Race, whiteness and internationality in transnational education: academic and teacher expatriates in Malaysia

Abstract

The expansion of transnational education has diversified the destinations and mobility patterns of academic and teacher expatriates (i.e. education expatriates). Emerging literature have explored white Anglo-Western expatriates’ experiences of racism and racialization in non-white majority settings, but these are not usually analysed alongside that of less- and non-white expatriates. This article does so by drawing from qualitative interviews with forty racially diverse education expatriates in Malaysia to explore differential experiences in work, immigration and everyday life. It investigates expatriate experiences at the intersection of race, nationality and skin colour, and where relevant, the interconnections with gender, age, class and religion. It critically examines how education expatriates respond to their hierarchical position(ing)s within the dominant racial logics of (white) Westernness in postcolonial Malaysia. A translocational positionality approach offers valuable intersectional insights into the racialized processes that stratify education expatriates’ experiences of (dis)advantage and capital convertibility in contingent and contradictory ways.