Alien academics: Colonial social mobility, datafied subjectivity, and white-collar indentured servitude in U.S. higher education

This article illustrates, critically analyzes, and theorizes experiences of discrimination faced by international students and scholars of color in U.S. academia. First, it proposes the conceptual framework of colonial social mobility for examining how progressive academic spaces are often steeped in the kind of nativistic, anti-immigrant sentiments popularly attributed to political conservatives. Second through, a case study from a communication studies department, it reveals how international academics of color are datafied into a form of biopolitical capital to anchor varying DEI-related crisis management agendas. Finally, it presents a chronological, experiential narrative of the forms of marginalization faced by international students and scholars of color as they navigate the processes of graduate education, the academic job market, employment visas, and permanent residency, highlighting how the logics of indentured servitude and coolie labor of bygone eras continue to inform the experiences of racialized foreign subjects. We argue that the confessional designation of international students and scholars of color as “alien” in immigration documents ironically – though insufficiently – lays bare the interpersonal, intercultural, and institutional dynamics preventing this demographic’s personal and professional flourishing, an issue that rarely animates either popular or scholarly rhetoric on social justice in the United States.