous titular reference to an ‘invisible hand’ directing student politics today. Second – and because of this conservatism – I assert with reference to the discipline of psychology that its proposed decolonization is clearly an ideological venture. But I also suggest that our obsession with decolonization discourse is to some extent unavoidable, involving what psychotherapists would call a repetition compulsion that cannot be relinquished until the original trauma of apartheid has been mastered. And third, I draw on Marxist literary theory to problematize the disciplinary order itself, in so doing drawing attention to a paradox that lies at the heart of the decolonizing project.

2022

The objective of the works that make up this compendium is to encourage a reflection on the challenges, vicissitudes, and strategies that were triggered in higher education institutions as a result of the health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that revolutionized daily activities. of institutions globally.

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education, 2023

While critical scholars have attempted to decenter internationalization, limited research has aimed to understand internationalization efforts in the context of the socio-historical particularities of the postcolonial condition. This paper takes a decolonial perspective in the study of internationalization, in light of the Eurocentric tendencies of modernity, whose major manifestation in higher education is neoliberal globalization. We unpack internationalization in the U.S. and examine how it is embedded in and reproduces neoliberalism, racism, and colonialism. Since decolonization is not merely deconstructive but also regenerative, we reconceive what it means to be international and recommend how internationalization can be deployed as a tool of decolonization, considering various possibilities for hopeful and ethical praxis. We identify promising practices to spark ongoing reflection and action about ways to contest coloniality/modernity and rethink mobility. This paper can benefit educators seeking to reclaim internationalization and [re]align it with an ethos of mutuality and practices geared at strengthening cooperation, rather than competition.

Compare, 2021

At the time of writing this Forum, many nations, cities, and universities are still in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept – indeed, the experience – of an outbreak of global proportions is not new – yet, our recent circumstances serve as a reminder that humanity remains unprepared and lacks the skills to mobilise and enforce a rapid international response in times of crisis (Alon, Farrell, and Li Citation2020; Weible et al. 2020). Intellectually and organisationally, we appear to suffer from selective amnesia and a shortage of the resilience and creativity needed to effectively contain a global catastrophe of this scale. As the death count grows, new waves of the coronavirus are hitting countries that experienced initial success with their quarantine measures (WHO 2020). Moreover, racism, anti-intellectualism, demagoguery and dishonesty have been reinforced in conjunction with the generalised intensification of feelings of desperation, anger and fear in response to the inadequate response to the pandemic and the excessive loss of lives that could have been prevented (Egede and Walker 2020; Godlee Citation 2020; Matache and Bhabha 2020). In view of the reality where societies are unable to fully utilise cumulative knowledge and skills, new issues have emerged regarding the roles of research, teaching, and learning in the international and cross-cultural fields of study.