Inclusive internationalisation

Do Different (Social) Groups of Students Need Different Internationalisation Activities

Bibliographic Data

ID4960002
AuthorsC Van Mol (0000-0001-9275-101X, Tilburg University, corresponding author), Adriana Perez-Encinas (0000-0001-5043-8447, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Year2022
Volume47
Issue12
Pages2523-2538
Publication date2022-12-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Higher Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0307-5079 • E-ISSN: 1470-174X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03075079.2022.2083102
OpenAlexW4293083078
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited39

For a long time, internationalisation strategies of higher education institutions across the world focused on international student mobility. However, international student mobility is a socially selective process, whereby students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to participate. Consequently, in recent years ‘internationalisation for all’, ‘inclusive internationalisation’ and ‘internationalisation at home’ have become prominent terms in internationalisation strategies, aiming to provide internationalisation activities to all students, including those who remain at home. To our surprise, however, existing scholarship today did not investigate whether offering a broader array of internationalisation activities also reaches the objectives of such new internationalisation strategies, namely to reach a broader group of students, including those from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds. To this end, in this paper, we investigate the likelihood of different (social) groups to participate in different internationalisation activities, both at home and abroad, through an online survey conducted in 2019 at three institutions in Belgium and the Netherlands (n = 2567). Our findings clearly indicate that the social composition of student populations needs to be taken into account when designing internationalisation strategies. Our results indicate that simply broadening the type of activities is not sufficient, as students from lower socio-economic backgrounds showed to be less likely to participate in any internationalisation activity. Overall, the findings suggest that inclusive internationalisation might best be reached through integrating internationalisation into the formal curriculum, in order to circumvent the barriers that might exist to participate in activities outside of the formal study schedule

Business · Disadvantaged · Economic growth · Economics · Higher education · Internationalization · Pedagogy · Political science · Public relations · Scholarship · Sociology · Education and experiences of immigrants and refugees · Global Education and Multiculturalism · International Student and Expatriate Challenges · Psychology

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