Contributing to Current Discussions on the 'Geopolitics of Higher Education'

My project analyses the causal mechanisms and powers that underlies issues related to hybridity and the ‘third space’, an imaginary space that I argue is created among international students after having left their nations for several years and adapting to a new cultural space as students in a university abroad (Bhabha, 2004). Using critical realism theory, specifically Margaret Archer’s (2003) concept of ‘reflexivity’, I plan to explore international students’ inner dialogues to understand their thoughts on nationalism and identity in the transition space after university and how it contributes to their decision-making as they move into employment and the global labour market. The ‘geopolitical’ dimension of my research is the role international education have in the shaping of global collaboration and economic development, specifically through the influence universities have in shaping the next generations’ self-identity and agency as global mobility will rise again as we see the end of this pandemic. Since nationalism is caused by a “multidimensional sense of marginalisation” (Bieber 2018), I see my project highly relates with discussions about national sentiment and identity conflicts, particularly among international students. This is because the analytical tools I intend to use from critical realism allows me to look at both structure and agency (analytical dualism) and how they nomadically interlock in the process of creating individual and systemic/institutional change.

Another geopolitical dimension I am exploring is the context of nationalism and how it shifts in the university. I am interested in the power universities have as a political institution to the ideologies their students bring to the communities they later join. Internationalisation has become synonymous with westernisation according to several literatures (Lee, 2021; Mok, 2007; Yang 2002). I am interested in this because it shows how the international education experience really influences individual’s values and world views, particularly those from non-western countries. As Bieber (2018) suggested, the key marker of nationalism is grounded in narratives of being natives or holding a particular set of values. Since universities play an important role in shaping values, it is critical to understand the various colonial aspects in international education as its qualities are still determined by western norms (Lee, 2021; Madsen and Adriansen, 2020).

I believe my contribution to a more comprehensive understanding of geo-politics would be my proposal to provide a more critical analysis to the post-colonial and de-colonial discussions in the geopolitics of HE. In this course, Katja Brogger suggested us to look into how the nation-state of a country is influencing the nation-state of the university. This macro-micro relationship is an interest for me and I will explore it further from the lens of theories such as Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) to look into how the political economic sphere of a country shapes the 'skill regimes' of that country which influences how their universities and training institution operates. The need to re-visit best practices in universities lead to the question of how world events (Brexit, the Pandemic) have changed our ways of learning and how we can incorporate the new ways we have adapted towards further growth. In my case this would be a re-visit to understanding our systems and standards, how we are opening space for inclusive thinking, how to move against personal biases and systematic inequalities that have embedded our ways despite the many efforts we have already made in the last decade. This is why the course was so enthusiastic about questioning standards, particularly what is our standards today with all the geopolitical happenings that we recently and are currently facing. The new geo-politics have grown from the very challenges we have faced together. This is why this is the best moment to work on pushing the boundaries towards more effective international collaboration and partnership, particularly between the west and non-western countries. It is no longer the time to hold back when there are differences of principles, this is the very purpose of the theories and approaches I am using in my research. In fact, these dissimilarities are signs that there are ways for improvement. Because in these differences we can find methods of negotiations to seek what have continuously been the barrier holding us back from greater collaborations and development. This will improve our field, more than it has in the past 30 years.

References

Archer, M. (2003). Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture. London: Routledge.

Bieber, F. (2018). Is Nationalism on the Rise? Assessing Global Trends, Ethnopolitics Vol. 17 Issue 5 Pages 519-540

Lee J (2021). International Education as a Geopolitical Power, in Lee (ed) US Power in International Higher Education, Rutgers University Press (chapter 1).

Mok, K. H. (2007). Questing for internationalization of universities in Asia: Critical reflections. Journal of Studies in International Education, 11(3–4), 433–454.

Yang, R. (2002). Third delight: The internationalisation of higher education in China. New York, NY: Routledge.

Madsen, L. M., and Adriansen, H. K. (2020): Transnational research capacity building: Whose standards count? Critical African Studies. doi:10.1080/21681392.2020.1724807