Student Vulnerabilities
Decolonizing “Cheap Labour and Good Business”: An Analysis of the Experiences of Racialized International Students and Settler Colonial Violence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hijin Park
This paper draws on interviews with 45 racialized international students and 10 university employees who provide services to international students at a comprehensive university in Ontario, Canada, and examines the student’s experiences with discrimination and violence. While international students are often stereotyped as inordinately wealthy members of the global elite, many racialized international students in Canada are precarious and exploited students and workers. A growing body of scholarship on international student victimization reveals that racialized international students in the West are disproportionately vulnerable to discrimination and violence on and off university and college campuses, and in public and private spaces. This harm may be committed by landlords, employers, strangers, fellow international students, non-international student classmates, professors, and administrators and by members of their ethnic communities. Factors for this include visa and immigration requirements, unregulated homestay programs, unregulated tuition fees, and the intersections of racism, sexism, xenophobia and Islamophobia. Our research documents some of these harms and argues that this discrimination and violence is connected to the violence of settler colonialism. Drawing on critical race and decolonial perspectives on internationalization we focus on how coloniality produces the patterned migration of disenfranchised people from the Global South who are pushed to migrate to settler colonial countries that historically and in the contemporary context require a large pool of exploitable labour. We highlight how the settler colonial state -- through the governing of higher education -- advances and normalizes discrimination and the impact of these systems on racialized international students.
Exploring Retention Initiatives for Sustained Student Support for First-generation, Online BIPOC Students Beyond the First Semester: Amplifying the Positive Influence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Angela Brown, Jennifer Butcher, Sandra Cleveland, Tana Palafox, La Keeta Prunty Keeta
This study explores and describes how institutional and community members can aid in the retention of minoritized undergraduate students at an online liberal arts private university through positively identified initiatives. The objectives of this study include investigating the unique cultural background of a specific group of minoritized students and how it influences their academic retention, what institutional, faculty, and family supports best support the retention of these minoritized students, and if the timing of such support plays a role. According to Rovai’s retention model, student characteristics, external factors such as finances and family responsibilities, and the institution's internal social and academic support significantly influence student retention. This study contributes to the literature surrounding the role of administration, institutional, and community members in combating minoritized online student attrition in higher education. A mixed methods approach is utilized with quantitative correlational analysis of surveys completed by the subject population and qualitative analysis of in-depth student interviews to identify themes of effective institutional and community support for student retention. Potential research limitations include a small sample size from one institution, time constraints for the research and/ or interview process, and investigator confirmation bias. Practice implications may include the importance of initiating retention practices with BIPOC online, first-generation students during the application process, and continuing throughout enrollment by faculty and other institutional support staff. In addition, recognizing potential cultural familial influences on retention may advocate for institutional flexibility with this minoritized population.
