Race, Mobility, and the Contradictions of International Higher Education

Abstract This essay reviews Parallel Societies of International Students in Australia (Gomes, Catherine. 2021. Parallel Societies of International Students in Australia: Connections, Disconnections, and a Global Pandemic , 1st ed. United Kingdom: Routledge), International Students at US Community Colleges (Malveaux, Gregory F., and Krishna Bista, eds. 2021. International Students at US Community Colleges Opportunities, Challenges, and Successes . London: Routledge), and International Students from Asia in Canadian Universities (Kim, Ann H., Elizabeth Buckner, and Jean Michel Montsion, eds. 2023. International Students from Asia in Canadian Universities : Institutional Challenges at the Intersection of Internationalization, Inclusion, and Racialization . 1st ed. New York: Routledge). Collectively, the books elucidate the social and institutional conditions that govern the experiences and coping strategies of international students in three popular study-abroad destination countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia. Through interdisciplinary lenses (e.g., policy analysis, critical race theory, and media ethnography), they examine the lived experiences of international students in terms of mobility, exclusion, and adaptation, highlighting the disjunctures between internationalization rhetoric and practice.