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The affective assemblage of internationalisation in Japanese higher education

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Version 2 2023-06-07, 08:52
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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 08:52 authored by Louise Morley, Paul Roberts, Hiroshi Ota
Positive attributes stick to higher education internationalisation, and it is a policy paradigm with performative effects. Internationalisation draws on imagined virtuous flows of knowledge production and exchange, and is presented as an assemblage of detraditionalisation, expansiveness and epistemic and cultural opportunity for individuals, organisations and nation states. Policies target bodies, minds and affect, yet are presented as an unquestionable good in an imagined genderneutral, borderless, meritocratic and benign global knowledge economy. This paper explores the affective economy of internationalisation drawing upon interview data gathered in fifteen private, five national and eight public universities in Japan with thirty-four migrant academics and thirteen international doctoral researchers. We aim to contribute to internationalisation theory by exploring the sticky micropolitics of internationalisation in relation to affective assemblages, and how the gendered, racialised, linguistic and epistemic inequalities constituting academic mobility are frequently disqualified from discourse. Our discussion includes consideration of the Japanese policy context, the concept of affective assemblages, navigating gender regimes, precarity and linguistic imperialism. We conclude that the immaterial or affective labour that is required to unstick, install and maintain an internationalised academic identity and navigate the translations and antagonisms from everyday encounters with difference is substantially under-estimated.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Higher Education

ISSN

0018-1560

Publisher

Springer

Department affiliated with

  • Education Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2020-07-23

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2020-08-19

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2020-07-23

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