Interview with Asuka Ichikawa

Interview: Can you tell us a little about your journey to becoming a researcher? What is your background?

Asuka: For me, the journey began when I became an international student at age sixteen. I left my home in Japan to study at a public secondary school near Vancouver, Canada. Yet at that time, I had little knowledge of research. Even though I loved to learn, and even though I saw professors in classes, I did not think that a scholarship could be a potential path to pursue as a profession for myself. Also, I think my interests in languages, cultures, and countries began a lot earlier, as someone who was raised by a mother who taught Japanese to international students/professionals and a father who was a bilingual spokesperson. Also, while I was born and raised in Japan, my family kept in touch with our relatives in the U.S. who are the descendants of my great grandfather’s sister who immigrated to the U.S. These ties motivated me to learn more about my family history in the context of migration, and how to stop injustices such as racism. For these reasons, I grew up interacting with people from various parts of the world, thinking about how people could connect with each other despite any differences we may have.

Initially, I was interested in seeking a career in diplomacy. This led me to major in international relations at the University of British Columbia in Canada. There, I worked for the university’s mentorship program for international students, and designed and directed a student-led seminar on multicultural history and policies in Canada with other students who had transnational backgrounds. From these experiences, I gradually became interested in exploring international students’ lived experiences in a scholarly way. However, I did not begin my journey to become a researcher right away.

After completing my bachelor’s degree, I went back to Japan to be with my father who had been fighting a terminal illness. After completing a master’s degree in the Human Security and Communications program at Keio Graduate School of Media and Governance, I began my career in investment banking, where I had the opportunity to work with people from multiple countries on a daily basis. Several years later, I decided to make a career change. I attended Harvard Graduate School of Education to learn about cross-cultural counseling and evidence-based intervention programs. Upon graduation, I moved to New York City and worked for The Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, in the field of public diplomacy to promote U.S.-Japan relations through cross-cultural educational and exchange programs.

After working for both private and public institutions, I became more aware of my passion for impacting practice and policy-making in international education through research. Now as a doctoral student, I am grateful for the international and diverse academic community at Boston College, where I have the opportunities to work with colleagues and faculty who share the commitment to international social justice. As I am the first in my family to pursue graduate studies, I am truly thankful for my family, friends, and mentors who supported and believed in me along the way.

Interviewer: What interested you in specifically doing research with international students?

Asuka: To this day, my foundation to do research with international students is grounded in my lived experiences as an international student, a foreign-born professional, and a female migrant of colour. My hope is to conduct research that could bring out the humanity of international students/scholars and advocate for any necessary changes at the institutional and systemic levels to support their well-being as whole persons.

Interviewer: What are your reflections about both being a current international student and being a scholar in this subfield? Does this dual role bring up any benefits or challenges for you and your work?

Asuka: I think of my dual role as a unique asset. My identity as an international student helps me to connect with other international students with empathy, with the capacity to understand the structural challenges that we live with. At the same time, I acknowledge that my role in academia specializing and writing about the very population I am part of – comes with a privilege and a responsibility. While being critically aware of my own biases and assumptions, I hope to co-create the research with the participants and deliver it to the world, to hopefully collectively promote international social justice.

In terms of how I came to carry the dual role – for many years, it did not occur to me that I could be a researcher. Journal articles were something that I read; academic papers were something that I wrote for classes. Nevertheless, a change in my mentality happened when the door opened for me to publish the piece on family loss and grief several years after completing my master’s degree. Recently, I noticed the article was cited by other scholars, and I am experiencing how rewarding it could be to be in conversation with other authors wherever we are located.

Through research, I realized I could take action on the structural problems I found through my lived experiences as an international student. In addition to finding the space and permission to write about my experiences, being in academia allows me to work as a conduit of the diverse yet collective voices of the international students’ community to call for change. As aforementioned, I do not intend to represent a body of international students as we each live in distinct contexts and possess complex, intersectional identities. I am also aware of how my worldview could impact the choices in my research topics, questions, designs, and writing. Yet as someone who is drawn to people’s stories and feminist theories, it was liberating for me to learn that I could embrace my subjectivity as an international student and a researcher, as long as I am creating the time and space to be explicitly critical of my own research process.

Interviewer: What is your overall impression of this research subfield? Where do you see it going in the next 5-10 years?

Asuka: When I was an undergraduate student about a decade ago, I do not think there was — or at least I was unaware of — a research subfield on international students in higher education. I am thankful for the generations of scholars who developed this field because I finally feel I found an academic ‘home’ as someone who walked an interdisciplinary journey both academically and professionally. I think the field will continue to evolve through the intersections between international higher education and global trends/issues, such as climate change, the role of technology, (im)migration issues, and the instability of world peace. In addition to those factors at the macro level, I think the field will continue to be shaped by what is happening at the personal level, including students’ mental health, generational changes in lifestyles/norms/values, and immobile and mobile aspects of our lives concerning our careers, human connections, and (inter)national policies.

Interviewer: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing research with international students right now?

Asuka: I think discriminatory politics and policies pose lingering challenges ahead. Psychological and physical safety matter for students to engage in learning. For international students in particular, their sense of belonging could impact their decisions on which countries they would like to study at, and potentially to work after graduation. I am also concerned about the neoliberal influences in higher education that are making higher education increasingly expensive and exclusive, causing more burdens on international students and their families.

Perhaps the term international higher education could be thought of as an oxymoron; it shows the inherent systemic barriers we are trying to dismantle because higher education institutions were originally developed to educate elite local citizens in their respective countries. Today, more and more international students are being sought out by universities around the world — while there are initiatives to create more inclusive and intercultural learning and living campus environments, it is also important to keep our eyes open to some of the underlying parochial motivations for the institutions to seek international students to supplement financial and demographic changes and challenges. As such, I think caution is needed for discourses and narratives in research that risk reducing the humanity of international students.

Interviewer: You have been really involved in the research community, especially with your work for Journal of International Students. How have you navigated this as an early career researcher?

Asuka: I am grateful that I could be part of the international research community at an early stage of my academic career. I am especially thankful to the editorial team of the Journal of International Students (JIS) for welcoming the pioneering idea to create a podcast for the academic journal. As the Producer and the Host of the Global Scholar Stories podcast, my mission is to create an accessible and audible mentoring resource for student- researchers who may be new to navigating an academic career, publishing, and ultimately – our life as transnational scholars in international education. We do this by highlighting the personal stories of students/scholars behind their research, hosting conversations with experienced scholars, and amplifying the voices and works of students/early career researchers. As someone who was (and still is) new to an academic career and publishing, I wanted to demystify both processes by creating a free, mobile, and audible resource that could be accessed by anyone from anywhere in the world. As of Fall 2023, we are preparing Season 2 to be released soon, so please visit the JIS website and our social media platforms for more updates!

The podcast is part of the Digital Storytelling Team for the Journal of International Students (JIS). In the team, I work with Dr. Sarah Schiffecker, the Director of Social Media, and Györgyi Mihályi, the Editor of Global Connections Newsletters. Our collaborative work is situated at the end of the whole production process of the academic journal — a lot of work happens behind the scenes prior to publishing, and our job as the team is to disseminate the authors’ works in the best light, and also to open the doors to publishing for students/early career researchers. 

In my work with JIS, I am glad that I could bring my previous experiences in journalism/communications and digital storytelling. I love to interview; as in the Japanese proverb ichigo ichie, I appreciate each encounter with other researchers who care about the field. Since I am usually the one to interview others, writing this piece has been a refreshing experience (with much gratitude to the RIS book editors for this opportunity)!

Interviewer: What advice would you give to researchers who are developing a new research study with and about international students?

Asuka: Please read our book [Research with International Students], and let us know what you think! 🙂 — This would be the shortest answer, but if I could add more (even as an early career researcher), I would encourage researchers to be rooted in the lived experiences of international students. This down-to-earth perspective will lead us to research that is true to the needs of international students and propel us to think about how we might make a difference in both practice and policy to create a world where we could thrive together.