“We Loved It Because We Felt That We Existed There in the Classroom!”: International Students as Epistemic Equals Versus Double-Country Oppression

Abstract

The article compares student narratives of engagement in internationalization in the United Kingdom and Germany. The comparison signals a new area of critical sociology of internationalization which shows signs that internationalization in non-Anglophone countries may evolve under conditions the article calls “double-country oppression.” “Double-country oppression” denotes a situation whereby international students are put at risk of exclusion not only on the basis of lacking characteristics that “bind” them to the country of education (in this case Germany) but also, and perhaps primarily, because they lack characteristics that “bind” them to Anglophone countries, despite being located in a non-Anglophone country. As such, “double-country oppression” has important pragmatic and conceptual implications as it calls into question analytical paradigms which center around the nation-state. The emergence of “double-country oppression” also challenges the view that there are new possibilities for epistemic democracy as more non-Anglophone countries enter the internationalization competition.