Agency is not defined by the context that you are in currently, it is also defined by where you have been. In other words, it is defined by what you bring with you as an individual moving through time. Therefore, students’ past context affects future situations and as a result has the potential to constrain their agency.
This argument has implications for global contexts when the wider outcomes of internationalisation are considered. For instance, since 2017, China and Sub-Saharan African regions have seen the fastest growth of English-taught programmes having both doubled their provision.
Now close to 28,000 masters and undergraduate programmes are offered in English outside of the US, UK, Australia and Canada. In this sense, it seems that the traditional 'source countries' of international students are now becoming 'destination counties'. Nevertheless, the diaspora to the 'inner-circle' countries still dominates. In 2019 there were 5.3 million international students globally, with more than half of them enrolled in programmes in the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, and Russia. By 2025, this figure is expected to reach 8 million!
If agency is defined by where you have been, it is therefore questionable whether students are taught in an international context through socially just pedagogies which facilitate international and intercultural learning and position students as epistemic equals in the classroom. So, what can be done to address this issue?
An argument at the centre of this issue is that fact that by its very definition an international university is a multilingual space and that policy should coherently reflect this. For instance, pedagogies of internationalisation should make provision for students to be able to conduct research multilingually. In this way, in an international setting epistemologies of different languages are given recognition and do not have to get lost in unframed or unnuanced English translation.
To become genuinely international, global universities need to develop a critical consciousness. With the recent movement to decolonise curriculums, it is clear that as a product of colonialism, and more recent trends of international economic liberalisation, indigenous languages and epistemologies have been suppressed for many years.
In the case of Higher Education (HE), globally English-Medium Instruction (EMI) implementation has been haphazard as universities have been pursuing ranking status, more international student numbers, and more profit. This trend frames internationalisation as a 'numbers game' and the concomitant EMI policy, a policy infused with social justice issues.
Globally, in the age of academic capitalism HE institutions are profit-making systems regulated through neoliberal, capitalistic, rationalities which overlook realistic ecologies of language. Such neoliberal rationalities reinforce hegemonic EMI policies which overlook local indigenous languages and thus engender epistemic injustices. A continuation of such policies in the future puts HE institutions at risk of becoming less multilingual. Therefore, to gain trust and become genuinely international, global universities need to develop a critical consciousness.
To begin this process and rebuild trust, dialogues are required to describe what is taking place and reflect upon whether the outcomes of current policies are socially just. Policy makers worldwide need to implement measures that maximises opportunities for students and policy makers themselves to co-imagine socially just pedagogies within their structured ecologies.
To start this process, Global North Universities should partner with Global South Universities in more equal ways to learn from each other. For instance, they can learn how the curriculums are developed in their respective contexts to respond to the needs of stakeholders. Curriculums for international students should give scope for the students, who are at their centre, to explore elements of their identities and should be aligned with their worldviews.
A pedagogy of internationalisation, therefore, should be one that enlarges the range of affordances available to students within their situated structured linguistic ecologies. This action would give students the opportunity to shape situations of their learning in different ways, and this may be achieved through an analysis of existing power relations.
Maximising the range of affordances to international students suggests a shift from curriculums being ‘planned’ to curriculums being ‘lived’, in that socially just curriculums can emerge from ecologies of intercultural interaction between students and teachers. By starting these processes policy makers and key decision makers can mobilize international epistemologies.