Abstract
This article examines how internationalization is defined by three leading higher education professional associations: NAFSA, the International Association of Universities, and the European Association of International Education. We examine key publications to understand which activities, topics, and constituencies are included in conceptualizations of internationalization and, conversely, which are absent. We find that all three rely on similar definitions that emphasize international students, student and scholarly mobility, and curricular change. We argue that current definitions are largely de-politicized and de-historicized, while internationalization is often assumed to mean more and better coverage of the globe. Little attention is given to the ethics of international engagement, particularly across unequal relations of power. We conclude with numerous questions for administrators and faculty engaged in internationalization that seek to deepen conversations about this work. In particular, we emphasize the importance of identifying enduring patterns of global inequality, recognizing ethical responsibilities, and enabling alternative possibilities.
Introduction
Around the world, faculty, staff, and administrators are being asked to engage with internationalization on their campuses, often with little understanding of what internationalization is, should, or could be. Mainstream resources are overwhelmingly oriented toward achieving “successful” internationalization, rather than prompting thoughtful engagements and systemic analyses around why or how we should do so. This article seeks to draw attention to the possibilities, complexities, and complicities that are presented by the seemingly inevitable intensification of internationalization. Ultimately, we seek to create spaces for conversations that might enable educators to collectively problematize and historicize existing assemblages and allocations of resources and value.
To do so, this article examines discourses on internationalization put forward by three of the largest international education professional associations: NAFSA, the International Association of Universities (IAU), and the European Association for International Education (EAIE). We draw on a critical paradigm to deconstruct the “internationalization imperative” through a close reading of major reports, surveys, and documents, asking what “counts” as internationalization and what does not. In analyzing discourses from NAFSA, IAU, and EAIE, we find that the three associations’ conceptions of internationalization are quite similar, with shared understandings of what “counts” as internationalization, namely, international students, student and scholarly mobility, research partnerships, and curricular reforms. We further argue that all three associations tend to adopt a predominantly technical and often quantified approach to measuring internationalization, while simultaneously leaving the idea of “international” conceptually vague. The major effect of this approach is that internationalization is framed as apolitical and largely divorced from broader discussions of historical or geopolitical inequalities, ethical responsibilities, and alternative possibilities for engaging with and across difference.
We conclude by posing open-ended questions that can help to orient collective conversations among higher education administrators and faculty engaged in internationalization efforts. We emphasize that all approaches to internationalization are partial and must consider what is viable, relevant, and socially responsible in a given context. We note that although internationalization is being undertaken by institutions around the world, our focus in this article is on internationalization as it operates within Western institutions and organizations.
Internationalization at a Crossroads
Nearly 15 years ago, Jane Knight (2004) defined the internationalization of higher education as “the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post-secondary education” (p. 11). Although Knight’s (2014) has become a go-to definition of the term, recently, she expressed concern that “internationalisation has become a catch-all phrase used to describe anything and everything remotely linked to the global, intercultural or international dimensions of higher education and is thus losing its way” (p. 76). In response, she proposed not a revised definition of internationalization, but rather reconsideration of “the fundamental values underpinning it” (p. 76). Knight is not alone; de Wit (2014) also argued “internationalization in higher education is at a turning point and the concept of internationalization requires an update, refreshment and fine-tuning taking into account the new world and higher education order” (p. 97; see also Brandenburg & de Wit, 2011). Beyond these more general concerns about the need to re-examine what is meant by “internationalization,” a growing critical literature attends to the specific possibility that dominant approaches might further reproduce and reify enduring local and global power inequalities, in both the epistemological and material dimensions (Madge, Raghuram, & Noxolo, 2015; Stein, Andreotti, Bruce, & Susa, 2016; Suspitsyna, 2015). In light of these conversations, this article examines how professional associations currently understand and define internationalization, as a starting point to deepen and add complexity to current conversations.
Our approach is guided by critical discourse analysis; dominant discourses around internationalization assume that it is both necessary and desirable (Hudzik, 2011). Critical discourse analysis allows us to de-naturalize the assumptions and ideas that frame and limit our thoughts about internationalization. Discourse refers to how we use language to define, categorize, and explain our social world, becoming the basis for establishing identities, justifying action, and creating social structures (Chabbott, 2003). In this way, discourse creates “regimes of truth” that not only explain the social world but help to constitute reality (Foucault, 1980). When discourse analysis is undertaken from the critical paradigm, scholars identify dominant discourses and deconstruct them to examine how power functions to normalize certain ideas while minimizing or foreclosing others. Kezar (2006) reminded us that in the critical paradigm, an “objective stance vis-à-vis the phenomena of study is neither required nor deemed desirable” (p. 308). Rather, we seek to shed light on how powerful histories and assumptions work to normalize certain definitions and ideals of internationalization, and to point to potential openings for different types of engagement, or what we describe as “engaging difference differently.”
Using a critical discourse analysis approach, we conduct a close reading of major publications by three prominent professional associations that support and advocate for internationalization: NAFSA: The Association of International Educators, based in the United States; the IAU, a global association of universities; and the EAIE. Combined, these three organizations represent major sources of ideas about internationalization and the professional advocacy networks that define best practices and collect data on how higher education institutions (HEIs) are responding to the internationalization imperative. However, our analysis is not intended as a comprehensive assessment of their work in particular. Instead, we focus on these three associations because each is a producer of influential discourses on (and practices of) internationalization, and their materials can therefore serve as useful illustrations of dominant discourses on internationalization that circulate within higher education spaces more generally. We recognize that the selection of only one key document by each organization is limited; because of this, we do not claim to offer a representative review of their approaches to internationalization, nor an analysis that can be generalized to describe how internationalization is defined and operationalized within individual universities, departments, or professional associations. However, in adopting a critical approach, our goal is not to empirically summarize or report out major themes in these reports. Rather, it is to shed light on aspects of internationalization that have been under-appreciated in many conversations, and point to possibilities for new conversations.
Profiles of Internationalization
NAFSA’s Comprehensive Internationalization
NAFSA is a worldwide membership association of professional higher education administrators focusing on international education. NAFSA was founded in 1948 as the National Association for Foreign Student Advisers, as a professional association for advisors helping foreign students studying in the United States after World War II. By 1990, the association’s work developed to include admissions personnel, language specialists, and higher education leaders, and its mandate included both foreign students and outbound mobility. In recognition of these changes, the association voted to rename itself NAFSA: Association of International Educators to reflect its broader mandate. In the 21st century, NAFSA has been a strong advocate of global education. It organizes an annual conference; publishes a professional magazine, International Educator; and advises higher education administrators on a range of issues, including how to manage international offices, tips for successful study abroad tours, and international student recruitment. Although primarily U.S.-centered in its history, outlook, and mandate, its annual conference attracts 10,000 members from over 100 countries, and its website describes it as “the leading organization committed to international education and exchange” (NAFSA, 2019).
In 2011, NAFSA published a flagship text, Comprehensive Internationalization, which summarizes much of the association’s thinking on internationalization. The report was produced by the Internationalization Dialogue Task Force and written by John Hudzik, a former dean of International Studies and Programs at Michigan State University who is also a past president and chair of the Board of Directors of NAFSA and past president of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA). The report, while being only one of many publications by NAFSA, articulates the association’s approach to internationalization and has informed its key programming, including the Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization.
The concept of comprehensive internationalization, which undergirds NAFSA’s approach to internationalization, is framed as an “organizing paradigm to think holistically about higher education internationalization” (Hudzik, 2011, p. 5). Given the association’s endorsement of this approach, we focus on NAFSA’s approach to comprehensive internationalization: Comprehensive internationalization is a commitment, confirmed through action, to infuse international and comparative perspectives throughout the teaching, research, and service missions of higher education. It shapes institutional ethos and values and touches the entire higher education enterprise. It is essential that it be embraced by institutional leadership, governance, faculty, students, and all academic service and support units. It is an institutional imperative, not just a desirable possibility. (Hudzik, 2011, p. 6)
While expansive and aspirational, this definition of comprehensive internationalization is also somewhat vague: comprehensive internationalization is defined as a form of commitment and action that must infuse “international and comparative perspectives” throughout the entire institution, including internal and external stakeholders. However, what exactly counts as “international and comparative” is not discussed. Because NAFSA was founded in the United States and its membership is overwhelmingly located in the United States, its approach to internationalization both reflects and potentially reproduces dominant discourses of internationalization found in the United States, and its discussions of what is “international” is implicitly oriented to a U.S. audience through the report’s discussions of U.S. universities’ history of isolationism.
The report outlines two primary types of indicators of internationalization: (a) student-focused measures and learning outcomes, and (b) research, scholarship, and engagement outcomes. Student-focused indicators of internationalization include study abroad program diversity, the number of international students and their majors, the number of students achieving language competencies, and the number of students in “international, global, and comparative majors,” although which majors count as “international or global” is also left undefined.
It is worth noting that many indicators of internationalization refer to study abroad. For example, the report identifies possible indicators as “Study abroad program diversity: destination, length, subject matter, pedagogy” and “Number and diversity of students in activities abroad (study, research, internships, etc.).” The implicit assumption here is that by traveling abroad, students will learn about another country, language, or society. However, the distinction of “international-to-whom” is never addressed, despite the fact that country of origin is fundamental to definitions of internationalization. The implicit assumption of study abroad indicators is that international students traveling back to their home country would not count as engaged in an international activity, while a national student doing the same activity would count. The status of a permanent resident or immigrant returning to a home country or second-generation students learning heritage languages are also never addressed, suggesting that the dichotomy between “domestic” and “international” is defined somewhat narrowly by visa status, with no discussion of other forms of student diversity.
Indicators of student learning outcomes are also left quite vague. For example, outcome-oriented indicators of internationalization include “Evidence of outcomes relative to learning objectives,” “pre- and post-results on standardized tests of knowledge, attitudes, or beliefs,” and “evidence of impact on students, e.g., knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, skills, careers.” Each one of these indicators suggests that students should be learning something, or experiencing some change in attitude or belief. However, the report never clearly articulates or discusses what exactly students should be learning, or how the learning might be undertaken.
Indeed, much of the literature on internationalization, including this NAFSA report, seems to imply that internationalization should improve students’ understanding of the world’s many countries, societies, and languages; provide exposure to diverse perspectives; and prepare students to work closely with those from different linguistic or cultural backgrounds. However, discussions of the politics of difference are rarely engaged directly. The number and diversity of international students’ countries of origin are viewed as a key indicator of internationalization; however, in these discussions, international students become framed as primarily resources for internationalizing the campus environment to the benefit of national students. Moreover, despite the fact that many organizations, including the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), and the European Union (EU), define international students as those on international study visas for tracking trends in international academic mobility, scholars including Jones (2017) have argued that such practices at the institutional level fail to recognize the heterogeneity of “international students,” and create a “false dichotomy” (p. 934) between “international” and “domestic” that may prevent institutions from developing relevant and targeted approaches to adequately support all students.
The effect of the focus on “international” as defined by visa status on campuses is that nationality comes to define diversity, and other forms of difference among “international students,” including class, ethnicity, linguistic, and migration status are often downplayed. The closest the report comes is stating that the institution must fully integrate international students into the campus environment to promote their “appreciation for global diversity” and must maximize “the contact and cross-learning of both domestic and international populations” (Hudzik, 2011, p. 35). In addition, one student learning outcome states that there should be “evidence of students’ capacity to learn from and with others from different cultures” (Hudzik, 2011, p. 26). However, this language implies that international is a synonym for “different cultures,” with the United States as the assumed audience, while the wide range of diversity of cultural practices within the same nation, including the United States, is wholly ignored.
Similarly, there is no discussion of global inequality or power imbalances in any of the recommended indicators of internationalization—internationalization is never discussed as a way to help students understand or rethink their place in the world, despite the report’s recognition that U.S. higher education and the United States more broadly has a long history of isolationism. The “content of internationalization” could include a discussion of unequal political, economic, and cultural relations between countries; it could help students, particularly those in North America and Europe, wrestle with the historic and ongoing power imbalances in the world that grant them distinct privileges based on their national origin. This is just one possibility for the types of “knowledges, attitudes or beliefs” that could be mapped onto internationalization. However, this report largely ignores the issue of power and geopolitics altogether. Instead, one of the key takeaways of NAFSA’s definition of comprehensive internationalization is that it is self-consciously defined as a “big-tent,” intentionally broad in scope and inclusive of a wide variety of activities. In practice, this broad definition allows campuses to engage in a version of “comprehensive internationalization” with little grappling with geopolitics, power imbalances, or privilege. The benefit of a “big tent” approach is that it seeks to avoid limiting institutions to narrow prescriptions; on the contrary, it also means that the burden of adopting and translating a version of critical internationalization into institutional priorities and programming likely falls on the initiative of specific individuals, rather than being undertaken in a more systematic way.
The IAU’s Global Survey on Internationalization
The IAU (2016) is an institutional membership-based international non-governmental organization (INGO) that aims to build a worldwide higher education community. The IAU was founded in 1950 as a worldwide association of HEIs. Today, it has 650 members from roughly 120 countries; the IAU is an institutional membership organization, whose members are typically university leaders from around the world. The IAU focuses on promoting values-driven institutional leadership, and internationalization is a priority area for the IAU—its 2016-2020 strategic plan includes internationalization as a thematic priority, stating that the association aims to remain “a leader for inclusive, fair and ethical internationalization of higher education” (IAU, 2016, p. 10).
The IAU conducts the Global Survey on Internationalization, which serves as an important knowledge-producing initiative for the association, as part of its commitment to trend analysis. The Global Survey on Internationalization began as a pilot initiative in 2003. The survey is now conducted every 4 years (2005, 2009, 2013, 2018), and participation has grown significantly with each iteration. The first IAU survey of internationalization in 2003 included only 176 HEIs from 66 countries, primarily predominantly English-speaking countries. Subsequently, the survey was translated into multiple languages, and the first regular survey, conducted in 2005, included 545 countries from 95 countries. By 2009, the survey included 745 HEIs from 115 countries, and in 2013, the fourth Global Survey included more than 1,300 HEIs from 131 countries. The IAU membership covers all world regions, including Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and its survey is designed in consultation with experts from those regions.
To understand how the IAU conceptualizes internationalization, we examined the text of the questionnaire used for the fourth Global Survey on Internationalization to examine what activities are included as internationalization. The survey is divided into six sections: (a) an institutional profile, (b) internationalization as an institutional priority, (c) specific strategies and activities associated with internationalization, (d) student mobility, (e) internationalization at home, and (f) the respondent profile (IAU, 2013).
The survey begins with an institutional profile that examines how important internationalization is to university leadership, asking “What level of importance does internationalization have for the leadership of your institution?” The very nature of the question and its placement at the beginning of the survey can be understood as implying that internationalization should be an institutional priority. An alternative way to gauge the importance of internationalization, for example, would be to ask respondents to list their current institutional priorities, where a list of options could include enhancing research productivity, ensuring equitable access, community engagement, supporting diverse learners, upgrading facilities, improving student experience, and so on, where increasing international engagement is only one of many possible priorities. However, the IAU questionnaire does not ask respondents to compare or evaluate the importance of internationalization relative to other priorities. By creating data that reinforces the idea that internationalization is important, the survey creates a world in which higher education administrators can commit to internationalization without having to weigh other activities or constraints, or having to reflect on why it is important by considering the motivations behind its presumed importance (e.g., financial, ethical, political).
The next section of the questionnaire focuses on organizational and bureaucratic aspects of internationalization. The survey asks several questions about who is responsible for internationalization, as well as questions about whether the HEI has a specific office or team, a monitoring and evaluation framework, budgetary resources, and whether it has defined concrete learning outcomes related to internationalization. These questions emphasize an understanding of internationalization as an organization-level process. The survey also identifies several activities, which become an implicit definition for what internationalization is and what it should be, including recruiting international students, facilitating student mobility and exchanges, research partnerships, joint degrees, branch campuses, and distance learning.
However, many key university constituencies are left out, and by failing to recognize them, many types of activities that could be conceptualized as “internationalization” are not included. For example, activities that are not included in the survey include co-authoring with international colleagues, the number and types of languages of instruction offered, the number and extent of scholarships offered to students for mobility opportunities, or the extent to which institution-produced knowledge is openly accessible to researchers around the world. Moreover, none of the mentioned activities include discussions of multiculturalism, diversity, equity, or other types of work that higher education administrators could be participating in to advocate, support, or enact more just or equitable forms of internationalization programming.
By focusing on the activities and roles of higher education administrators, the survey seems to downplay the role of faculty and librarians. For faculty members, internationalization tends to be conceptualized as “outgoing mobility opportunities for faculty/staff” (IAU, 2013, p. 8). In addition, there is one question about whether internationalization-at-home includes professional development to support faculty in integrating international or intercultural content into the curriculum. However, the survey is noticeably not interested in how that content is integrated, or whether the institution offers any support to help faculty members teach students from diverse backgrounds, which remains a key challenge for many faculty. Other key stakeholder groups that are noticeably absent include librarians, alumni, and/or local community organizations.
In a notable exception to the IAU survey’s largely technical frame of reference, the survey asks about risks to institutions, society and values, sources of funding for internationalization, and barriers to internationalization. The listed societal risks include exacerbating inequality in access, overuse of English, the homogenization of curricula, reputational risk, and prestige orientation. Similarly, the survey then asks about risks to the country, such as a loss of cultural identity and linguistic diversity, brain drain, or dominance of Western epistemologies. This section offers a potential opening for more nuanced and critical approaches to internationalization. However, selecting and ranking risks to produce comparative data is abstracted from discussions of institutional deliberations, meaning it does not allow us to understand how considerations of risks inform institutions’ internationalization practices.
Another potential critical opening arises in a question related to external barriers to internationalization, where the survey asks about visa restrictions, both those imposed by the respondent’s country and those by other countries. The same question addresses language barriers and concerns over a “lack of interest” on the part of potential partners. This question implicitly recognizes the unequal geopolitical environment, which privileges some students and disadvantages others, but is also framed as important primarily because it is an “obstacle” (IAU, 2013, p. 6) to effective internationalization. Notably, the survey does not ask about other pertinent obstacles, such as differentials in fees for international students, availability of scholarships for less-affluent international students, or financial aid options to help national students study abroad.
The EAIE’s Barometer
The EAIE is a non-profit organization for higher education administrators and professionals engaged in internationalization. According to EIAE, its mission is to “help our members succeed professionally and to contribute to developments in international higher education from a European perspective” (EAIE, 2019). In its work, EAIE offers services to members and other international higher education professionals, serves as a platform for networking and strategy, and influences “key decision makers” in the field. Despite being Europe-centered, EAIE includes individuals from outside Europe who “share our view of international higher education as equitable, ethical, socially responsible, accessible and accountable” (EAIE, 2016, p. 1). Each year, EAIE hosts an annual conference, produces the Forum magazine, and The Internationalisation of Higher Education Handbook. EAIE is also part of the Association for Studies in International Education (ASIE), which publishes The Journal of Studies in International Education. In 2012, EAIE led a group of associations in the creation of The International Student Mobility Charter, which calls on governments, institutions, and associations to endorse 10 dimensions of support for international students.
In addition to these publications, EAIE has committed to creating periodic reports on “the state of internationalization in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) from the point of view of actors directly involved in internationalization” (EAIE, 2014, p. 2). The first edition of this survey and subsequent report, “EAIE Barometer 2014,” was published in 2015, and the second addition was published in 2018. To understand how EAIE conceptualizes internationalization, we examined the survey questions that will inform the second edition.
The 2018 EAIE Barometer survey has nine sections that cover institutional context, management of internationalization, and challenges. In the section on institutional context, the survey asks respondents to identify the main goals of internationalization at their HEI, which include: improve the quality of education; improve the quality of research; prepare students for a globalized world/enhance student employability; better service the local community and society; improve institutional reputation, competitiveness, and/or position in rankings; financial benefits; respond to demographic shifts; other; and do not know. Notably, many of the listed goals frame internationalization in terms of the competitive advantages it will confer to local students, communities, and institutions, namely, in terms of improving their reputation or economic standing. In creating a list of assumed motivations for internationalizing, the survey implicitly ignores other possibilities, even as there is an opportunity for people to write in “other” goals. Indeed, absent from this list is the pursuit of internationalization for reciprocal or transformative outcomes, such as challenging and/or broadening students’ worldviews, reframing the power dynamics of intercultural relationships, or enhancing epistemic equity between different communities and nations. It is also significant that the list of goals includes service to the local community and society, but no similar reference to responsibilities to global communities.
Next, the EAIE survey asks respondents to rank the “level of internationalization” of their HEI in relation to other HEIs in their own country, as follows: above average, average, below average, or do not know. This kind of a ranking not only assumes that internationalization can be compared across institutional contexts but also immediately establishes a hierarchy and frames internationalization as a competition. As with the IAU survey, such a framing also positions internationalization as an inherent good, without considering that some institutions might have other legitimate priorities or that some internationalization activities can be harmful.
As in the IAU survey, the EAIE survey prepopulates its responses in ways that frame and limit what can be identified as internationalization. For instance, respondents are asked to identify which activities are undertaken at their institution, which are prioritized in strategic plans, which have been areas of progress in the last 3 years, and which will become more significant at their HEI in the coming 3 years. These activities include: international student recruitment; international faculty/staff recruitment; international mobility for home students; international mobility for home faculty/staff; internationalization of the curriculum; programs in a non-local language; courses and activities developing students’ international awareness and cultural competence; distance/online/blended international learning; branch campuses; joint degree programs, capacity building in developing countries [sic]; engagement with local community and society; internationalization of campus services; institution-wide internationalization training for faculty/staff; other; do not know. While the EAIE’s list of internationalization activities is more comprehensive than that of the IAU, and includes a number of constituencies ignored by the IAU, the framing nonetheless implicitly bounds what is considered “international” and potentially reinforces global hierarchies. For example, it is telling that the only time low-income countries are invoked directly, the assumed relationship is “capacity building,” rather than equal research partnerships or outward mobility.
There are a few notable exceptions to the technical perspective in the EAIE Barometer questionnaire. One is the “Challenges,” section, which asks respondents about the internal and external challenges that their institution faces in pursuit of its internationalization goals. The provided list of external challenges is particularly notable in that several gesture to political and economic inequalities and/or tensions such as issues of brain drain (although this is in reference to local staff and students, not international staff and students), immigration barriers (e.g., visa restrictions), high costs, and even “political nationalism that evokes anti-international and xenophobic sentiments.” Moreover, the EAIE survey acknowledges that internationalization does not come naturally, but must be actively supported through faculty/staff development, by including a question that asks respondents to indicate the kind of training programs that are available at their institution, such as recruiting and retaining international staff and students, teaching methodologies for the international classroom, and managing international relations.
Discussion: De-Politicized Internationalization
The documents analyzed above illustrate some of the common guiding assumptions about the definition and measurement of internationalization in higher education that risk reproducing uneven relations of local and global power. Despite their considerable differences, the three professional associations hold largely similar understandings of higher education internationalization: all three associations profiled adopt a broad definition of internationalization, with all three pointing to roughly a dozen possible activities, stakeholders, and forms of programming that “count” as internationalization. They also focus on similar priority programs, including international students, student and scholarly mobility, research partnerships, “internationalization-at-home” through curricular additives and extra-curricular activities, and cross-border initiatives such as branch campuses, joint degrees, or distance programs. Similarly, we note that all three associations tend to define successful internationalization primarily in technical terms, with a focus on organizational structures, activities, and programs. Each association’s list of key indicators for internationalization places a significant emphasis on the extent to which the organization is “doing a good job” implementing new, often additive, forms of international engagements, a point noted by other scholars (Brandenburg & de Wit, 2011).
Prior scholarship has pointed out that internationalization indicators need to move beyond measuring what institutions are doing to measure what students are learning (Brandenburg & de Wit, 2011). We found evidence of this discourse permeating the professional associations, with NAFSA emphasizing the need to move beyond organizational structures to measure actual student learning and outcomes. However, we note that these conversations remain framed in highly functionalist discourses of human capital development, which conceptualizes the purpose of higher education as skill development and downplays the role of higher education as a site of knowledge production, critique, or political or ethical engagement.
A key finding is that there is a striking absence of engagement with political, historical, or geopolitical dimensions of international relationships and knowledge production. For example, none of the associations ask higher education administrators to engage with histories and legacies of unequal geopolitical influence, or with inequality in the contemporary academic system that privileges Western, wealthy, and English-speaking institutions, for example. Similarly, there is almost no discussion of the financial burdens (or exploitations) associated with various forms of internationalization. As a result, there is a blind spot regarding the link between internationalization and broader conversations concerning how unequal power shapes relationships across racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic difference.
A second key finding is that the idea of “international” remains conceptually vague in discussions of internationalization. A number of words, including international, trans-national, global, and inter-cultural, are all used, more or less interchangeably. This multiplicity of terms distracts from the fact that what “counts” as “international” is rarely discussed or theorized, leaving us with all but the most simplistic of definitions—essentially, international is “outside the nation-state’s borders.” A key point, missing from many definitions of internationalization, is that when “international” is defined as “abroad” or “foreign,” there is an implicit assumption about identities assumed to be “local” or “national.” In general, the “national” student body is thought to be homogeneous, non-immigrant, and non-Indigenous which erases local differences and the ongoing, uneven relations that have produced them (Roshanravan, 2012). This also means that conversations about internationalization and multiculturalism are rarely bridged.
On one hand, internationalization is often equated with “global” and entails a push to cover the “entire world.” The indicators from NAFSA imply that the more expansive the coverage, the better the internationalization. It is worth pointing out that a desire to “cover” the world and “collect knowledge” suggests a potentially superficial and extractive cataloging and consumption of difference, rather than deeper understanding. Although there are implicit linkages between internationalization and “appreciation for global diversity,” without defining it further, “appreciation” can implicitly frame the global “other” as an object of knowledge, cultural capital, and/or personal development for the local subject, rather than an equal partner in a reciprocal engagement. In this way, an apolitical embrace of the “global” risks becoming a means of reproducing relative advantage, while simultaneously ignoring the long histories of often-exploitative global engagements that produced those relative advantages to begin with (Charania, 2011).
At the same time, the emphasis on comprehensive “coverage” is belied by the fact that internationalization strategies also emphasize the importance of having “strategic” partners. These tend to reflect historical and ongoing global inequalities and contemporary geopolitics—North American universities send students to Europe for exposure to “high culture” and look to China and India to capitalize financially off global elites’ desire for English language education, while places like Mauritania, Guyana, or Turkmenistan hardly register on the map.
Failure to engage critically with histories of international engagements makes it likely that existing inequalities in international engagements will simply be reproduced in the imperative to internationalize. Decades of critical scholarship from de-colonial and post-colonial studies have documented how engagements across difference do not necessarily interrupt, and instead often reproduce, unequal power relations (e.g., Santos, 2007; Spivak, 1988). This is because the dominant frames that shape both self-knowledge and intercultural engagements within Western institutions are often shaped by inherited hierarchies of human worth, in particular those that presume that the West sits at the head of humanity and as the leader of moral and intellectual progress (Andreotti, 2007). The mere presence of an international dimension in higher education—whether readings from other national contexts or even an entire course about another country—does not necessarily interrupt Eurocentric frames, as content is often interpreted through them, further reifying presumed supremacies and separations. Similarly, the terms of international institutional partnerships can easily become dominated by more economically and geopolitically powerful partners, affecting knowledge production. If, for instance, the imperative to internationalize were instead addressed alongside or in dialogue with ongoing efforts to decolonize higher education, it might lead to deepened conversations about colonial legacies, critical multiculturalism, or structures of white advantage.
Conclusion
In this article, we deconstruct the discourses of major professional associations regarding internationalization, illustrating how dominant approaches are focused on aspects of technical implementation and largely avoid the ethical and political dimensions of international engagement. We suggest there is a need to develop deeper and more systemic understandings of the political and historical dimensions of international engagements and their possible impacts, both in general and as this manifests within particular institutional contexts. While we emphasize that there is no “best” approach to internationalization, we nonetheless suggest that collective, critically informed efforts to map, examine, and contextualize different possibilities can equip participants to act from a place of deepened understanding. With this in mind, we conclude this article with questions and conversations that higher education administrators and faculty may want to consider when discussing and planning internationalization efforts. More fundamentally, we suggest internationalization work should be engaged from a space of humility, with self and institutional reflexivity, and with a commitment to continually assess the impact of that work.
First, who is at the table? Whose voices and experiences are represented, and whose are not (and who decides this)? Whose voices might be present and represented, but still remain unheard? Recognizing that internationalization is never apolitical, we would encourage administrators to ask whose experiences are centered in discussions of internationalization? Who is presumed to benefit from internationalization, and who is the presumed subject of internationalization efforts? In particular, we are wary of implicit assumptions that the assumed target for internationalization on North American campuses is a white, citizen, middle class individual who needs (and is entitled to) “exposure” to the “rest of the world” for their own personal and political development. Meanwhile, international students, and non-Western community partners, are often framed not as subjects but as objects of internationalization, in particular, as objects of Western development by way of education. Such framings naturalize and reproduce Eurocentric hierarchies of knowledge and humanity.
To further nuance this conversation, we might go beyond asking who is included and centered in conversations about internationalization, and also ask about the terms of the conversation itself: Who gets to decide what counts as internationalization, and why? Who has more power in shaping international research partnerships or international service-learning programs, and what are the histories and institutional structures that have created and sustained these unequal patterns of relationship? How might these patterns be interrupted and reformulated so as to enact internationalization in more equitable ways? Engaging with these kinds of questions would invite faculty and administrators to either begin or continue identifying the enduring intellectual and political economies that shape internationalization practice, and perhaps prompt them to consider the challenges that would be involved in trying to reframe it.
Second, commonly cited definitions of internationalization frame it as an “ongoing process”—and we welcome this approach. However, our profiles above note that dominant approaches to internationalization remain highly technical and emphasize coverage of regions, languages, and programs, and the quantity of international activities rather than a more qualitative consideration of the ethical and political possibilities that are enabled by any particular activity. Rather than conceptualizing internationalization in terms of coverage, through numerical indicator programs and students, we argue that internationalization should be understood as an approach to “encountering difference” and perhaps, as a way to “encounter difference differently,” that opens up possibilities for examining and re-examining biases, stereotypes, and hegemonic assumptions about ways of being and knowing. In line with this argument, we would ask administrators to reflect on questions such as the following: What are you measuring? What assumptions and investments are reflected in those measurements? To what extent are the outcomes of internationalization framed in terms of “acquiring” knowledges about places and peoples, rather than “deconstructing” assumed knowledge, and “opening up” new possibilities for relating to ourselves and the world in ways that account for our differences and interdependencies?
Footnotes
Authors’ Note
Sharon Stein is now affiliated with University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
