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Song & McCarthy

Governing Asian International Mobility in Australia      

Xianlin Song, UWA & Greg McCarthy, Peking U

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Asian international mobility has literally changed the face of Australian campus, altered the socio-political dynamics of higher education, and posed many challenges for policy makers, managements, academics and students caught up in the torrents of globalization. This paper outlines the transformed higher education landscape, and contests against the ‘neoliberal cascade’ of students as customers and the marginalization of public good. It draws out the implications of the State regulatory regime’s attempts to redefine the public good of a university in market citizen terms at a time of Asia’s rise as a hub of knowledge production. The paper argues that in face of increased mobility, Australian universities have imposed uniformity in governing practices in which difference is sublimated and categorized along a developmental continuum.

Within this context of global mobility, the status of Asian students is defined by mixed temporalities, as all historical differences are mediated by a common narrative of European intellectual thoughts and at the same time, the policies of the State and university management regulate Asian international students via a process of standardisation of educational practices. In Australia, as in the many countries, internationals student mobility exists in this fuzzy area of temporary subjectivity and citizenship where the regulatory state and corporatized university work together to turn Asian international students into neoliberal subjects and yet as outsiders. While international students are part of the internationalising knowledge diaspora which has the capacity to interrogate the global and contribute to the creation of ‘in-between’ cultural spaces above the boundary of nation-states and local sites, ironically, the dominant discourse and economic imperatives militate against such a knowledge exchange. The paper notes what is unique about the Australian university system is its openness to the inflow of students and academics from the Global South but dominated by the hegemonic ideology of the Global North. The paper argues for a new ontology as well as a new epistemology that recognise the ‘internationalising’ effect of international students, and oblige a global cognitive justice and build an international constituency of the public good of international student mobility.

Professor Greg McCarthy

BHP Chair of Australian Politics at Peking University

Professor Greg McCarthy is the BHP Chair of Australian Studies at Peking         University. Professor McCarthy also holds the Chair of Australian Politics at the University of Western Australia. His main research interests and extensive   publications are on Australian politics and political culture. His longstanding research     focuses on transitional change within and between nations. Recently, he has written on the internationalisation of Australian higher education governance, and the  political implications of the conversion of Australian higher education from an elite to  a mass and internationalised education system. In addition, he has investigated the    international relationship between Australia and China as read through the policies of        contemporary Australia governments.

Dr Xianlin Song

Asian Studies, University of Western Australia

Xianlin Song is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies, at the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on the current cultural transition and gender issues in contemporary China, and more recently on international higher education. Her recent publications include Women Writers in Post Socialist China (co-authored with Kay Schaffer, Routledge, 2014), Bridging Transcultural Divides: Teaching Asian Languages and Cultures in a Globalising Academy (co-edited with Kate Cadman, Adelaide: UAP, 2012), Transcultural Encounters in Knowledge Production and Consumption (co-edited with Youzhong Sun, Singapore and Beijing: Springer and Higher Education, 2018).