Ethical internationalisation in higher education: interfaces with international development and sustainability

This analysis is situated within a larger project focusing on ethics and internationalisation in higher education. Internationalisation is occurring at a fast pace and encompasses overlapping and contradictory aims largely framed by market imperatives. At the same time, institutions of higher education increasingly promote sustainability. We use a framework informed by decolonial theories to map different orientations of internationalism at the interface of sustainability and international development in the context of neoliberalism. To examine these interfaces we offer a social cartography that locates intersections of neoliberal, liberal, and critical discourses within an internally contested but enduring modern/colonial imaginary. We demonstrate the generative potential of the social cartography by drawing on examples from strategy documents relating to internationalisation from universities in Canada, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden and the UK.