Emma Harden-Wolfson

Together with my research team at McGill, we’ve got a new article out in this week’s University World News. It reflects on the ways international students are being attacked, both literally and metaphorically, and the five macro factors causing a rise in anti-international student sentiment. We also suggest some possible ways forward anchored in a right-based approach towards international students.

The article draws on a number of recent events which at first might look unrelated other than their link with international students but which, through our research, we see as interconnected.

I’ve been following the news in Kyrgyzstan, where international students have been the victims of mob attacks, and had planned to write about that. Then, University World News got in touch and asked me to write about international students being used as scapegoats and what can be done to protect them.

This got me thinking about the issue more broadly and how this ties both to the research we’re doing at the moment on recent changes in the Canadian policy environment towards international students and my previous work on this area.

This was combined with co-author Shannon Hutcheson’s excellent work linking racism, pandemic injustices and international students (for recent publications, see here and chapter 5 here) and co-author Yvonne Zhang’s research for her Master’s thesis on civic engagement among Chinese international students in Canadian universities.

Put all of these ideas into the mix, and the result is the article International students are under attack.