“You Did Not Sound Black on the Phone”: racialized othering and housing discrimination among international graduate students

Housing discrimination is often framed as a matter of individual bias, yet it is deeply embedded within seemingly neutral housing systems and institutional practices. This study examines how international graduate students experience discrimination in the U.S. housing market, drawing on survey data, focus groups, and Black feminist geographic approaches that center lived experience, relationality, and power. It introduces the concept of “unique discrimination” to capture the layered and context-specific forms of exclusion that emerge at the intersection of race, accent, immigration status, and institutional requirements such as Social Security Numbers and credit histories. The findings show that discrimination operates not only through overt racial bias, but also through everyday screening practices, bureaucratic norms, and informal landlord decisions that disproportionately disadvantage international students. By foregrounding the relational and structural production of housing exclusion, this study contributes to ongoing debates in Black geographies, intersectionality, and housing justice. It argues that addressing housing inequality requires moving beyond formal legal protection to confront the institutional mechanisms that reproduce unequal access to housing.