Yellow Peril and cash cows: the social positioning of Asian international students in the USA

Abstract

Asians and Asian Americans in the USA have long been a part of a contentious racial history, yet the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted discriminatory stereotypes and beliefs. As revealed through this discourse analysis, Asian international students were simultaneously positioned as scapegoats, bearers of disease, cash cows, and political pawns, all within the context of the pandemic. Asian international students navigated their shifting social positionings within a national context that was heavily influenced by racist nativism. Findings indicated that during a health pandemic, Asian international students were positioned as both the Yellow Peril and cash cows within U.S. higher education. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10734-022-00814-y.

Unraveling the myth of Western supremacy: A critical discourse analysis of U.S. news reporting on international student migration from China.

“…In specific, I demonstrated that along with the perpetuation of the China-U.S. dichotomy, Chinese students were discursively configured as problems/threats vis-à-vis the United States, and as malcontents/victims vis-à-vis China. For the observed positioning of Chinese students visà-vis the United States, the findings of the study echoed existing scholarly critiques of the image of otherness confronting international students in the context of their host country (Suspitsyna & Shalka, 2019;Yao & George Mwangi, 2022). For the observed positioning of Chinese students vis-à-vis China, the findings shed new light on issues surrounding the identities of international students as they illuminated that the framing of international students as unintegrated others tended to percolate into the dynamics not only between the students and their host country, but also between the students and their home country.…”

“…As demonstrated by the findings of the study, the othering of international students is heavily shaped by a dominant “global imaginary” (Stein & Andreotti, 2016) undergirded by the coloniality of power, which transcends a U.S.-centered notion of race/racism. The prevalence of derogatory remarks on international students during the COVID-19 pandemic (Yao & George Mwangi, 2022) can be considered the most recent iteration of the colonial global imaginary in question. Therefore, administrators, faculty, and student affairs staff in U.S. HEIs are expected to take informed steps to look beyond the U.S.-centered notion of race/racism for the sake of combating the othering of international students (Yao et al, 2019).…”

“…Among the roughly 1 million international students currently studying and living in the United States, more than 90% of them came from non-Western backgrounds 1 (IIE, 2021b). Along with the increasing presence of non-Western international students in U.S. HEIs, there has been a growing concern over the rise of xenophobic and discriminatory sentiments toward this student population, which has been only further exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic (Bardhan & Zhang, 2017; George Mwangi et al, 2019; Koo et al, 2021; Lee & Rice, 2007; Ma & Zhan, 2020; Stein & Andreotti, 2016; Yao & George Mwangi, 2022).…”

Interrogating higher education's responses to international student mobility in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This opinion of a cash cow is aligned with the previous research before the pandemic, which reveals that higher education institutions and governments do not provide adequate support to international students, who are treated as aliens with limited rights despite being an essential part of any institution's internationalisation effort and are classified as non-citizens and temporary migrants [ 61 , 62 ]. IHIs and governments frequently overlook or neglect international students [ 15 , 63 ], and international students are commonly treated as cash cows with poor services [ 64 , 65 ] providing resources to enable economic advantage [ [66] , [67] , [68] ] from international student fees [ 13 ]. In other words, IHE in the global north is considered a mechanism for governments to earn funds to offset dwindling public funding [ 69 ].…”

“I don’t think it can solve any problems”: Chinese international students’ perceptions of racial justice movements during COVID-19.

“…According to Yeo et al (2019), Asian international students are often racialized by their skin color, English proficiency, and nationality as they become integrated into U.S. society. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, they are simultaneously positioned as scapegoats, bearers of disease, cash cows, and political pawns (Yao & George Mwangi, 2022). In addition, Chinese students are considered outsiders in U.S. domestic issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement and affirmative action campaigns (Lien, 2021), so their misunderstanding and stereotypes about U.S. racial minorities do not reduce but probably deepen due to the lack of cross-racial interactions and almost the absence of antiracist education.…”