International students: Is it an innocent label?

Reflections on ‘Research with International Students Conference’ (The University of Manchester, 11-12 December 2023)

By Riadh Ghemmour (The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama)

In December 2023 I attended and presented at an international conference on ‘Research with International Students’ hosted by Manchester colleagues Dr Jenna Mittelmeier, Dr Sylvie Lomer, and Dr Kalyani Unkule at the University of Manchester and funded by The Spencer Foundation.

The conference brought together a diverse and transnational audience and presenters to co-create a space of critical reflexivity, reimagination, ‘problematising givens’ (Pennycook, 2001), and exploring theoretical, methodological, practical, ethical and policy questions related to the concept of ‘international students’ – through an intersectional, decolonial, multicultural, ontological and axiological lens.

The central questions which the conference considered during the two-day programme were as follows:

• What critical conceptual and methodological issues currently face research with international students as a subfield?
• What are practical (macro or micro) considerations for research designs in this subfield?
• How can researchers consider issues of power, inequality, intersectionality, and ethics in research with international students?
• How might research with international students be imagined differently?
• What should the future of research with international students look like?

Having met different scholars, educators, and researchers during the conference, I think it’s fair to say that there was a general agreement that the label of ‘international student’ is problematic, unchallenged and very often used uncritically within the UK higher education (HE) sector – and beyond. This is also evidenced in the scholarly work of key luminaries who acknowledge the HE deficit narratives and discourses framed around internationalisation and international students. For example, Moosavi (2021) states that East Asian students are often seen as lacking critical thinking skills or predisposed to plagiarise; and therefore, they weaken the excellence of the Western academy. Jones (2017) also seems to recognise the ‘deficit’ conceptualisation of international students, in which they are seen as lacking academic, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. Consequently, this can lead to negative stereotyping, over-generalisation, homogenisation and even racist and discriminatory behaviours from staff and students (Welikala and Watkins, 2008). In addition, in their article Heleta and Chasi (2022) explain that efforts to define, frame, label, conceptualise and theorise what internationalisation may mean are often grounded in a northern-centric paradigm and imagination. According to Preston (2013), this upholds Eurocentric hegemony and coloniality in HE – which is defined as the domination and control of Western institutions as the result of colonial legacies which have shaped what is worth of researching, studying, teaching and citing within our academic spaces (Mignolo, 2007; Moosavi, 2020).

As a result, the conference sought to create a space where attending guests engage meaningfully, critically and reflexively with the label of ‘international students’– through asking uncomfortable questions related to coloniality, systemic racism and systems of white dominance.

Many HE universities attract a huge number of international students which is seen as a triumph that feeds diversity agendas. While diversity is important to be recognised, it does not necessarily lead to equity. In addition, international students seem to be both ‘desired’ and ‘unwanted’ because of their both financial contributions to sustain the academy and the politics of border control (King & Raghuram, 2012). This is why research in the field of internationalisation and international students are essential to advance a nuanced understanding of these issues, and how they may play out in reinscribing harm and reinforcing an agenda that is unfair and unjust. In her keynote entitled: an equity-driven lens for research with international students, Chrystal A. George Mwangi reminds us that (re)defining what internationalisation/international students is not a prescribed book, so we need to go beyond conventional and broader definitions which we have, and interrogate such definitions to frame our work and research more critically and reflexively. This is also because the ‘international’ label is not a neutral construct (Merabet, 2021).

In fact, all these issues which have been identified impact the research which is conducted on international students. There were many thematic parallel sessions happening at the same time during the conference, but because I am biased, I attended and presented in the session entitled, ‘decolonising research with international students’. During this session, stimulating conversations, debates and commentaries were made to encourage a decolonising turn to research with international students as a way to problematise research practices which we have normalised and accepted as universal, objective and impartial in the academy. Such approach to research may view participants as simple data, numbers or statistics, and therefore create power differentials between the researchers and the ‘researched’. In my presentation entitled, ‘humanising the international students’ experience’, I also highlighted the above, and invited colleagues to consider issues of power dynamics and how overall power manifests in research – from inception to publication. I recommended the work of Indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith whom we can learn from, and her scholarship and research with the Māori community. Smith (2022) claims that research is a dirty word for Indigenous people because of its links to colonialism and imperialism which perpetuates a dehumanising and unethical practice towards Indigenous people. Smith suggests research from a place of compassion, reciprocity and humility. These values were also discussed by the other speakers during the session.

Another focal theme which was also highlighted during this session and overall conference was the importance of considering issues of positionality. The latter refers to how our experiences, bias, beliefs, privileges, power and ideologies shape the position we research and write from. Sometimes aspects of our positionality go unnamed, unchallenged or unexamined because academia has almost conditioned us to remain objective and has detached us from the broader complexity, insider-outsider dynamics, and messiness of research. Indigenous scholar Shawn Wilson (2008) reminds us that research is relational – meaning that knowledge is co-produced through a set of relationships.

It is also important to note that the social justice, inclusive, creative, imaginative and ethical agenda which this conference endeavours to develop individually and collectively looks like a huge project that involves resources, institutional commitment, community-driven ethos, time and patience. In light of the UK’s new governmental policies to drastically reduce the number of immigrants and international students bringing dependents, rethink graduate visa schemes and significantly increase immigration fees, it’s important to work in solidarity and teach and remind ourselves of ‘critical hope’ as Chrystal A. George Mwangi mentioned it in her keynote to empower ourselves, our students and humanise our research. This reminder of critical hope is timely and what we currently need. It is not the candid nor the naïve passive hope. Lake & Kress (2017) argues that it is instead ‘the active refiguring of epistemological, ontological and axiological conditions necessary for renewing society and alleviating human suffering’ (p. 69). This hope is active, reparative, and forward-looking for transformation, emancipation and empowerment.

I have left the two-day conference feeling hopeful, empowered and inspired as a learning developer and coordinator for the Learning Skills Programme at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Therefore, I am to reimagine and alleviate the student experience at RCSSD and beyond, through creating spaces of dialogic teaching, inclusive research and humanistic-based induction sessions which disrupt cultures of ‘assimilation’ or ‘fitting in’ to enable international students to remain authentic to their multicultural background and lived experiences.

I welcome commentaries, questions and a dialogic space to discuss this reflective blog further, please do reach out to me via email: Riadh.Ghemmour@cssd.ac.uk

Additional resources

• The convenors of the conference wrote an edited book entitled: Research with International Students, published via Routledge (Open Access)
• Keynote speeches and other sessions from the conference were recorded and posted here
• The recording of my presentation can be found here
• More resources on research with international students can be found here

Reference list

Heleta, S., & Chasi, S. (2022). Rethinking and redefining internationalisation of higher education in South Africa using a decolonial lens. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 45(3), 261–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080x.2022.2146566  

Jones, E. (2017). Problematising and reimagining the notion of ‘international student experience.’ Studies in Higher Education, 42(5), 933–943. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2017.1293880  

King, R., & Raghuram, P. (2012). International student migration: Mapping the field and new research agendas. Population, Space and Place, 19(2), 127–137. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1746

Lake, R., & Kress, T. (2017). Mamma don’t put that Blue Guitar in a museum: Greene and Freire’s duet of radical hope in hopeless times. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 39(1), 60–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2017.1262166

Merabet , R. (2021, August 4). ‘Why Am I International?’: Tuition Fees. 

internationalstudentsvoices. January 16, 2024,

https://internationalstudentsvoices.com/2021/08/04/why-am-i-international-tuition          fees/ 

Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Delinking. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 449–514.        https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647  

Moosavi, L. (2020). The decolonial bandwagon and the dangers of intellectual decolonisation. International Review Of Sociology, 30(2), 332-354. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2020.1776919  

Moosavi, L. (2021). The myth of academic tolerance: The stigmatisation of East Asian students in Western Higher Education. Asian Ethnicity, 23(3), 484–503. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2021.1882289

Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics a critical introduction. L. Erlbaum.

Preston, J. (2013). Whiteness in academia: Counter-stories of betrayal and resistance. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Smith, L. T. (2022). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Bloomsbury Academic.

Welikala, T., & Watkins, C. (2008). Improving intercultural learning experiences in higher education responding to cultural scripts for learning. Institute of Education, University of London.

Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: indigenous research methods. Fernwood Pub.