chineseedmobilities

NORDIC JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION (NJCIE) General call for papers

The Nordic Jourmal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE) is now in its seventh year of publication. It is uniquely positioned as the Nordic region’s only journal within Comparative and International Education.Yet,NCIE reaches out to a global audience.

We invite papers that seek to analyze educational discourse, policy, and practice and their implications for teaching and learning, and particularly invite papers investigating topics through an interdisciplinary lens focusing onnew insights and fostering critical debate about the role of education indiverse societies. NICIE is concerned with the interplay of local, national,regional, and global contexts shaping education. The ways in which localunderstandings can bring to light the trends, effects, and influences that existin different contexts globally highlight the general understanding ofComparative and International Education in NCIE.

All papers should include a comparative and/or international dimension. Furthermore, all contributions must engage with wider theories and debatesin the field of comparative and international education and include a Nordicand/or global perspective.

We invite Nordic and international contributions to this general call for papers.

For more information, visit the journal website: http://www.nordiccie.org.

Inaugural British Journal of Sociology Conference

15-16 April 2024, LSE, UK

CALL FOR PAPERS

To mark their new tenure, the Editors of the British Journal of Sociology (BJS) invite submission of abstracts for a major international conference at the London School of Economics (LSE) on 15-16 April 2024.

The BJS conference will showcase cutting-edge research from across the discipline of sociology, and will also feature keynotes, plenary sessions curated by the Editors, and a series of author-meets-critics sessions debating high-profile new books. It will provide a pivotal in-person platform for more than 200 academics across the discipline to advance their research in conversation with colleagues, to learn about the most exciting theoretical, empirical, and methodological developments in the field as well as to foster new synergies and collaborations around pressing challenges relevant to sociology.

There is no predetermined theme for the conference. We invite scholars to submit abstracts of up to 400 words on topics relating to any aspect of sociology. Please include 4-5 keywords with your abstract, along with the names and email addresses of any co-authors. Sessions will be structured by the thematic streams and intellectual foci derived from the submitted abstracts. We welcome submissions from scholars of all ranks and affiliations.

The BJS will heavily subsidise the conference, capping registration fees at just £100 for the whole conference, with 20 free places and 15 travel bursaries for those facing financial hardship.

Submit your abstract here by Friday 20 October 2023.

Key dates:

Abstract submission deadline: 20 October 2023
Decision on paper acceptance: w/c 13 November 2023
Presenter booking deadline: 8 January 2024
Conference dates: 15-16 April 2024

Please send any queries to bjs@lse.ac.uk. A list of Frequently Asked Questions can be found below.

We encourage scholars to share this call for papers with colleagues and encourage them to participate in the conference.

The BJS Editors

Dr Rebecca Elliott, LSE

Professor Sam Friedman, LSE

Dr Ali Meghji, University of Cambridge

Professor Aaron Reeves, University of Oxford

Managing Editor: Tong Meng

Call for Papers & Reviewers for Berkeley Journal of Sociology

The Berkeley Journal of Sociology is a graduate student-run journal with a renewed focus on public sociology. We seek to translate academic social science research into forms that engage wider reading publics. The journal aims to broaden the interpretive range, imaginative scope, and prospective application of sociologically-oriented research to political struggles, emerging cultural trends, and imaginations of alternative futures.

We are currently accepting submissions for our 2024 print journal and website. To be considered for this issue, submissions are due by December 1, 2023 at submissionsbjs@gmail.com. See below for our general submission policies. Should you have any questions, please consult this website or email us at submissionsbjs@gmail.com.

Submission guidelines
The Berkeley Journal of Sociology is accepting the following kinds of submissions:

Essays: long-form articles based on academic research on any timely social issue or phenomena, or the design, implementation, or practice of social policies. Essays are published in our biannual print journals and on our website. Submissions should be relevant to broad audiences outside of academia, and should also incorporate independent research and support claims with original evidence (2,000–5,000 words)
Commentary: assessments and critiques of contemporary social, political, or cultural events, journalistic coverage, recent reports, and public discourse (1,000–2,500 words)
Book reviews: essays that use recently published or canonical books as launching pads to discuss broader social issues (1,000–2,500 words)
Field memos: elaborations of lessons learned and novel methodologies undertaken in the field as they relate to contemporary social struggles, political debates, or social-scientific practice (500–1,000 words)
Photo essays: sociological and visual critiques of society at large

Submission Policies

Submissions must be original work.
All submissions should be written or produced for a general audience.
Articles should be timely, jargon-free, and should support all claims with clear and convincing evidence.
We encourage you to include a high-resolution image or figure to accompany your article.
Submissions that have already been published elsewhere are not eligible for BJS publication. However, pieces that are extensions/expansions/elaborations on past work, as long as they have not been published previously, are eligible for submission.
Submissions for the print edition are due by December 1, 2023. If you wish, you may contact us to inquire about specific ideas or proposals before the deadline. Email submissions (and questions about submissions) to submissionsbjs@gmail.com.

Review Process

All journal submissions are peer-reviewed. You can expect to receive feedback or further communication on your submission by mid-late January, or about a month after the submission deadline.
The BJS Editorial Team reviews submissions. Typically each submission is reviewed anonymously by 1-2 members of the editorial team.
The review process has two rounds. In the first round, submissions are either 1) rejected or 2) we invite authors to revise and resubmit based on editorial feedback. In the second round, revised submissions are reviewed again and are either 1) rejected or 2) invited to resubmit with revisions for final publication in the journal. Typically the same members of the editorial team review the piece throughout the process.
The whole review process typically goes from late January through mid April. The final print publication comes out around May.

Become a Reviewer for the Berkeley Journal of Sociology!
The BJS is made possible with our fantastic editorial collective of graduate students and early-career scholars who review submissions and provide input on the content and layout of the journal. Our editorial board is not limited to UC Berkeley Sociology and we aim to encompass a broad range of sociologically-relevant inquiry.

We are always looking to add more folks to our roster of reviewers! If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, please fill out this form: https://tinyurl.com/Review-BJS

For general information or inquiries, contact us at: berkeleysociologyjournal@gmail.com

Managing Editor: Xin Fan

Understanding Chinese International Students in the U.S. in Times of the COVID-19 Crisis: From a Chinese Discourse Studies Perspective

Yu, J. (2023a). Understanding Chinese International Students in the U.S. in Times of the COVID-19 Crisis: From a Chinese Discourse Studies Perspective. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 18(1), 45-61. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2023.2214538

Against the background of the harsh realities of a deeply unequal global landscape, international student mobility is highly asymmetrical and unidirectional from developing countries to Western universities, primarily to English-speaking destinations (Beech 2019; Marginson 2006). However, the flow of global knowledge is opposite from the American-Western metropolitan centers to the rest of the world, which has been reproduced by accredited higher education institutions and solidified in mass media, press, and publications (Shi-xu 2014). Such one-way academic student mobility not only satisfies host countries’ immediate demands of economic gains, but also naturalizes Western ways of knowing through language, pedagogy, and academic research.

When it comes to the research of international education, particularly among Chinese international students in European and North American universities, the given divergent conceptualizations of thinking between the East and West can be traced back to Hofstede’s cultural studies. In his cultural dimensions, the Eastern and Western people have simply been categorized into the seemingly ‘scientific’ categorizations of collectivism vs. individualism, indirectness vs. directness, egalitarianism vs. hierarchy, masculinity vs. femininity, etc. (Hofstede 2001). Building on the ‘Hofstedian legacy’ (Holliday 2013, 6), theories of cultures of learning in education (Jin and Cortazzi 2011) and cultural foundations of learning in psychology (Li 2012) are successively developed to account for Chinese students’ various shocks and examine students’ difficulties in a new sociocultural context. Traditional cultural attributes seem to serve as the trouble-free, innocent, and normative explanations for human behaviors, but, in effect, they are manipulated to produce and reproduce a systematic discourse of scholarly hegemony. This false cultural profiling not only provides a mechanism for freezing the traits of the cultural group but also strengthens particular knowledge about Eastern images of the inferior Other based on the West-controlled hierarchies of cultures.

In addition, Western colonial/imperial politics of knowledge production is still prevalent and persistent in education research. Through knowledge production and reproduction, the West has intellectual authority over the Orient at the expense of silencing other forms of knowledge. Thus, the differentialist discourses on ‘culture’ play a decisive role in constructing the non-Western as culturally and morally deficient. By the same token, they offer contrasted images of the idealization of the Western Self (Bhabha 1994; Said 2003; Spivak 1988). Epistemic dominance compels researchers of color to believe that Western scholarship of valid knowledge development is the universal standard and norm. Western-centric thinking and long-standing patterns of symbolic violence are not disrupted but reproduced and reinforced through academic practices. To be specific, when doing research on international students from Confucian cultures in Western universities, educational researchers tend to focus on students’ barriers, difficulties, problems, and struggles in a new learning environment (e.g. Ching et al. 2017).

In this article, I draw on Chinese Discourse Studies (Shi-xu, 2014) as a theoretical framework to explore how Chinese international students as cultural agents respond to the global pandemic and pandemic-related stereotypes. To begin with, the primary theoretical mechanism underpinning Chinese Discourse Studies is to seek, create, and maintain societal harmony through a dialectic lens (Shi-xu 2014). There is no denying that after the century-old humiliation of foreign aggression in modern history, the top priority for contemporary China and Chinese people is economic development and social stability. To pursue this goal, Chinese people are accustomed to employing cognitive and discursive strategies to rejuvenate ancient civilization and reclaim their voice on the world stage. Another essential principle underlying Chinese Discourse Studies is to express agreement and avoid extreme binary statements, which is premised on Confucian classics of the Golden Mean, zhongyong (中庸), and harmony, he (和). This salient feature is also reappropriated by the central government to strive to build a harmonious society in hopes of coping with social inequalities emerging in Chinese society (Han 2008). The third theoretical principle of Chinese Discourse Studies is ‘self-criticism first’ (Shi-xu 2014, 160). Chinese discourse culture operates under the rule of meaning production through self-retrospection and self-critique (自我批评 ziwo piping). Nevertheless, many symbolic characteristics, such as indirectness, vagueness, silence, complexity, and even contradiction, are often seen and heard in Chinese public discourse. They are often mistakenly interpreted as lacking in analytical or critical thinking and short of ‘I’ voice (Ramanathan and Kaplan 1996) from white Eurocentric perspectives in discourse studies.

Through a critical analysis of 21 Chinese international students’ narratives, this article identifies three culturally specific characteristics that pervade Chinese normative dialogues: (1) Chinese dialectics, (2) Chinese harmony, and (3) Chinese self-criticism. They are often employed to emphasize Chinese optimistic attitudes in times of crisis, avoidance of confrontation for harmonious communication, and moral character of self-introspection to conform to the social norm. These three culturally specific characteristics are interrelated and interconnected, and pervade Chinese normative discourses, which have long-time been mistakenly interpreted from Western-centric perspectives, theories, and approaches. This article offers new empirical evidence for the reconstruction of the Chinese paradigm of discourse studies and reveals the inappropriateness of Western scholarship for understanding non-Western linguistic and communicative events and practices.

In sum, this article demonstrates that Chinese discourse studies can be a potential decolonial option to depart from deep-seated scholarship in Western intellectual supremacy and a visionary framework to advance multicultural discourses about international education against the backdrop of geopolitical tensions and anti-Asian racism.

References:

Beech, S. E. 2019. The Geographies of International Student Mobility: Spaces, Places and Decision-Making. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bhabha, H. K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Ching, Y. C., S. L. Renes, S. McMurrow, J. Simpson, and A. T. Strange. 2017. “Challenges Facing Chinese International Students Studying in the United States.” Educational Research Review 12: 473–482. doi:10.5897/ERR2016.3106

Han, A. G. 2008. “Building a Harmonious Society and Achieving Individual Harmony.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 13 (2): 143–164. doi:10.1007/s11366-008-9021-y

Holliday, A. 2013. Understanding Intercultural Communication: Negotiating a Grammar of Culture. London: Routledge.

Hofstede, G. 2001. Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Jin, L., and M. Cortazzi. 2011. Researching Chinese Learners: Skills, Perceptions and Intercultural Adaptation. Houndmills. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Li, J. 2012. Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Marginson, S. 2006. “Dynamics of National and Global Competition in Higher Education.” Higher Education 52 (1): 1–39. doi:10.1007/s10734-004-7649-x

Ramanathan, V., and R. B. Kaplan. 1996. “Audience and Voice in Current L1 Composition Texts: Some Implications for ESL Student Writers.” Journal of Second Language Writing 5 (1): 21–34. doi:10. 1016/S1060-3743(96)90013-2

Said, E. W. 2003. Orientalism. 3rd ed. London: Penguin.

Shi-xu. 2014. Chinese Discourse Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Spivak, G. C. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271–313. London: Macmillan.

Authors’ Bio

Jing Yu PhD, is an Assistant Professor of International Higher Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and a Faculty Affiliate in Asian American Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include international student mobility, intersections of race, class, and nationality, and international dimensions of equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Her recent project on Chinese international students’ everyday racism and mental health issues has been successfully funded by the Spencer Foundation’s small research grants. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Diversity of Higher Education, Journal of College Student Development (Research in Briefs), and Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice.

Managing Editor: Xin Fan

What Has COVID-19 Taught Us: Advancing Chinese International Student-Related Research, Policies, and Practices Through Critical Race Perspectives

Research Highlighted:

Yu, J. (2023b). What Has COVID-19 Taught Us: Advancing Chinese International Student-Related Research, Policies, and Practices Through Critical Race Perspectives. Teachers College Record, 125(6), 110-118. https://doi.org/10.1177/01614681231190165

“I’m not excited about ‘going back to normal,’ because normal was the place where all the failures were for the kids I’m concerned about.” ― Gloria Ladson-Billings (December 20, 2020)

As we are ramping up to the return of in-person events in the post-pandemic environment, Gloria Ladson-Billings, a critical race theory scholar, reminds us that the COVID-19 pandemic should be a transformative opportunity that forces us to break with the past and imagine the world anew. For the field of international higher education, this call is right on time. Due to the unprecedented pandemic, international activities, especially cross-border student mobility, have been disproportionately impacted (Mok et al., 2021; Yu, 2021a). As the largest international student group in U.S. higher education, Chinese students have been made particularly vulnerable due to the resurgence of anti-Asian racism and U.S.-China geopolitical tensions. There is therefore a pressing need to make sense of Chinese international students’ perspectives and experiences around U.S. higher education—and in doing so, to highlight the ever-present educational inequalities rooted in academic capitalism, global unevenness, and institutional racism.

This article builds on the results of a critical qualitative research project investigating Chinese international students’ agency, decision-making, and perceptions of race, racism, and power (Yu, 2021a, 2021b, 2022a, 2022b, 2023a, Under Review ^abc). Drawing from interdisciplinary studies of international education, Asian American studies, sociology, and migration studies, this research project brings critical race perspectives to understanding Chinese students’ transnational mobilities and practices. It aims to unveil global hierarchies and racial inequalities in the field of international education in order to help advance future research and open new paths to practice.

Ideas for Critical Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that the neoliberal model of international education is falling apart (De Wit, 2020). There is a renewed interest in and urgency for educators, scholars, and practitioners to rethink the field of international higher education through a critical race lens. In considering the theoretical implications of this fact for research, ethical and political dimensions should be centrally incorporated to ponder the issues of rights, responsibility, justice, and equity within international higher education. In recent years, more and more scholars have reset the research agenda and have started to critically reflect on international student mobility (Stein, 2017; Yang, 2020) and academic knowledge production (Kubota, 2020; Shi-xu, 2014); however, theoretically sophisticated critical research on international students’ lived experiences with racism and racialization is still urgently needed. In response to this theoretical challenge, I put forward an innovative framework, Global Asian Critical Race Theory or GlobalAsianCrit (Yu, Under Review^a), as a contribution that combines the key tenets in Asian Critical Race Theory (Iftikar & Museus, 2018) and Global Critical Race Theory (Christian, 2019). In this creative framework that I proposed, I incorporated both a racial/ethnic and a critical global view into CRT to help understand how global white supremacy has shaped the racial realities of Asian individuals and how racial oppression works differently in different geographical contexts.

Ideas for Equity-Driven Policies

The COVID-19 pandemic and the related rise of anti-Asian racism have also revealed that international students of color are excluded from equity and social justice discourses in U.S. higher education. Thus, institutional policies should start by including disaggregated data on international students’ racial, ethnic, and national identities, which enables colleges and universities to acknowledge the heterogeneity within the highly reductive federal category of “nonresident alien” and to understand the diverse nature of these students’ learning experiences. Disaggregating the data and exploring the heterogeneity within this diverse group of students will be helpful for policymakers, institutional leaders, faculty, staff, and administrators to identify the specific needs of these international students and to support their sustained success and development in the U.S.

In addition, despite the fact that diversity and inclusion are continuously advocated in U.S. higher education, international students have been largely absent from debates and discussions of anti-Blackness and anti-Asian sentiment, due to their status as foreign students and temporary residence. Given this history of exclusion and ethnic discrimination, institutional policies should include global perspectives to uphold principles of educational equality and social justice for international students.

Ideas for Inclusive Practices

Finally, I propose three practical strategies for appropriately supporting Chinese international students. First, open discussions of race, racism, and power need to be included in institutions’ orientation sessions for international students. My research (Yu, 2022a) demonstrates that there is a great discrepancy in Chinese students’ understanding of race and racism before and after their migration to the U.S. It is necessary to equip international students with basic racial knowledge, such as how to identify racist comments and where to seek institutional help when discrimination and racial stereotyping occur. Administrators and practitioners can provide much-needed space for open conversations and transparent communications around racialized incidents on campus. Moreover, providing general education courses on the sociohistorical background of race, racism, and free speech in the U.S. can help international students better understand the complex racial reality of U.S. institutions and the wider society.

Secondly, administrators and staff should use an asset-based approach to designing services and workshops for international students on campus. While various activities are designed for international students to quickly adapt to U.S. campus culture, most available programs tend to be based on a deficit mindset of Chinese students or rooted in racialized logic. The asset-based practices that I recommend are intentional ways of acknowledging and leveraging the strengths of international students, including their everyday experiences, knowledge, and cultural practices to serve as resources for teaching and learning. Domestic students should not be excluded from these events and activities, for critical cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicative skills are essential qualities for all students to work with people from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds in future various professional situations.

Thirdly, colleges and universities should structurally facilitate international students’ engagement with domestic students and wider local communities. My research (Yu, 2022b) shows that Chinese students may express prejudicial attitudes toward other people of color, especially African Americans. More interracial contact can help both international and domestic students disrupt their stereotypes about one another. Hence, this form of support for international students can foster their sense of belonging or cohesiveness in a specific campus organization or activity. U.S. institutions should take shared responsibility to reinvest some of the income generated by international student tuition toward creating and supporting inclusive student clubs and extracurricular activities.

Conclusion

It is clear that Chinese international students are “raced” in the U.S., so instead of demanding that students conform to the oppressive social norms and meet the academic expectations of the (white) host learning environment, social justice efforts should be made to interrupt hegemonic thinking and complicate notions of race and racism by looking beyond the limited understanding of these concepts within U.S. borders. As Gloria Ladson-Billings reminded us, the COVID-19 pandemic can be a portal, a gateway to imagine a new world for K-12 schools as well as international higher education.

References:

Christian, M. (2019). A global critical race and racism framework: Racial entanglements and deep and malleable whiteness. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 5(2), 169–185.

De Wit, H (2020). Internationalization of higher education: The need for a more ethical and qualitative approach. Journal of International Students 10(1), i–iv.

Iftikar, J. S., & Museus, S. D. (2018). On the utility of Asian critical (AsianCrit) theory in the field of education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 31(10), 935-949.

Mok, K. H., Xiong, W., Ke, G., & Cheung, J. O. W. (2021). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on international higher education and student mobility: Students perspectives from mainland China and Hong Kong. International Journal of Education Research, 105, 101718.

Stein, S. (2017). Internationalization for an uncertain future: Tensions, paradoxes, and possibilities. Review of Higher Education, 41(1), 3–32.

Yang, P. (2020). Toward a framework for (re)thinking the ethics and politics of international student mobility. Journal of Studies in International Education, 24(5), 518–534.

Yu, J. (2021a). Lost in lockdown? The impact of COVID-19 on Chinese international student mobility in the US. Journal of International Students, 11(S2), 1-18.

Yu, J. (2021b). Caught in the middle? Chinese international students’ self-formation amid politics and pandemic. International Journal of Chinese Education, 10(3), 1-15.

Yu, J. (2022a). The racial learning of Chinese international students in the US context: A transnational perspective. Race, Ethnicity and Education. Advance Online Publication https:// doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2022.2106878

Yu, J. (2022b). “I don’t think it can solve any problems”: Chinese international students’ perceptions of racial justice movements during COVID-19. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Advance Online Publication https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000457

Yu, J. (2023a). Understanding Chinese international students in the U.S. in times of the COVID-19 crisis: From a Chinese discourse studies perspective. Journal of Multicultural Discourses. Advance Online Publication https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2023.2214538

Yu, J. (Under Reviewa). Exploring Chinese international students’ experiences in times of crisis through Global Asian Critical Race Theory.

Yu, J. (Under Reviewb). “Asians are at the bottom of the society”: Chinese international students’ perspectives on Asian Americans in the U.S. racial hierarchy.

Yu, J. (Under Reviewc). #YouAreWelcomeHere? The two faces of American higher education toward Chinese international students.

Authors’ Bio

Managing Editor: Xin Fan