The Cultivation of a Care of the Self in International Education

• In Event: Disquieting Higher Education: Foucault and Contemporary Theories in Education

Abstract

International student mobility (ISM) has been viewed by critical scholars within economic and political frameworks, while governmentality scholars have focused on practices that shape international student conduct in relation to neoliberal globalization. Yet, both critical and governmentality scholars often overlook another crucial element, that of the ethical care of the self. This paper proposes an analytical framework for (re)conceptualizing international students as active agents in the construction of their own subjectivity rather than as individuals caught up in their own subjugation. Considering the relationship international students have to themselves acknowledges the coercive as well as the constitutive elements of a cultivation of the self, allowing space for the ethical dimensions of identity-making, self-formation, and equitable practices in international education.

Author

• Ryan P. Deuel, St. Lawrence University