The International Higher Education: Ethics, Politics and Labour research cluster emerged out of conversations about the complex ethical and political landscapes of internationalizing the postsecondary education sector in Canada--a major realm of connections between Canada and the world. We want to think through the global hierarchies of international higher education, historically and in current forms, and Canada's role in shaping and re-shaping this dynamic in critical ways. Largely interested in the movement of bodies, ideas, practices and infrastructures that internationalization facilitates, coerces and oversees, we ask how these movements shape local Canadian landscapes of higher education. In the process, we seek to generate broader questions of justice, ethics and politics in the realms of teaching, learning, curricular and pedagogical practices as well as in realms of student life and labour in host institutions. We also seek to expose the factors that give rise to these movements, from local politics of education funding to global contexts of labour, languages, research and publishing.
Membership and Interests
We are scholars, students and educators actively thinking through, teaching and writing about international higher education as it intersects, overlaps and conflicts with global migration and migrant labour exploitation, neocolonial programs of soft power and/or the imperialistic capture and control of human and natural resources, curricular internationalizing, anticolonial pedagogies and postsecondary restructuring. Our disciplinary affiliations lie with Humanities, the broader Social Sciences (Sociology, Social Work, Geography, Politics, Migration & Diaspora Studies), Education, Labour Studies, Anthropology, and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. Specifically, we are examining if and how these disciplines could offer (or not) critical conceptual tools to de-couple postsecondary internationalizing from colonial capitalist power relations and profiteering.
- In what ways can feminist, antiracist and decolonial theories and intersectional approaches illuminate the diverse and often marginalized experiences of international students, and how can educational practices be transformed to address issues of gender, race, class, and labour exploitation in global academic contexts?
- How do borders—both literal and epistemic—affect the experiences of international students in higher education, and what strategies can be employed to challenge or transcend these borders, integrate ethics and human rights, and demonstrate solidarity with international students who are also workers and potential permanent residents of Canada?
- How do colonial histories, global power dynamics, and nationalism shape the movements of people, ideas, and resources within international higher education? What are the ethical and political implications of these movements/dynamics largely from the global north to the global south?
- How do decolonial frameworks/theories critique Western academic dominance and how might they be used to reimagine the internationalization of higher education and foster more equitable movements of peoples, systems of knowledge and ideas?
Objectives
- Offer space for conversations among graduate students and faculties on the aforementioned areas with the overarching goal to envisioning ethical internationalization.
- Foster a critical mass of international students and scholars at York University, with an eventual goal of creating a wider network where such conversations can grow.
- Carve out spaces for discussions on the specific ways internationalizing cuts through our scholarly areas, e.g., migration, labour activism, feminism, care work, supervision, pedagogy, epistemology, writing, study abroad, academic integrity, scholarships, student support, advocacy, and ethics of international exchange etc.
- Work toward building a multi-layered research agenda capturing the complexities of postsecondary internationalizing.
Membership
Stevie Bell - Cluster Co-Lead, Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, York University
Soma Chatterjee - Cluster Co-Lead, Associate Professor, School of Social Work, York University
Tania Das Gupta - Professor, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, York University
Vedanth Sachdeva Govi - PhD Candidate, Anthropology, York University
Brian Hotson - Writer, Independent Scholar
Shirin Shahrokni - Associate Professor, Sociology, York University
Roopa Desai Trilokekar - Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, York University
Asmita Bhutani Vij- Assistant Professor, Work and Labour Studies, York University