International Students: (Non)citizenship, Rights, Discrimination, and Belonging

Going Beyond the (Un)awakened Body: Arts-Based Collaborative Autoethnographic Inquiry of Korean Doctoral Students in the United States

“…We found that our sense of foreignness positioned us as outsiders whose voices were not heard and who had difficulty negotiating standards or given institution rules. In accordance with our findings, previous studies have demonstrated that international students' (non)belonging stemming from non-citizenship status made it hard for them to protect their rights (Tran & Hoang, 2020). As in Kim's (2020) story of her experience as a Korean international scholar, we doubted our ability to raise our voices to change institutionalized regulations or the unfair treatment of Asian students.…”

Citizenship Practices of Chinese Students on an Australian Campus: a Case Study

“…These activities have rarely been examined from a citizenship perspective, however. The studies that adopted this theoretical lens have tended to treat citizenship as a formal status associated with the nation-state, examining citizenship in terms of rights entitlements and traditional civic and political activities such as voting and engaging with local community (Skeiker 2010;Szelényi and Rhoads 2007;Tran and Hoang 2020). Although the status dimension of citizenship is useful in underlining the limited social and political rights of international students in their host societies which often contribute to their situation of being marginalised and excluded in these societies, it leaves out of the picture the citizenships expressed and practised in international students' everyday lives.…”

“…Being mobile in a world where citizenship rights are still largely defined by borders of nation-states means that international students are often in a vulnerable position, their rights entitlement and wellbeing not being sufficiently protected by reliable and coherent mechanisms (Tran and Hoang 2020). As scholars (Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood 2017) arguing for rethinking the ways to protect international students' rights contend, examining students' social activities through the lens of citizenship allows us to appreciate the nature of the citizenship practices in which they engage, practices reflecting a wide range of economic, sociocultural, and political activities in the host society.…”

“…The number of students studying outside their home countries has grown significantly over the past few decades (OECD 2021). Although the importance of this mobile group has been highlighted in policy discourses as representing great economic value for the host countries and as fostering important human capital for its home countries, the actual experiences of international students are often characterised by marginalisation, discrimination, exclusion, and disadvantage (Tran and Hoang 2020). As a result, students in this group project a dichotomous image as both 'valuable' and 'vulnerable' (Cho 2017).…”

“…As a result, students in this group project a dichotomous image as both 'valuable' and 'vulnerable' (Cho 2017). Their experiences are associated to a significant degree with their temporary migrant status which restricts their access to citizenship entitlements such as work rights and government benefits available to their peers (Sinanan and Gomes 2020;Tran and Hoang 2020). They also reflect the multiple difficulties international students face in building social connections in host societies, in achieving economic security, in remaining physically and mentally healthy, and in developing a sense of belonging.…”