Guest editorial: Bordering, othering and reconceptualizing the inter/national subject in higher education

Abstract

This special issue is concerned with a timely and seemingly neutralized issue; internationalization of higher education institutions and the making and unmaking of the “international” subject in the UK and across different social-cultural, national and political contexts. Our international/transnational/migrant standpoint and research track record in critical perspectives to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Intercultural Communication respectively, sparked interest in this topic and is discussed in detail later in this editorial. In what follows we briefly discuss the introduction and current challenges of internationalization in the UK, its implementation in other Anglophone and non-Anglophone contexts, in an attempt to unravel the highly politicized assertions underpinning dominant discourses of internationalization and conceptualizations of “international” in different geo-political contexts. We contend that processes and practices of internationalization and discourses of “international” are in fact inherently antithetical rather than synergistic with social justice goals and largely endemic and epidemic to the neo-liberalized ethos, colonial structures and white patriarchal, capitalist regimes of higher education institutions. Critical internationalization research that problematizes the popular framing of internationalization in terms of economic, intellectual and multi/intercultural benefits and the formation of international academic staff and students as disembodied subjects–reduced to indicators of cosmopolitanism, enhanced human capital and global competitiveness–has potential to advance theorizations of difference and equality, and to inform, enrich and transform social justice agendas in higher education institutions. ...