The racialization of international student mobility: Roots, effects, and implications for American higher education institutions

Peng Yin

My dissertation investigates how international student mobility (ISM) in the context of American higher education institutions (HEIs) has become increasingly subjected to an emergent paradigm of racialized otherness. To contextualize my inquiry on the paradigm of racialized otherness, I choose to focus on a specific and vibrant body of the international student population enrolled in American HEIs, i.e., undergraduate Chinese international students. As an illustrative case, examining the paradigm of racialized otherness vis-à-vis the undergraduate Chinese international students aims to offer a distinctive yet nonexclusive lens to probe into the racialization of ISM on a broader scale. My dissertation consists of three studies. Study 1 adopts the method of critical discourse analysis to examine and identify the undergirding constituents of the paradigm of racialized otherness. Study 2 draws on the framework of item response theory (IRT)-based modeling to construct and validate a measurement instrument that taps into the students' perceptions of the undergirding constituents of the paradigm of racialized otherness. Study 3 takes the approach of multi-sited ethnography to explore how to leverage the affordances of the students' everyday learning and living experiences to tackle the paradigm of racialized otherness. The findings of my dissertation are intended i) to inform the development of design-based initiatives, both within and outside formal instructional settings, to address the ongoing and intensified trend of racialization concerned with ISM, and ii) to facilitate the conceptualization of a policy agenda for re-envisioning and promoting equity and diversity as entailed by the continuous internationalization of American HEIs.

About Peng Yin

Peng Yin is a doctoral candidate in the Language, Literacy, and Culture program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. His research agenda sits at the intersection of globalization and American higher education institutions, particularly through the lens of international student mobility. What lie at the core of his current academic inquiry are the mechanisms that undergird the processes whereby the population of international students has become increasingly subjected to an emergent paradigm of racialized otherness, in addition to how the paradigm of racialized otherness is perceived and negotiated by the students as they navigate their everyday learning and living experiences in a transnational context. Peng holds a B.A. in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages from Beijing Language and Culture University, an M.A. in International Educational Development from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a second M.A. in International Educational Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford University. Peng is a Gardner Fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at UC Berkeley. He is also a proud member of the Prolepsis Design Studio at UC Berkeley.