Adding an International Student’s Voice to the Pandemic Discourse as Thinkers, not Subjects: Reflections on Power, Stillness and Humanness

As of this writing, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international higher education is continuously being documented, drawing enough, if not too much, attention towards international students. However, the voices of international students remain muted such that much of what has been said about their experience do not directly come from them but from those who claim to speak on their behalf. In this essay, I attempt to add an international student voice to the pandemic discourse by shifting attention to international students not as subjects but as thinkers and co-producers of knowledge in their own right, in hope of also contributing to the broader conversation about ethics and responsibility surrounding international education and international student mobility research and practice. I do so by sharing my own reflections on the crisis and its critical relation to power, stillness and humanness

Understanding the Potential for a Hallyu “Backlash” in Southeast Asia: A Case Study of Consumers in Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines

Korean cultural products (known as Hallyu) are now the dominant incarnation of East Asian culture throughout Southeast Asia and have introduced consumers to Korean industry, cosmetics, and culture. Recent work has concentrated heavily upon this region and the new dynamics Southeast Asian countries can offer to the study of inter-Asian cultural links, particularly during the political amalgamation of the ASEAN economic community. Yet in the more developed Southeast Asian nations of Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, there is some evidence of a rejection of and animosity towards Hallyu products from consumers who are beginning to question and disapprove of the high number of Korean products in their countries. Through interviews with over 70 consumers dissatisfied with Hallyu across these three nations, this project identifies three main areas under which this potential for a Hallyu “backlash” occurs: perceptions of colonial-esque attitudes and cultural imperialism from Korea; the movement of Hallyu from an innovative new “high culture” to a static and out-of-date “low culture”; and the increasing availability of new and different international products that threaten to usurp Hallyu. Such evidence represents a potential change in East and Southeast Asian relations, as well as the long term difficulties inherent in using Hallyu as a vehicle to maintain Korean influence

Sustaining Korean Studies: Challenges and Prospects in Philippine Higher Education Institutions

The view and reality of a bifurcated world are brought into stark relief by COVID-19. Those long-standing inequalities in different facets of life are exacerbated by the pandemic that has been widely acknowledged and documented. Scholars recognize that humanity has entered the era of “Covidscapes,” where there is a shared experience of the pandemic; but where segregation is felt at different levels due to its differential impact. While division and its many manifestations are not the makings of the pandemic; COVID-19 is amplifying long-standing binaries between the developed and developing; the affluent and the poor; and even the West and the East. While not exhaustive; this commentary lays out these prevailing divides and disparities from the lens and through the experiences of international students

Deconstructing the periphery: Korean degree-seeking students’ everyday transformations in and through India

According to dominant perspectives on educational mobilities, India is not an obvious study destination choice and more so not a favoured one for students from South Korea. The aim of this paper is to question this prevalent discourse by drawing attention to the small-sized but rather steady flow of Korean students who have gone to Indian universities for both short-term and long-term educational programmes. Obviously, this unique but underexplored phenomenon is at odds with the prevailing episteme surrounding international student mobilities (ISM) focused on the ‘world-class’ imaginary and East–West, South–North binaries. By presenting empirical data on and from Korean degree-seeking students in India, this study offers fertile understanding of student experiences and imaginings of transformations – those that take place in what have been typecast as ‘peripheral’ study destinations such as India. Drawing on critical scholarship on ISM, this paper seeks to find out what changes and shifts are generated in and through the periphery as a place of study. In particular, it asks: what discourses on transformation do students construct as they experience, imagine and desire changes in their lives through their everyday encounters with and negotiation of India? How are these transformations articulated and how do these articulations, in turn, manifest (de)constructed views of place, of self and of others? And, lastly, how do these narratives shape the broader discourse on educational mobilities and study abroad? In approaching these questions, this paper introduces diverse discourses on ‘everyday transformations’ articulated by students through comparison, contradiction and conjecture

Towards an integrative understanding of contemporary educational mobilities: a critical agenda for international student mobilities research

The study of international student mobilities (ISM) has increased substantially over the last two decades. Following trends in institutional and policy debates on the broader internationalisation of education, researchers have paid considerable attention to questions about why, where, how and under what circumstances people engage in educational migration. As the field of ISM has matured, however, it has also taken shape around distinct frameworks wherein little cross-fertilisation appears to be occurring and where a series of normative narratives have emerged. In this paper we evaluate the extant scholarship on ISM and argue that there are significant blind spots in current research and that there is a need for a greater focus on interdisciplinary conversations that can address the changing characteristics of educational migration internationally. In particular, we argue that researchers have remained preoccupied on researching international students at particular points in time, have over emphasised the centrality of privilege and youth and been too focused on Westward mobility. In concluding, we set an agenda for future research on ISM that addresses three key challenges: analysing the connection between imagination and action; the relationship between life course, privilege and precarity; and accounting for the recent diversification and stratification of ISM