Examining Racial Sensemaking and Racialized Experiences of Chinese International Doctoral Students in the United States

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: A Critical Examination of the Complexities of Being Asian in Higher Education Settings (Table 36)

Abstract

Despite a growing body of literature on international students’ racialized experiences (e.g., Mitchell, 2017, Yao et al., 2023), Chinese international doctoral students’ perspectives and experiences remain under-researched. Utilizing the Learning Race in a U.S. Context (LRUSC) framework (Fries-Britt et al., 2014), this phenomenological study examined how 12 Chinese international doctoral students made sense of race and navigated racialization through semi-structured interviews. The findings demonstrate that their perceptions of race shifted from accepting constructs of race as objective to resisting and disrupting arbitrary, hegemonically ascribed U.S. racial categories and that they used different strategies to grapple with racialized experiences. Implications are offered to better inform resources, support and policies that aim to improve international students’ experiences.

Author

• Peiwen Wang, Southern Connecticut State University