Considering an Ethic of Care Framework to Counter Colonial Violence in International Education

Abstract

This collaborative, theoretical essay considers how an Embodied Ethic of Care Framework (Sodhi, 2022) could offer a different way of being in internationalized educational contexts in Canada. We begin by describing international education in the Canadian context. We explain how a federal international education strategy that is focused on boosting the economy rather than on education leads to “conditional hospitality” (Ahmed, 2012) and the commodification of international students (Guo & Guo, 2017). We then introduce the Embodied Ethic of Care Framework which is informed by Black feminist thought and Indigenous African thought (Sodhi, 2022). The framework recognizes the collective energy of community (Sodhi, 2022). We juxtapose the five elements of the framework to instances of international education in Canada. Because language-based discrimination is still a commonly accepted practice in Canadian post-secondary institutions (Martin, 2022), our descriptions of internationalized contexts in Canada attend to languaging and dialoguing. We demonstrate how current connections with international students are transactional – which replicates harmful historical relationships between people of colour, capitalism, and colonialism. The Embodied Ethic of Care Framework is an antidote for this form of colonial violence because it places relationship building at the center. Through echolocation (Gumbs, 2020), we invite readers to consider how an ethic of care framework might inspire a different way of being that could redress coloniality and systemic racism in internationalized contexts in Canada and/or in their own contexts.