ABSTRACT
It is generally considered that international students and international teaching staff play important roles in the English-medium HE in general and in the TNE sector in particular, reflecting the ‘international’ physical side of the internationalisation of HE worldwide. However, building further on my previous works (Chowdhury & L. H. Phan, 2014; L. H. Phan, 2013, 2015; L. H. Phan & Barnawi, 2015), I argue that in many ways the very term ‘international’ gets abused, exploited, and commercially celebrated by various stakeholders of Englishmedium TNE higher education. This chapter builds up this argument with evidence collected in Thailand and Vietnam. In particular, I examine the questions of integration and belonging. I can further argue that the often celebrated ‘on the rise’ Asian countries that are infused with hospitality, smiles, generosity, and friendliness can be places whereby discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, where one comes from, and what English one speaks is intense. I show in what ways Asia’s obsession with ‘the West’ does not necessarily mean treating ‘Westerners’ favourably, while such obsession could simultaneously lead to unpleasant treatment of various groups. Again, social class plays a big role in the picture. On top of all this, the commercialisation of HE can complicate the whole TNE sector.
