UC Berkeley

In recent decades, international student mobility (ISM) in the context of American higher education institutions (HEIs) has become increasingly affected by a power-imbued paradigm of racialization. As suggested by a growing number of studies, U.S.-bound international students, especially those from non-Western backgrounds, are subjected to institutionalized racist and xenophobic sentiments, which lead to alarming levels of discrimination against the students (Bardhan & Zhang, 2017; DiAngelo, 2006; Lee & Rice, 2007; Yao, 2018; Yao & Mwangi, 2022). However, in spite of a shared understanding of the adversities confronting the students, there is a dearth of empirical inquiries into the political and ideological underpinnings of the racialization of ISM, let alone the ways in which the students respond to the racialized paradigm as they navigate their everyday lives in a transnational and transcultural environment. In this three-paper dissertation project, I aim to contribute to filling the identified research gaps through a multi-layered examination of the interplay between the cycle of racialization and a specific body of the international student population in the U.S., i.e., undergraduate Chinese international students. Based on the analysis of data collected from three main sources, i.e., the U.S. news media, survey questionnaires, and a 26-month period of ethnographic fieldwork, the findings of my dissertation illustrate that the cycle of racialization targeted at the Chinese students has its roots in a dominant narrative of the West (us)/non-West (them) divide. This dominant narrative, which mirrors the legacies of colonialism, gives rise not only to the essentialized conceptualization of the cultural attributes and national origin of the students, but also to the marginalization of the students as inferior and unassimilable others. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that the identities of the students are influenced but not determined by the imposed West/non-West divide. Drawing on an assemblage of language and other semiotic practices undergirding their everyday learning and living experiences in both online and offline spaces, the students develop alternative frames of reference to agentively position themselves vis-à-vis their home and host societies. In so doing, they embark on a journey to re-conceptualizing the meaning of studying abroad and the process of becoming transnational migrants. These findings are further discussed in the dissertation in relation to the imperative for developing an anti-racist and decolonizing agenda for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion against the backdrop of the continued internationalization of American HEIs.