Talking Through Uncertainty: An Ethnomethodological Analysis of International Student Talk on Reddit

• In Event: Research in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis: Categories and Identities in Interaction I

Abstract

This study employs ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to examine how international students studying in the United States collectively construct, negotiate, and manage visa-related anxiety on a public Reddit forum. Treating posts and replies as situated social actions, the analysis focuses on the interactional practices through which participants make sense of immigration uncertainty. The findings show that visa anxiety is organized through recognizable conversational patterns. Advice is routinely offered in directive formats and legitimized through experiential claims or institutional references, positioning some users as credible insiders. Uncertainty is managed through sequential question–answer exchanges that transform fragmented policy knowledge into shared interpretations. Disagreement is handled using analogical reasoning, partial alignment, and structured rebuttal, allowing competing accounts of enforcement or policy risk to coexist without breakdown. Participants also draw on membership categories such as “good people,” “legal immigrants,” and “smart international students” to moralize deservingness and vulnerability. These practices demonstrate that visa anxiety is not simply reported but interactively produced. By analyzing forum discourse as an ongoing accomplishment of social order, this study contributes to sociological understandings of international student precarity and the role of digital spaces in navigating international higher education.

Author

• Ojonimi Segun Salihu, Western Michigan University