Let's Talk About Decolonial Internationalization

Abstract

There is increasing pressure on higher education institutions (HEIs) to adopt internationalization strategies. The phenomenon of internationalization of higher education is described as “the intentional process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions and delivery of post-secondary education, in order to enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff, and to make a meaningful contribution to society” (De Wit et al., 2015, p.281). In higher education, we face a central problem. While universities promote internationalization strategies, they spread Eurocentric ways of knowing, standards, and norms as global. International mobility is predominantly a student and faculty movement from the East to the West. This mobility disseminates the colonial global educational engagement where the West seems to be the ultimate knowledge producer. The challenge of HEIs is to interrupt the colonial patterns in international education. This position paper examines the hierarchy of knowledge production in higher education through a decolonizing framework. Subsequently, it proposes a decolonial internationalization in the case of Canadian Universities.