The geopolitics of international higher education prior and during Covid-19: a decolonial feminist analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Thinking with four non-EU academic migrants from the global South, and their experiences of working/studying or starting to work/study during the Covid-19 pandemic, we are unravelling the current geopolitics of the internationalised higher education in the global North. Our central argument is that Covid-19 has not simply affected the national and global politics of migration, including international academic migration, but it has also worked as a magnifying glass of the historically established inequalities sustained and perpetuated by physical, biomedical and epistemic borders. Most importantly, we are not following the rather obvious theoretical route of biopolitics while analysing the internationalisation of higher education in relation to the Covid-19 health crisis and migration politics. Instead, we are looking at this geo-biopolitical and epistemic assemblage through a decolonial lens. In doing so, we want to contribute with our and our interviewees’ reflections to the ongoing discussion on what currently counts as ‘internationalisation’ in higher education, pointing out the colonial and neoliberal foundations of it, and the possibilities of aligning it with the efforts of decolonising the university.