Race, gender, and the immigrant student: Aspiring decolonisation in Irish universities

The growth in international students in the context of the global ‘internationalisation’ agenda within academia offers significant opportunities for broadening and deepening multicultural exchange, understanding and learning within universities. However, to do so effectively means acknowledging the reality that many universities around the world remain colonial strongholds of white, male, middle-class privilege. Drawing from our respective experiences as a female scholar of colour (SoC) and a female white senior lecturer within an Irish university, in this article, we argue that in order to realise their dreams of internationalisation, universities need to engage with the complex legacies of colonisation, racism, and existent inequalities in a way which makes substantive improvements to students experiences. This means moving beyond individualised neoliberal engagements with specific scholars to one which engages students’ diversity, difference and rich, situated experiences in ways which challenge and unpack the ongoing structures of power which reproduce social divisions in their everyday lives. While a solid body of literature already exists on both the need to decolonise curricula, and on the experiences of academics of colour, far less has been written about the experiences of SoCs and ethnic migrant students within ‘internationalised’ universities. Our article aims to make a contribution in this regard.