Globalisation, Societies and Education

Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 49–66

Desperately seeking the global subject:

international education, citizenship and
cosmopolitanism
Julie Matthewsa* and Ravinder Sidhub
aThe University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia; bThe University of Queensland,
Australia
Globalisation,
10.1080/1476772042000252461
CGSE2304.sgm
1476-7724
Original
Taylor
2302004
[email protected]
JulieMatthews
00000November
and
&Article
Francis
(print)/1476-7732
Francis
Societies
Ltd
2004
Ltd and Education
(online)

This article takes the case of international education and Australian state schools to argue that the
economic, political and cultural changes associated with globalisation do not automatically give rise
to globally oriented and supra-territorial forms of subjectivity. The tendency of educational institu-
tions such as schools to privilege narrowly instrumental cultural capital perpetuates and sustains
normative national, cultural and ethnic identities. In the absence of concerted efforts on the part of
educational institutions to sponsor new forms of global subjectivity, flows and exchanges like those
that constitute international education are more likely to produce a neo-liberal variant of global
subjectivity.

Introduction
Discussions of global citizenship and cosmopolitanism in globalisation literature go
beyond narrow ethno-cultural nationalism and patriotism1 to highlight global gover-
nance (Held, 2001, 2002), openness to cultural diversity (Hannerz, 1996) and recog-
nition and regard for a common humanity (Nessabaum, cited in Urry, 2000; Gill &
Howard, 2002; Turner, 2002). Implicit in these debates are assumptions of individ-
ual autonomy, free choice and agency. The starting point for this article is globalisa-
tion’s potential for cosmopolitanism and the development of globally oriented
subjectivities. We draw on the findings of an exploratory study into the experiences
of international students in Australian schools to examine the subjectivities arising
through the flows and exchanges which constitute international education. Informed
by post-structural critiques of autonomous agency, we highlight the ways students are
placed, thrown, located under and subject to positions which precede and exceed
them. We argue that agential forms of citizenship, cosmopolitanism and global

*Corresponding author: Julie Matthews, Faculty of Arts & Social Science, University of the
Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore DC Qld 4558, Australia.

ISSN 1476–7724 (print)/ISSN 1476–7732 (online)/05/010049–18

© 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/14767720500046179
50 J. Matthews and R. Sidhu

consciousness are a source of optimistic inspiration, but they are not automatically
initiated by processes of internationalization and globalisation.
Our empirical findings suggest that in the case of international education two
processes are at play. First, the normalizing discourses of nationality, race and ethnic-
ity permeate international education to reinforce old ethnic and national affiliations
while stimulating new ‘racial’ formations. Second, given its economic rationale, prac-
tices of international education uphold the global spread of hegemonic social prac-
tices such as the marketization of education. Under these conditions international
education does not necessarily establish the conditions for unsettling ethno-cultural
and nationalistic persuasions and practices and thus misses the opportunity to spon-
sor cosmopolitan identification and globally oriented subjectivity. In short, interna-
tional education is as likely to give rise to profoundly conservative ethnocultural
affiliations and largely instrumental notions of global citizenship as to generate a
collective and compassionate global subject.

This research
Inspired by cultural theorists of globalisation such as Appadurai (1996), Wilson &
Dissanayake (1996) and Featherstone (1996), we initially set out to investigate how
high school students on the Sunshine Coast, in the Australian state of Queensland,
used communication technologies (e.g. Internet, Email, chat lines, etc.) to establish
transnational connections. We were interested in how global processes (‘globalisa-
tion’) might be producing cosmopolitan attitudes, practices and transnational affilia-
tions (‘globally oriented subjectivities’). It soon became obvious that the increased
take-up of information and communication technologies were not in themselves suffi-
cient to drive transnational associations. Mainstream high school students in the pilot
study used Internet technology to ‘hook up’ with friends after school and weekends,
but appeared to have few links outside the locality.
Our research focus subsequently shifted to inquire whether an institution widely
associated with nation building, the school, facilitated cultural, affective and cognitive
encounters with various global others through the recruitment of international
students. We reasoned that the presence of international students in the school
community would afford greater opportunities for co-presence, dialogue and
connectedness than abstract engagements with a series of global images and icons. As
most of the empirical work on international education has concentrated on the higher
education sector, we decided to focus on how state schools, which we perceived to be
more representative of class and cultural diversities than universities, sponsor new
forms of global identification and imagination. Further, we were curious whether
cosmopolitan practices and identifications, namely conceiving the world as a whole
and building affiliations with the international student other, are more pronounced in
schools with a high population of international students.
In hindsight this study was a ‘desperate’ search for the global subject. We use the
term desperate advisedly, because the achievement of global subjectivity, it seemed to
us, is a key redeeming feature of the international education field in Australia, which
 Desperately seeking the global subject 51

is principally motivated by economic considerations (Matthews, 2002b; Sidhu, 2002,

2004). We were also motivated to investigate what global flows and processes were
about. This seemed especially pertinent in light of our pilot study, which did not show
any connections between young people’s use of communication technologies and
their transnational affiliations.
Using interviews and focus groups, we examined the social relations and intercon-
nections of international high school students against current writings on globalisa-
tion, cosmopolitanism, global citizenship and globally oriented citizenship. We
interviewed 56 international students and four teachers at one Sunshine Coast and
two Brisbane high schools. Student interviews were conducted in self-directed focus
groups of four or five students. The students were in upper school (Years 11 and 12)
and aged between 16 and 18 years. Their countries of origin were China (28), Korea
(3), Indonesia (2), Thailand (6), Japan (3), Hong Kong (2), Vietnam (6), Taiwan (3),
Papua New Guinea (2) and Germany (2).
This paper proceeds in the following way. In the next section we describe salient
themes in globalisation literature arguing, by reference to current trends in supply and
demand, that economic expressions of globalisation are shaping the international
education sector. We locate these trends in the supply and demand of international
education in both historical and contemporary geopolitical power relations. We
follow on with a theoretical exposition on cosmopolitanism and its potential for the
development of globally oriented subjectivities. Specifically, we discuss definitions
and deficiencies in contemporary understandings of cosmopolitanism and their
potential to contribute towards the achievement of globally oriented citizenship. We
then describe and analyse findings from our focus group interviews with international
students, showing that in the context of school practices the conditions of possibility
for the achievement of globally oriented, cosmopolitan subjectivities are limited.

Globalisation
Globalisation refers to a wide range of discrepant phenomenon, but is commonly
portrayed in singular and economic terms as reflecting an evolutionary, inevitable and
irreversible phase of societal development. The expansion of national economic
systems into an integrated, interconnected, borderless, competitive global market-
place is constructed as a ‘natural’ periodisation of human civilization, progressing
from agriculture to industrialism and post-industrialism with its attendant advance-
ments in information and communication technologies and transport (Jessop, 2000;
Bergeron, 2001).
A shortcoming of existing research is a tendency to study globalising processes
through a disciplinary lens, while minimizing the interplays and interdependencies
between the economic, political and cultural dimensions of globalisation (Robertson
& Khondker, 1998). Globalisation studies have been criticized for their ‘methodolog-
ical nationalism’, studying global phenomena through the lens of territorialist
geography (see Beck, 2000, 2004), as opposed to adopting a ‘multiscalar’ approach
which demands ‘wide and deep’ engagements with the local, national and global
52 J. Matthews and R. Sidhu

(Held et al., 2000). Such studies have also been criticized for a collective failure to
engage with space and time, a manifest outcome of which is a largely parochial and
first worldist account of globalisation which ignores the histories of capitalism, colo-
nialism and imperialism (Tikly, 2001; Slater, 2002; Venn, 2002).
Recent research on globalising processes and global flows have acknowledged the
disembedded and disembodied quality of many theoretical accounts of globalisation
and have highlighted the power/knowledge relations implicit in how we imagine and
theorize the global (Allen, 1999; Held et al., 2000; Amin, 2002; Larner & Walters,
2002; Slater, 2002). What is now being argued for is a series of theoretical and empir-
ical engagements, which embrace practices of the global (Larner & Walters, 2002).
The profoundly complex relations between local, national and global are often
theorized as weakening the regulatory capacities of nation states while increasing the
influence of multinational corporations and supranational bodies. However, the case
of international education would suggest that the first world nation state is not losing
control of education but rather education systems are being increasingly pressed into
the service of national, economic and social ends (see Green, 1997; Marginson, 1997,
2002). The story is different for developing nations, who are forced to make ‘struc-
tural adjustments’ (Carnoy, 1995; Tikly, 1999) that entail rolling back state educa-
tion provisions.
It is important to stress that Western neo-liberal responses to global capitalism are
not ‘inevitable’ or ‘necessary’ responses to the ‘demands of globalisation’ (Henry et
al., 1999; Marginson, 1999). It is also important to recognize the ideological basis of
this thinking and the extent to which it stymies alternative ways of thinking about and
organizing education (Levin, 1998).2 Having highlighted some of the problems asso-
ciated with the way in which globalisation is studied and imagined, a caveat is in
order. It is beyond this paper’s scope to provide a detailed critique of the writings on
globalisation. We will restrict our comments to selective writings that have
commented on the cultural dimensions of globalisation, which is the area of greatest
relevance to this paper.
Broadly, cultural theorists stress mobility and interconnectedness and regard flows
of people (facilitated by travel) and flows of ideas and ideologies (facilitated by sophis-
ticated communications technologies and the media) as obliterating the tyranny of
distance so that: ‘relationships between people in disparate locations will be formed
as easily as people in proximate ones’ (Waters, 2001, p. 5). New transnational
connections and new forms of commodification are noted to assist ‘boundary cross-
ings’ and to hasten the formation of cultural hybridities. The globe is regarded as
replacing the national/local as an identity referent, thus establishing conditions for
freeing subjects from fixed identities while reducing the possibilities for cultural
domination and imperialism. Globalising processes are also credited with transform-
ing the conditions of people’s lives producing: ‘new ways of doing business and work-
ing, new forms of identity and politics, new forms of everyday life, time and space,
new forms of sociability’ (Featherstone, 2002, p. 4).
The basis of much of the criticism of cultural narratives of globalisation has been a
tendency to disarticulate understandings of flows and hybridities from power
 Desperately seeking the global subject 53

geometries, including those inspired by political economy or geography (see Mitchell,

1997; Anthias, 2001; Larner & Walters, 2002). The troubling labour mobilities of
women and children (see Chin, 1998; Urry, 2000; Bergeron, 2001; Ehrenreich &
Hochschild, 2002) and ‘travelogues’ of asylum seekers and refugees (Christie &
Sidhu, 2002) are subsumed into the discourse which portrays ‘flows’ of people as
benign, smooth and unmediated by structural problems such as poverty, war, failed
states and an inequitable global trade. As Parrenas (2000); reminds us, the processes
of globalisation and forms of hybridization experienced by third world women such
as Filipino domestic maids and sex workers are qualitatively different from those
experienced by global intellectuals and entrepreneurs. The free floating, fleet-footed,
globally mobile individual for whom the world is borderless and opportunities bound-
less is problematically premised on the dispositions, aspirations and opportunities of
the Euro-American, first world, elite, masculine subject.

Globally-oriented citizens and ‘grounded’ cosmopolitans

Although the term cosmopolitan dates back to ancient Greece, referring to a citizen
of the world (kosmou politês), the utopian imaginary which underpins the notion of
world citizen, extended beyond Greco-Roman and early Christian religious and philo-
sophical thought towards modernity. The cosmopolitan citizen of the world informed
Kant’s vision of a ‘perpetual peace’, Goethe’s criticism of German militarism and
Marx’s dream of an international socialism (Turner, 2002, p. 48). At its simplest, a
cosmopolitan orientation is associated with an intellectual and aesthetic sense of open-
ness towards peoples, places and experiences from different cultures, especially those
from different nations (Tomlinson, cited in Szerszynski & Urry, 2002).
However, cosmopolitanism has also inspired criticism, which takes two broad and
related forms. First, a banal cosmopolitanism stands accused of producing little in the
way of commitment to globally oriented citizenship. Banal cosmopolitanism, the
consumption of global brands, icons, peoples, heroes, public figures, foreign travel
and multicultural food, does not necessarily include an awareness of global issues
such as world peace, global warming, environmental destruction and global human
rights. It does not necessarily extend to ethical and moral commitments to a global
community. Indeed, early research would suggest that a sense of moral connected-
ness with and compassion for global others is noted to decrease with distance (see
Szerszynski & Urry, 2002).
Second, cosmopolitanism is criticized for its reliance on masculinist, individualist
and elitist dispositions and for its ‘co-articulation’ with a colonial and imperial
governmentality (Venn, 2002). Cosmopolitan elites can choose to disconnect them-
selves from the local, including severing their responsibilities to contribute to local or
national states (Szerszynski & Urry, 2002). As mobile elites they enjoy the freedom
of physical movement and communication, in stark contrast to those who are
confined to place, whose fate is to remain located (Featherstone, 2002, p. 1).
Against this backdrop, cosmopolitan elites from both the first and non-first
world have been criticized for perpetuating the expansion of global capitalism. Here,
54 J. Matthews and R. Sidhu

post-colonial and Marxist accounts stress that the ‘remnant’ structures of power
established by colonization and extended by capitalism have given rise to a new tran-
snational capitalist class of ‘international bourgeoisie of frequent flier executives,
financiers, bureaucrats, professionals and media personnel’ (Comaroff & Comaroff,
2000), as well as cultural tourists without the capacity or desire to form lasting attach-
ments (Sklair, 2001; Venn, 2002). The elite subject who is sympathetic to Western
values and global capitalism cannot be considered to be the normative global subject.
It is in this light that Wilson (1998) cites Hannerz to suggest caution about celebrat-
ing the transformative potential of transnational class cosmopolitans, who might also
be deemed diasporic opportunists.
With this in mind, theorists like Mitchell (1997) and Anthias (2001) have
cautioned against premature celebrations of hybridity, maintaining that global flows
and exchanges continue to be underwritten by power relations which ultimately do
little to further ethical and moral issues. Mitchell’s (2001) analysis of the transna-
tional cosmopolitanism of Hong Kong Chinese business migrants to Canada raises
the issue of whether global processes and exchanges are skewed towards the forma-
tion of predominantly neo-liberal global subjects.
In response to criticisms that identify cosmopolitanism with cultural relativism,
moral indifference and vague liberal universalism, Turner (2002) proposes the
concept of ‘cosmopolitan virtue’, which he associates with reflexive distance from the
homeland, ironic self-reflection and some prior emotional commitment to place
(‘patriotism’). In an era of global fragmentation and hybridity, of mixes, mergers and
representations, cosmopolitanism requires a ‘cool’ and ironic distancing from one’s
own culture and the capacity to interrogate ‘unreflective identifications with local and
national cultures’ while maintaining an ethic of care based on the recognition of
human and cultural vulnerability (Turner, 2002; see also Szerszynski & Urry, 2002).
An exemplary form of cosmopolitanism is embodied in diasporic intellectuals whose
cosmopolitan sensibilities are not passive or uncritical but marked by resistance,
irony, selectivity and humour (see Appadurai, 1996).
Turner’s perspective on cosmopolitanism is radical in that he links it with patrio-
tism; love of and commitment to a place. While acknowledging that place-bound
commitments can detract from the ability to respect others in distance places, offering
as an example the case of American patriotism post September 11, he maintains that
‘irony without patriotism may be too cool and thin to provide for identification and
involvement with place and with politics’ (Turner, 2002, p. 56).
Recent scholarly commentary has constructed cosmopolitanism as a corollary of
globalisation, raising the spectre and possibility of global citizenship (Appadurai,
1996; Hannerz, 1996; Scholte, 2000; Urry, 2000; Beck, 2002; Held, 2002). Contem-
porary interest in global citizenship is prompted by the need to explore alternative
understandings of loyalties, membership, identities, rights and obligations arising in
the context of globalisation. The notion of global citizenship is not without its critics,
having been criticized as being unpractical and ‘too abstract’ to generate the
emotional and moral energy needed to galvanize action and make changes (Parekh,
2003, p. 12). The idea of a world state is further problematized, with Parekh arguing
 Desperately seeking the global subject 55

that such an entity is more likely than not to be ‘remote, bureaucratic, oppressive and
culturally bland’ (Parekh, 2003).
In place of global citizenship the case is made for ‘globally oriented citizens’ who
discharge their duties to global others by exercising their responsibilities as demo-
cratic citizens and where necessary by challenging narrow nationalistic policies which
are against the interests of humankind:
when our government props ups dictatorships in other countries, supplies them dangerous
weapons , corrupts, manipulates and destabilises vulnerable leaders, imposes unfavourable
trade agreements, and in other all too familiar ways pursues narrowly selfish policies, we
must challenge it by means of organised pressure and protests. … Apathetic citizens who
have no interest in the conduct of their government are neither good national nor good
global citizens. (Parekh, 2003, p. 13)

The argument here is that a cosmopolitanism which extends the capacity to mediate
between and within national cultures is positive if it creates possibilities for dialogue
with the traditions and discourses of others and if it widens the horizons of one’s own
framework of meaning. Parekh goes on to argue that ‘we should not fetishise sovere-
ignity and treat it as an unmixed good but look behind it to see if it serves worthwhile
goals’ (Parekh, 2003, p. 15). This recognition of citizenship as the primary mode of
individual and collective identity and the tangible duties it entails grounds the ‘free
floating’ global subject in space and time.
Globally oriented citizenship thus parallels national citizenship on two counts.
First, it refers to political activity and empirical assumptions to do with law, justice
and rights. Second, it depends on an ‘imagined community’ of people sharing the
same transcendent human values of humanitarianism, respect, justice and non-
violence (Parekh, 2003; see also Stokes, 1996).
Having discussed the conceptual difficulties in both cosmopolitanism and global
citizenship, what is clear is that our understandings of both concepts must embrace
ethical and moral commitments. The extended processes which connect people,
places and commodities, cosmopolitan lifestyles and plural subjectivities will contrib-
ute little towards socially just, democratic and egalitarian forms of subjectivity with-
out moral and ethical engagements. Whereas citizenship previously served the
patriarchal modern state and its capitalist classes, it must now reflect the globalising
imperatives that are creating the conditions of possibility for new identities and new
working conditions. For some theorists this means uncoupling nationality from citi-
zenship and promoting global citizenship and responsibility. For others it demands a
deepening of one’s democratic citizenship of a nation.

International education
The top provider countries of international education are the USA, the UK and
Australia, followed by Canada and New Zealand. In 2000 there were 13 129 interna-
tional students enrolled in Australian schools, most of whom were students from
Asia, from a non-English speaking background. The main source countries for inter-
national students are India, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and China, with, 83% of
56 J. Matthews and R. Sidhu

international student enrolments in schools from these countries (Australian Educa-

tion International, 2000). The total number of international students in British
schools is harder to estimate as state (government) schools are not required to collect
information about their numbers. In 2002 the Independent Schools Council esti-
mated that there were 15 800 international students enrolled in private (independent)
schools which contributed about £243 million to the UK economy (Independent
Schools Council, 2003). Typically, international students enrolled in UK institutions
come from the former British colonies, although more recent trends indicate interest
from students in neigbouring European countries.
The movement of predominantly Asian students from non-English speaking coun-
tries into Western English-speaking centres remains fundamentally unidirectional
and is a legacy of British and American colonialism which secured English as the key
language of global commerce (Wilson & Dissanayake, 1996; Bennell & Pearce, 1998;
Spring, 1998; Willinsky 1998). As we found in discussions with our interviewees,
acquiring English language competence is assuming a renewed urgency and impor-
tance, with many young people associating English skills with development and
progress, both of themselves and their country (see also Pegrum, 2004, p. 5). From
the perspective of the individual, learning English offers the opportunity for profes-
sional, cultural and economic advantage. However, the dominance of English
language in the global education market takes on a different guise if delinked from the
level of individual aspiration and considered at the macro level (Pegrum, 2004). In a
globalising world which purports to offer a stunning profusion of possibilities, the
prominence of English demands further investigation and here the work of post-colo-
nial theorists is potentially useful in highlighting the material and discursive links
between international education, modernity, colonialism and imperialism (see
Willinsky, 1998).
Early expressions of international education, education aid programmes, were
inspired by the rationales of colonialism, which were intended to produce an accul-
turated, governing elite in the colonies who were anticipated to support Western
interests. Imperialism’s influence extended to the post-independent societies, which
were steered towards a Westernized template of civicness, towards sameness rather
than diversity. These links continue to have implications for the capacity of contem-
porary expressions of international education to author post-colonial forms of cosmo-
politanism (Venn, 2002).
That stated, it can be plausibly argued that cultural tolerance and cosmopolitanism
was an unexpected and unintended consequence of European trade, the growth of
capitalism and colonialism (Turner, 2002). We want to make a similar argument with
respect to the current trade in education. In other words, we are not condemned to
repeat history as there are ways that we can dissociate international education from
the 21st century neo-imperial project.
A shortcoming of recent studies into international education concerns their
ahistorical focus. By implication, international education is presented as a direct
and desirable manifestation of globalisation. It is not surprising then that some
educators use the terms ‘globalisation’ and ‘internationalization’ interchangeably
 Desperately seeking the global subject 57

(Edwards & Tudball, 2000; Clyne et al., 2001). Perceiving international education
as a natural and inevitable manifestation of globalisation serves to create and rein-
force particular notions of a global future (Clyne et al., 2001), a trend which is
found elsewhere in the field of education, where discursive dominance is accorded
to the commercial and technological expressions of global connectivity.
Just as dominant interpretations of globalisation highlight economic processes and
effects, dominant understandings of international education highlight economic
necessity and financial benefits. These neo-liberal accounts of international education
are ‘globalocentric’ in that they assume that international education is ordered by the
dictates of the ungovernable and unpredictable global market. According to the
premises of a neo-liberal governmentality, ‘global educational service providers’ are
simply responding to the economic and cultural trends of globalisation to produce
highly skilled knowledge workers (Kenway & Bullen, 2003). The state is depicted as
assuming a minimal regulatory role as deregulated markets are thought to adjust
themselves to generate the best educational services and goods.
Yet, it has been the state’s embrace of neo-liberal ideologies which have reduced
support for public education and propelled both universities and, increasingly, state
schools to sell education to international students to raise revenue. Furthermore, the
globalisation of neo-liberal economics is partly responsible for the actions of govern-
ments in the ‘South/East’, which have curtailed investment in public education. Such
push factors have reduced domestic capacity and propelled individuals and their
families to seek an overseas education, often at significant personal cost.
The politically neutral language of the market provides little discursive space for
understanding these complexities which surround the production and consumption
of international education. Market language dilutes the importance of non-discursive
forces and processes in favour of explanations vested in notions of consumer choice,
autonomy and agency. Trade statistics help to normalize and celebrate the smooth
benign and ‘natural’ aspects of flows of people and capital. Thus, in the Australian
context, the ‘success’ of international education is usually framed in terms of rising
demand. At the same time, promotional and marketing narratives construct interna-
tional education as a cosmopolitan enterprise which initiates intercultural and cross-
national approaches to curricula and pedagogy, stimulates interest in foreign
languages, diversifies student demographies and fosters academic excellence, while
facilitating client-centred structures and processes in schools and universities.
The underside of trade-based expressions of international education is that it
diverts precious resources to recruitment and marketing activities and imposes
narrow and short-term understandings of ‘value for money’ as grids against which to
determine good educational practice. Efforts to fulfil consumer demand may result in
a conservative and narrow curriculum that devalues non-vocational, visionary and
experimental activities (see Mitchell, 2001). Surplus revenue may lead to reductions
in government funds, but more significantly a user pays approach to state education
is inegalitarian and undemocratic. It provides an additional basis of support for the
private sector and undermines the commitment to free and universal public educa-
tion (McCollow, 1989; Marginson, 1997, 1999).
58 J. Matthews and R. Sidhu

Although the most salient policy developments in international education have

affected the higher education sector, many are mirrored in Australian schools.
However, the impact of international education on state schooling in Australia
remains a relatively under-studied area, apart from work by McCollow (1989) and
Matthews (2002b). Extrapolating findings from research carried out in tertiary
settings, while not entirely satisfactory, is potentially useful to identify ways of study-
ing how social relations and subjectivities are produced in, and through, the interna-
tional education enterprise. Kenway and Bullen’s (2003) feminist investigation of
transculturation amongst female tertiary students is a case in point. They observe that
in the absence of research analysing global subjectivity, it is often assumed that inter-
national students are global citizens. However, international women students some-
times participate in their construction as ‘other’ by incorporating and adapting raced
and gendered representations, while in other instances they do so by resisting such
representations.
As with empirical work which seeks to study globalising processes and global flows,
the links between globalisation and international education demand more sophisti-
cated methodologies. We need to attend to the complex and contradictory ways in
which the economic, political and cultural intersect to shape not only students’
personal ambitions and aspirations, but also domestic educational capacity in sending
countries, as well as broader supply side issues that are currently producing the
predominantly commercial expressions of international education in the Anglo-
American world.
The legacies of colonialism and the role played by nation states in their quest to
maintain comparative national advantage have created the conditions for spatializing
knowledge by perpetuating the largely unidirectional flow of students from the
‘South/East’ to the ‘North/West’. Although we argue below that the trade is predom-
inantly intended to profit state education providers, this is not to suggest that teachers
and educationalists are unable to shape the conditions of possibility for a unique,
cosmopolitan brand of international education which promotes a globally oriented
citizenship.

International students
Our focus on the grounded micro-context of schools provides an empirical context in
which to examine the national identity building enterprise of education, including the
way racialized and gendered practices establish the boundaries of belonging. The citi-
zenship work of schools remains deeply embedded in national and patriarchal prac-
tices. This is reflected in everyday practices, school traditions and rituals, including
those which define school identity, standards of behaviour and dress codes, sporting,
cultural and academic achievements (Gill & Howard, 2002). Men invariably hold
positions of power and school parades, assemblies and rituals celebrate the violence
of war, invasion and conquest (e.g. Anzac Day and Australia Day). These practices
remain typical in the state of Queensland, although, as Gill and Howard (2002)
suggest, there may be regional differences across Australia.
 Desperately seeking the global subject 59

At a school we visited noted for its commitment to internationalization, the taken-

for-granted privileges of an Anglo heritage, nomenclature and norms were all too
obvious as teachers struggled to pronounce the surnames of several international
students. The Principal opened the assembly with a discussion of courtesy, promoted
as a universal marker of good manners. The interactions at this school assembly reso-
nated with our own experiences of schooling uncomfortably marked by our visible
‘minority’ status, and the ever present assumed ‘correspondence’ between appear-
ance, ‘race’, citizenship, nationality and ethnicity. At another school international
students identified particular spaces within the school’s grounds as ‘Australian’ or
‘international’. Instead of socializing with local students, they occupied a room at the
end of the block during their lunch break and recess and mixed among themselves.
Interviews confirmed that students’ everyday experiences were marked by separa-
tion and disconnection from local students. While students appreciated the kindness
of some Australian students, they were aware of the indifference, fear and ignorance
of others. A heightened awareness of national, cultural, ethnic and racial difference
influenced their choice of friends, as the following excerpt suggests:

G1: Yeah, I think they maybe at first they say; you look so totally different from them.
They may have strange thoughts about you. I don’t know.
G3: I think they are very helpful
G1: Pardon?
G3: Helpful.
G2: Yeah, many of them are really helpful, yeah but many of them are cold and unfriendly.
G1: They like to play with Australian students.
G3: Yeah, they don’t really like to hang around Asian students.
G1: Well, to me I would think maybe they think you’re different so they sort of, don’t know
you and they don’t understand your background and that’s why they feel different from
you. They fear to have contact with you.
G2. And we are too. (Two Vietnamese and one girl from Hong Kong, 16 years old)

Culture and communication were perceived to be barriers to intercultural interac-

tions with Australian peers.

Sometimes we have communication problems with the Australians here. It is not the prob-
lem of language … it is the culture thing. It’s the culture … . (Hong Kong girl, 15 years old)

Problematically, terms like ‘Asian’ and ‘Australian’ rely on taken for granted forms
of identification that disregard intercultural parallels, take national differences for
granted, homogenize ‘Asian-ness’ and ‘Australian-ness’ and thereby prompt either
‘Asian’ or ‘Australian’ identifications. Such identifications do not facilitate the critical
and ironic distancing necessary to interrogate nationalism. The comment of a Year
12 Japanese boy, who observed that the term ‘international student’ was problematic
because it served as a dividing practice to separate ‘Asian’ outsiders from the broader
60 J. Matthews and R. Sidhu

school community, suggests to us that international students may have good reasons
for challenging traditional identity categories.
Against a background of disconnections and disassociations between Australian
and international students, international education is also facilitating unexpected
links between diverse nationalities of international students. When Japanese young
people have the opportunity to befriend Korean heritage students and Taiwanese
students can meet those from mainland China, the potential to challenge nation-
centred, ethnic socializations is enhanced.
Students of different national and ethnic groups did not automatically defer to
Western cultural preferences. Many Chinese students preferred Chinese pop music,
movies and novels, while Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Chinese students
identified a marked preference for their ethnic cuisines. Indeed, their immersion in
Western culture appeared to reinforce rather than subjugate these tastes, suggesting
that the international student experience is as likely to highlight and entrench ethno-
cultural and national tastes and sensibilities as to promote appreciation of different
cultural and national perspectives. The desire for Western education does not neces-
sarily imply that people are entirely under the sway of global hegemonic practices, for
it is possible that Western knowledge may be desired at the same time as it is despised
(Tsolidis, 2001). It may well be the case, as discussed in more detail below, that
Western education is simply a pragmatic means of minimizing global forms of disad-
vantage.
Like the ‘flexible citizens’ described in Ong’s (1998) study of middle class Chinese
migrants, international students use material and symbolic resources to position
themselves to maximize advantages under circumstances where choices constitute
and straddle economic, national and geopolitical power dynamics. As is the case with
many local students, international students are preparing themselves for professional
careers desirable in the global marketplace where an English-based education
provides a comparative employment advantage. Some students seek university
entrance due to the shortage of tertiary places at home, but others may be seeking a
liberal humanist education and escape from the highly competitive and instrumental-
ist education system at home (where they may be more likely to fail).
Pragmatic instrumentalism was clearly evident in the aspirations of many students
who were keenly aware not only of the benefits of acquiring an English-speaking
education, but also of the need to blend in and mix with local students to improve
their language skills. However, other students recognized and appreciated the oppor-
tunity to engage in mutual interactions and exchanges of different understandings,
world views and experiences:

And so, I try to blend in with Australian students because in Australia their knowledge is
more than mine, and I try to get help from them, and we exchange information with each
other. I also be with my Taiwan friend too, because we communicate fluently; we can talk
about more things. (Taiwanese girl, 16 years old)

Many students spoke of their lack of social contact with local students. Evidently the
close proximity of local and international students does not automatically launch
 Desperately seeking the global subject 61

intercultural contact or harmony. Importantly, the desire for greater social interac-
tion, cultural exchanges and understanding is often thwarted by local students. One
student noted: ‘some students want to know more about international students, but
not all’.
Another student offered a more familiar scenario of events:
Sometimes the Australian students use some bad language on us like ‘fuck’ etc., when this
happens, we do not respond, we just sit back, because if we complain, the school leaders
and teachers will claim that we are the offender and not the Australian students. And
sometimes when the international student offend once, the school leaders will say I give
you two weeks, one week we will send you back to China, one week … . How about the
Australian students who always smoke in the toilet? And they are always in their school
uniforms when smoking. But the teachers find Chinese student smoking after school or
out of the school and without school uniforms, says—it is really not fair for us. (Chinese
girl, 18 years old)

Her understanding of racial taunts, abuse and ensuing institutional inaction serves as
a constant reminder that international students are ‘external others’ who are more
likely to be disciplined and excluded for misbehaviour. Like other minority students
they may come to regard themselves as highly visible targets and resent the invisibility
of Anglo-white insiders (Essed, 1990; Matthews, 1996). Clearly, students do not
experience schools as culturally dispassionate institutional spaces (Matthews, 1996,
1997, 2002a; Vasta & Castles, 1996, Hollinsworth, 1998) but as sites of racialization,
prejudice and racism, as this next set of comments suggest:
I hope to meet friends here, not more rubbish words from Australia people. (Chinese boy,
19 years old)
What is bad about Australia is that … most of the Australian people can be racist…. (Viet-
namese boy, 16 years old)

These narratives cast some doubt about the actual nature of transnational connectiv-
ity in schools and reinforce Matthews’ (1997, 2002a) and Shain’s (2003) findings
that restricted social relations and racially coded social spaces are strategies employed
by Asian minority high school students to protect themselves from racism. For some
international students mixing with Australian students was a way of guarding against
potential enmity (‘getting troubles’):
I think we should be more peaceful and friendly to each other. As we come from different
culture, we hope to experience friendship here and not getting troubles. (Chinese boy, 19
years old)

Our findings also mirror earlier research into intercultural relations on Australian
university campuses where intercultural associations were the exception rather than
the rule. Subtle exclusions, such as the refusal by local students to participate in group
work with international students and ‘in jokes’, can leave international students feel-
ing insecure and prompt them to work harder and be better. Whether due to insensi-
tivity, indifference, hostility or poor social skills, the outcome is student clustering
(Neasdale & Todd, 1993; Smart et al., 2000). International students, like other
minority students, are often aware that they are stereotyped as serious, studious and
62 J. Matthews and R. Sidhu

uninterested in social interactions. However, they point to a range of pragmatic

reasons, such as studying in another language, financial investment in education,
parental sacrifice and scholarship obligations, as reasons why they end up reinforcing
this stereotype (Matthews, 2002a,c).
We regard the intensification of nation-centred identities to be an unintended
consequence of the peripheral contact between international students and their
Anglo-Australian peers. However, while marginalization from the wider community
is of concern because it may breed new and often unwelcome national, ethnic and
religious fundamentalisms (Kenway & Bullen, 2003), it also has a ‘productive’
dimension in that it provides the opportunity for instrumentally valuable and intrin-
sically comforting social relations:

N1: Yes, we always sit together with international students because I think ….
N2: Sitting together with international students is good for us to understand our teachers’
language, which is English. And students usually have fun with international student. Actu-
ally we can talk our own language Mandarin but usually to communicate with each other.
N3: Why we always sit next to international students, we learn lessons, because some
Australian students have different languages, and can’t translate the teacher’s language to
you, so I always sit near the international students.

Conclusion
Our objective in this paper was to stimulate thinking about the often unquestioned
links between globalisation, international education and the development of globally
oriented citizenships and subjectivities. We used the experiences of international
students in two Australian state (government) schools as foci of our investigation.
The findings of our exploratory study would appear to suggest that international
students do not experience Australian schools as sites for sponsoring new forms of
global subjectivity and imagination.
In the Australian context, neo-liberal expressions of globalisation have authored an
international education industry which is largely commercial, self-interested and, by
default, imperializing. Globalisation discourse is hegemonic in international educa-
tion as elsewhere (Levin, 1998; Clyne et al., 2001). Discussions of internationalization
in higher education literature are often disengaged from engagement with long-stand-
ing debates in the field of comparative education and multicultural and anti-racist
education. The absence of these engagements may be traced to the predominantly
economic imperatives which have driven practices of internationalization in both the
higher education and latterly in secondary education contexts. Following Beck’s
(2004) call for a ‘cosmopolitanization of the social sciences’, we suggest that the meth-
odologies currently in place to study globalisation require refinement if they are to
explain how global, national and local level forces shape educational practices and the
experiences of international students.
In spite of its initiation as a panacea for cash-strapped educational intuitions, we
believe that international education can and should create conditions of possibility for
 Desperately seeking the global subject 63

the formation of globally oriented subjectivities which are informed by a broad-based

cosmopolitan virtue. Changing the processes and practices of international education
is not just a matter of working out how schools enrolling international students might
do things differently in curricula, pedagogy and educational structures. It also means
moving beyond ‘third way fantasies’ to recognize the limitations imposed by an
increasingly universal doctrine of neo-liberalism (Venn, 2002, p. 72). Markets do not
nurture a concern for social justice nor solve pressing global problems such as envi-
ronmental degradation, growing inequality, unsustainable economic development
and instability (Held, 2001). Marketized expressions of international education are
ultimately disengaged from notions of a global public good.
To effect an alternative international education requires educators to bypass tradi-
tional ways of imagining and constructing the other which have informed nation
states like Australia. Crucially, it requires teachers to understand international educa-
tion as something more than the means to competitive advantage in international
trade markets. These understandings are vital if we are to avoid embracing old nation-
alisms and patriarchies and generating new ones. Intercultural sensitivities, including
identification with a global community are important preconditions for effective
participation in 21st century civic life.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Annette Woods and two anonymous referees for their
constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes
1. Challenging the idea that love of one’s country (patriotism) is an anthema to cosmopolitanism,
Turner (2002) distinguishes it from respect for the state (nationalism) and argues that while
these have been collapsed in the modernist enterprise, the virtues of cosmopolitanism promoted
by the Stoic tradition of Rome regarded love of country as quite compatible with love of human-
ity (cosmopolitanism).
2. According to Levin (1998) economist education policies converge around six main orthodoxies:
(1) education sustains economic success and competition; (2) despite previous high levels of fund-
ing schools have failed; (3) education reforms are necessary but more funding is not; (4) school-
based management schemes improve school performance because parents and communities
know best; (5) schools produce commodities and consumer choice creates diversity and improves
schools; (6) national standards, accountability criterion and large-scale testing improve schooling.

Notes on contributors
Julie Matthews teaches in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the newly estab-
lished University of the Sunshine Coast. She recently returned from a 2 year
postdoctoral research fellowship based in the School of Education at the Univer-
sity of Queensland. Her research focuses on international education, minority,
anti-racist and multicultural education and identity formation. Previously she
taught at high schools in the UK and Australia.
64 J. Matthews and R. Sidhu

Ravinder Sidhu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Education at the

University of Queensland. She has published in the areas of globalisation, post-
colonial and international education and the management of refugees by first
world states. Prior to commencing her research, she worked in the overseas aid
and higher education field for a decade.

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