A Critical Perspective on Short-Term International Mobility of Faculty: An Experience from Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article looks at the relatively understudied phenomenon of short-term international mobility of faculty from the critical internationalization perspective. It uses data from interviews with academics from Kazakhstan, who participated in short-term professional development trips abroad to understand who benefits and who loses as a result of short-term faculty mobility and how the short-term international mobility may contribute to the process of reproduction of the existing social structures and inequality. Critical internationalization perspective in general, as well as mobility paradigm more specifically, helps to reveal some important insights about short-term international mobility from a non-Western country to predominantly Western institutions. The main conclusion from the study is that host university’s engagement in hosting mobile faculty coming on short visits seems to be driven predominantly by the neoliberal profit-seeking motives rather than by a more humanistic desire to serve the larger global society by sharing its expertise or to engage in equal and mutually beneficial partnership relationships.