22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
Reshaping Internationalisation in an Age of Uncertainty: Mapping the Fragile Geopolitics of European Internationalisation
Catherine Montgomery1, Rita Locatelli2
1Durham University, United Kingdom; 2Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy
Presenting Author: Montgomery, Catherine;
Locatelli, Rita
The concept of internationalisation is complex and contested, embodying diverse interpretations and perspectives that vary significantly across higher education. Marginson (2023) has recently explored the dominant understandings of internationalisation and highlighted the contradictions and limits of internationalisation, noting the importance of understanding the interactions between concepts such as internationalisation and the ‘larger and changing environment’ (Marginson, 2023 p.2). Internationalisation in higher education is influenced by its social, political and cultural environments and globally we are experiencing an era of extreme uncertainty, what Stein (2021) characterises as the volatility, unpredictability, complexity and ambiguity of contemporary societies. There are complex issues which mean that existing paradigms for internationalised higher education are becoming inadequate (Stein, 2021, p.482). This complexity of current global challenges raises the question of the role of international higher education in solving these issues and whether higher education can or should operate for the common good (Locatelli and Marginson, 2023).
As a crucial element in Higher Education, internationalisation can offer connective ways of creating relevant knowledge around some of the uncertainties and challenges which we face. Internationally and culturally diverse research and knowledge production (including diversity in disciplinary knowledge; methodological diversity; ethnicity; gender; or race) is integral to ‘good’ science (Olenina et al, 2022). Therefore, the role of internationalisation in knowledge generation is a crucial part of the higher education research and science picture (McGloin, 2021). Moving across and within boundaries, mobile staff and students can act as ‘knowledge brokers’ enabling universities to generate new knowledge relating to global issues through their participation in research, capacity building and internationalisation (Bilecen and Faist 2015, p.218).
However, internationalisation has developed against a background of global divisions and long-standing patterns of inequalities in power, wealth, and cultural influence (Connell, 2007, p. 212; Stein, 2021) and current fragile global relations are intensifying the precarity of international research collaborations, for instance between China and the US (Postiglione, 2021) and across Europe (Courtois and Sautier, 2022). Mobility as part of internationalisation also encompasses immobilities and alongside forced migrations due to political persecution and war, there are asymmetries in resources for higher education and previously colonised contexts continue to experience epistemic injustices (Marginson and Xu, 2023).
This paper focuses on an analysis of the ways in which internationalisation is changing against the current volatile geopolitical context. Considering the lack of plural, democratic and reflexive cross-border relations in higher education, it aims at contributing to critical reflections which have highlighted the need to promote alternative and more equitable approaches to the definitions and practices of internationalisation (Stein, 2021). We centre this exploration on Europe and begin ‘at home’ with one Italian university, and explore the past, current and planned internationalisation activities of this university across Europe and beyond. As well as investing significant resources in the internationalisation of education, and the establishment of a dedicated Centre for research in internationalisation, the university in question is part of a Strategic Alliance of Catholic Research Universities (SACRU) whose mission is to foster global cooperation amongst the partners located in 31 campuses around the world, aiming to advance research and teaching excellence through global collaboration. In this paper we analyse and map the complex ways in which internationalisation is reforming itself in one discipline, that of Education, and we particularly focus on engagement for ‘common good’ against the changing and volatile picture of international and geopolitical relations. We will draw from this picture some implications for the meanings and purposes of contemporary internationalised higher education and consider how internationalisation can engage with the volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous world in which we live (Stein, 2021).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis paper centres on an analysis of internationalisation in the field of Education in the context of an Italian university which is embedded in the European environment and whose attention to the international dimensions of education research, teaching and knowledge production has recently increased. In this case study, we investigate the underpinning principles, the agents involved, the governance structures and the ultimate aims of the connections and collaborations which may be conducive to alternative and more inclusive approaches to internationalisation. In addition to a comprehensive literature review which explores knowledge building in international higher education and the relationship between internationalisation and the existence of multiple knowledge systems, or ecologies of knowledge (Biesta, 2007), the case study rests on the following data:
• A mapping of the internationalisation activity of one international education research centre, exploring its knowledge building activities in an international context
• A mapping of the internationalisation activities of one Faculty of Education, exploring its links, resourcing and knowledge building within the university and outside with its European and international partners
• A series of interviews with key figures in our chosen Italian university focusing on staff at a range of levels including Vice Rector, Director of International Office, Deans and academics with responsibility for international collaboration, exploring their perspectives on internationalisation against a volatile and changing geopolitical context.
Finally, the presentation will reference a related research project which is mapping the SACRU network and has selected four Universities representative of different geographical areas, namely in the United States, Italy, Japan, and Chile. The aim is to understand, in a comparative perspective, how international understanding and reciprocity in cross-border higher education is constructed in these four institutions which stand out, among SACRU members, for having consolidated research units focused on Education and on Internationalisation.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis paper aims to offer alternative perspectives on internationalisation against a fragile geopolitical background by providing both an empirical and theoretical contribution to the current debate on definitions of internationalisation (Marginson, 2023; de Wit, 2024). Adherence to the construction of internationalisation as physical student mobility has contributed to a narrowness of vision for internationalisation (Whitsed, Burgess & Ledger, 2021) and this also enables a continued over-emphasis on elite Anglo-European perspectives in international education (Montgomery and Trahar, 2023). Broader conceptualisations of internationalisation are necessary, including thinking about the role of knowledge generation as an integral part of internationalisation (McGloin, 2021).
This paper offers a set of criteria, drawn from the empirical and theoretical work of the research, which reflect an alternative approach to internationalisation, framed not on a neoliberal or economic rationale, but more open in its epistemologies and inclusive of alternative forms of knowledge (Connell, 2017).
The paper considers whether the strengthening of intra-regional mobility and knowledge exchange and innovation within more localised blocks such as Europe, the ASEAN region and/or South-South collaborations may offer a stronger bond between the local and the global which will enable the project of internationalisation to engage with the complex challenges of our interconnected world.
ReferencesBiesta, G.J.J. 2007. Towards the knowledge democracy? Knowledge production and the civic role of the university. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 26, 467–479. DOI 10.1007/s11217-007-9056-0
Bilecen, B., & Faist, T. (2015). International doctoral students as knowledge brokers: Reciprocity, trust and solidarity in transnational networks. Global Networks, 15(2), 217–235. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12069
Connell, R. (2017). Southern theory and world universities. Higher Education Research &Development, 36, 4-15.
Courtois, A. & Sautier, M. (2022) Academic Brexodus? Brexit and the dynamics of mobility and immobility among the precarious research workforce, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43:4, 639-657, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2022.2042195
Locatelli, R. and Marginson, S. (2023). UNESCO’s common good idea of higher education and democracy. In Marginson, S., Cantwell, B., Platonova, D., and Smolentseva, A. (eds), Assessing the contributions of Higher Education: Knowledge for a disordered world. Edward Elgar Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035307173
Marginson, S. (2023). Limitations of the leading definition of ‘internationalisation’ of higher education: is the idea wrong or is the fault in reality?, Globalisation, Societies and Education, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2023.2264223
Marginson, S., and X. Xu. 2023. “Hegemony and Inequality in Global Science: Problems of the Center-Periphery Model.” Comparative Education Review 67 (1), https://doi.org/10.1086/722760.
McGloin, R.S. (2021). A new mobilities approach to re-examining the doctoral journey: mobility and fixity in the borderlands space. Teaching in Higher Education, 26:3, 370-386, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2021.1898364
Montgomery C. and Trahar, S. (2023). Learning to unlearn: exploring the relationship between internationalisation and decolonial agendas in higher education. Higher Education Research and Development, pp. 1057-1070 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2023.2194054
Postiglione, G. 2021. Sino-US Relations: Universities entering the age of strategic competition https://www.researchcghe.org/perch/resources/publications/working-paper-68final.pdf
Olenina, A., Bamberger, A. & O. Mun (2022). Classed and gendered internationalisation of research and knowledge production: a critical analysis of international doctoral students in the UK (1998-2016), International Studies in Sociology of Education, DOI: 10.1080/09620214.2021.2008266
Sharon Stein (2021) Reimagining global citizenship education for a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19:4, 482-495, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2021.1904212
Whitsed, C., Burgess, M. & Ledger, S. (2021). Editorial advisory board members on reimagining higher education internationalization and internationalization of the curriculum. Journal of Studies in Higher Education doi: 10.1177/1028315320984840
de Wit, W. (2024). ‘Everything That Quacks is Internationalization’ - Critical Reflections on the Evolution of Higher Education Internationalization. Journal of Studies in International Education 2024, Vol. 28(1) 3–14.
22. Research in Higher Education
Paper
Can We Transcend the Nation-state ‘World-sense’? Towards Unpacking the “International(ization)” Logic in Global Higher Education
Riyad Shahjahan
Michigan State University, United States of America
Presenting Author: Shahjahan, Riyad
In this conceptual essay, I provide a metaphysical critique of the “international(ization)” logic pervading global higher education (HE), by introducing and probing how the nation-state ‘worldsense’ dominates international(ization) of HE practices and policies. I use worldsense as opposed to “worldview”, borrowing from Yoruba feminist scholar Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí (1997, 2–3) who explains, the term worldsense is more conducive to indigenous ways of knowing and being. While many have debated the role of nation-state or national scale as a unit of analysis in global HE research, practice, and policy (Shahjahan & Grimm, 2023; de Gayardon, 2022; Komutzky, 2015; Marginson, 2022), the nation-state worldsense (an onto-epistemic grammar) remains unpacked and unchallenged. By such a grammar, I mean a dominant set of assumptions, related to the ‘nation-state’ category, such as anthropocentrism, bounded spatial containers, statist ontology, linearity, and singular notions of human progress (material accumulation, social mobility and so on) (see Anderson, 2006; Burke, 2013; Walby, 2003). Such a worldsense defines what is real, ideal, desirable and knowable, thus structuring ways of knowing/being. Drawing on Anderson’s (2006) notion of “imagined communities” and affect theory, I unpack the ways in which the nation-state as a category (and an entity) comes to being and informs globally facing HE policies (“internationalization” policies) and practices (i.e., engaging with “international” students).
The “international” was an adjective coined by Jeremy Bentham in 1780 to help capture the kinds of laws that would govern the relations between sovereign states (1780) (Suganami, 1978). “International”, as originally conceived, was thus a means to articulate a phenomenon that happened between two separate self-contained entities (i.e. sovereign states). Where does the nation-state world sense come from? A brief history of the “nation-state” idea reveals that it came from both Europe and Spanish Colonies in Latin America in the 17th and 18th centuries (Vergerio, 2021). Through decolonization movements in the 1950s, and sovereign states replacing empires worldwide throughout the 1970s, the nation-state ontology of space became the norm of the international order, obscuring the role of other polities. Instead, the nation-state world-sense reifies the nation-state category by identifying “a political or social unit with a territorial unit” and “leaves no room for other polities in this physical space” (Walby, 2003, p. 540). As such, the nation-state worldsense, as a statist ontology, underlies the emergence of the nation-state category as the signifier for a political unit of material space (i.e., self-contained, borders) to help consolidate power. The nation-state worldsense also helps constitute a signifier of “imagined communities” as mental and emotional spaces (Anderson, 2006). More specifically, the nation-state world sense helps construct the idea of shared origins, mutual interests and horizontal comradeship, binding strangers from different communities together—via language, history, culture, religion, or ethnicity. The nation-state world-sense acts as a velcro that ties particular bounded spaces to ideas, shared origins or cultures, and/or groups of people with each other.
I also draw on 'affect' theory as a conceptual resource to offer an ontological understanding of the nation-state referent and its related markers and processes (e.g., international students or offices, internationalization policies) as they emerge in relation to each other. By the term ‘affect’, I emphasize the ‘becoming’ properties of affect (Ahmed, 2013; Seigworth & Gregg, 2010), in that affect brings objects (i.e., an international student) into being by making them ‘sticky’ through encounters with other objects, e.g., national actors, or institutional policies or practices. I am suggesting that the nation-state worldsense underlies these encounters helping surface, articulate, and solidify these various entities in global HE. The nation-state worldsense is the velcro that helps stick and mediate these mutual encounters.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedDrawing on the interdisciplinary literature on nation-state formation (Anderson, 2006; Burke, 2013; Walby, 2003), internationalization of HE (Brooks & Waters, 2022; Grimm & Day, 2022; Mittelmier et al., 2023), and HE policy documents, I unpack how the nation-state as a category (and an entity) comes to being by informing practices (i.e., engaging with “international” students) and globally facing HE policies (“internationalization” policies). As such, I begin with a brief genealogical reading of the word “international,” its inherent assumptions, and why it is important to interrogate the role of “nation-state” worldsense in the global HE field. More specifically, drawing on Anderson’s (2006) notion of “imagined communities” and affect theory, I unpack the ways in which the nation-state as a category (and an entity) comes to being and informs globally facing HE policies (“internationalization” policies) and practices (i.e., engaging with “international” students). In the first section, I unpack how the “international” adjective emerges, as part of cross-border encounters, to designate a group of students (i.e. international students) that has a) different needs, b) yet to pay their dues, and c) may be harmful, compared to those who originate from within the nation-state in question. I illuminate how the nation-state worldsense underlies such markers and encounters, and the “international” goes beyond being a legal or socio-cultural category. I next demonstrate how the nation-state worldsense reproduces ‘imagined’ communities, institutions, and knowledge systems. More specifically, the nation-state worldsense underlies marking the spatial and epistemic differences in articulating internationalization policies in national policies. To this end, I discuss three national ‘internationalization” policies of Japan (MEXT, 2023), India (MHRD, 2020), and the USA (U.S. Department of State, 2021), respectively. I will highlight how various nation-states imagine and mediate cross-border encounters, and thus foreground their ability to affect and be affected. Furthermore, I will show various imagined communities and entities (i.e., the nation, institutions, offices, or language) continuously emerge in a world imagined and defined by cross-border encounters.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsI argue that the nation-state worldsense provides the onto-epistemic grammar to demarcate boundaries (and constitute an Other) between what is internal and external to an entity to help make sense of mutual encounters between particular objects (groups, institutions, entities and/or destinations) and processes in global HE. First, the “International” acts as a spatial signifier to mark cross-border encounters. The adjective ‘international’ helps signify the unique needs of a group (i.e. international students) who crossed particular borders that others did not. Second, the "International” category helps differentiate those who have yet to pay their ‘dues’ to the nation-state in question. Such “dues” are tied to a nation-state worldsense, as it is presumed that if one is outside one’s sovereign border, their access to what is inside the borders cannot be the same. Third, ‘International’ is also a ‘temporal’ signifier, differentiating those who cannot stay beyond a time-period set by the host nation-state. It is presumed if ‘international’ students do remain they may cause harm to those inside the national container.
My analysis of national “internationalization” policies, suggests that not only do these policies differentiate its borders, people, institutions, from others, but also demarcates those outside as “entities” to benefit the former. In so doing, these discursive and affective constructions help reproduce an ontology of space, presumed to be divided as sovereign containers. Such an ontology of space obscures the power relations within and across these borders. Such a modern referent, then becomes the way to designate spaces, people, knowledge, and institutions as having certain homogeneous characteristics, and thus imagined communities. We cannot simply delink from the nation-state worldsense easily, with a simple set of recommendations, but requires a transformation in our ways of knowing and being.
ReferencesAhmed, S. (2013). The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge.
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso.
Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2022). Partial, hierarchical and stratified space? Understanding ‘the international’in studies of international student mobility. Oxford Review of Education, 48(4), 518-535.
Burke, A. (2013). The good state, from a cosmic point of view. International Politics, 50(1), 57-76.
de Gayardon, A. (2022). The state and 'field' of comparative higher education. Oxford Review of Education, 48(4), 439.
Grimm, A. T., & Day, B. (2022). Navigating student visas in the United States: Policy, practice, and implications. In International Student Support and Engagement in Higher Education (pp. 161-174). Routledge.
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Marginson, S. (2022). What is global higher education?. Oxford Review of Education, 48(4), 492-517.
Mittelmeier, J., Lomer, S., & Unkule, K. (Eds.). (2023). Research with international students: Critical conceptual and methodological considerations. Taylor & Francis.
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MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development). (2020). National Education Policy 2020. https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf
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Seigworth, G. J., & Gregg, M. (2010). An inventory of shimmers. In M. Gregg and G. J Seigworth (Eds.), The affect theory reader (pp. 1–25). Duke University Press.
Suganami, H. (1978). A note on the origin of the word ‘International’. Review of International Studies, 4(3), 226-232.
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