Mapping the emotions of racialised international students and the politics of exclusion in higher education

Abstract

The concerns of power and recognition regarding international students’ experiences are largely absent from the literature, with a discourse of social inclusion framing the focus. Social inclusion within an economically centred view of international education ignores issues of ‘difference’ and celebrates ‘diversity’ as a key aspect. Such an approach lacks a discussion of power concerns; diversity is portrayed as unproblematic, whereas difference is something that needs to be managed by standardization and monitoring procedures. The article contributes to the recent decolonial approaches to racialised international students by showing how the subtle dynamics of power relations within higher education influence international students’ emotional experiences. It draws on longitudinal data collected from 25 Chinese international postgraduate students over a 1-year period in the UK. While employing Ahmed’s framework of affective economies together with Foucault’s concepts of discourse and power, it investigates the intricate connections between international students’ emotional experiences and prevailing institutional discourses of neoliberalism, individualism and postcolonialism. It elucidates how emotions work as tools to both constrain and enable agency in relation to the thoughts and actions of international students, influencing the perceived eligibility and appropriateness of their behaviours within the ‘White’ UK higher education space.