Rethinking the Ethics of Internationalization: Five Challenges for Higher Education

Abstract

These concerns are heightened given that the rise of internationalization has coincided with public funding cuts that have prompted institutions to increasingly rely on student tuition and other income sources not derived from state appropriations to balance their budgets and enact an increasingly market-like ethos (Gaffikin & Perry, 2009;Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). Some suggest that growing international enrolment is being treated as a means to subsidize local students' education and other costs, while potentially contributing to widening inequality in international students' home countries, as well as to the outsized emigration of highly-educated people from those nations (a phenomena known as 'brain drain') (Adnett, 2010;Johnstone & Lee 2014;Waters, 2006Waters, , 2012. Several scholars have therefore noted the risk that internationalization might reproduce already uneven geo-political relations and ultimately contribute to the increased polarization of global wealth distribution (Dixon, 2006;Khoo, 2011;Shahjahan, 2013;Tikly, 2004).In many cases, concerns about the ethical dimensions of internationalization are articulated in response to a recognition and critique of local and global power imbalances, as in the studies cited above. However if, as Bolsmann and Miller (2008) suggest, internationalization is "a continuation of former imperial and political connections that have evolved into financially beneficial markets and sources of income for western universities" (p. 80), then we need to situate the current moment within a longer history of global entanglements organized by colonial, capitalist relations. If we fail to do so, the "ethics of internationalization" will continue to be haunted by the following paradox: the same Eurocentric categories and commitments that reproduce the highly uneven global higher education landscape may also shape many of our efforts to address these inequities.In this paper I argue that in order to interrupt this circularity of critique and reframe our approaches to ethics in internationalization, it is necessary to identify, denaturalize, and interrupt our satisfaction with existing sociohistorical and geopolitical frames for conceptualizing higher education. In particular, I trace the ongoing effects of colonial relations, and consider how these relate to the developmental logics that shape many global engagements in higher education, as well as how these shape ethical possibilities. After this, I outline five ethical challenges of internationalization. I conclude by emphasizing the need for higher education scholars and practitioners to deepen our engagement with these and other challenges in ways that grapple with complexity, contradiction, and complicity, and consider the possibilities and limitations of any potential response. Thus, rather than offer a prescriptive alternative, I ask what it would take for us to unlearn and unravel the harmful investments and narrow frames of reference that keep us from imagining a radically different ethics of internationalization. Decolon...

Discourses on Global North and Global South Partnerships in Internationalization Strategies

“…Examining colonial roots to bring an end to harmful structures is important for internationalization and international partnerships in higher education. Much of the decolonial literature argues that internationalization operates in deliberate ways to maintain global power hierarchies (Amsler & Bolsmann, 2012;Majee & Ress, 2020;Stein, 2016;Thondhlana et al, 2020). Larkin (2015) argues that international research partnerships will continue to play a key role in the recolonization of epistemology as they are typically constructed around Western hegemonic discourses of development.…”

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“…Plusieurs chercheurs dénoncent le faible niveau d'application des principes d'équité et de justice sociale dans les plans stratégiques d'internationalisation des universités canadiennes (Buckner et al, 2020;Garson, 2016;Grantham, 2018). Au vu des critiques adressées aux stratégies universitaires en matière d'internationalisation, en particulier quant à l'altération de leur dimension éthique (Stein, 2016), la réflexion autour de la prise en compte de ces principes devrait constituer une priorité constante pour concevoir des partenariats transformationnels permettant de repenser, réajuster et renforcer la contribution de l'internationalisation à la cohésion sociale à l'échelle mondiale (Grantham, 2018).…”