ABSTRACT
Despite a boom in literature around international students in higher education and their experiences, discourse around international students often lacks specificity, particularly around race. Among the increasing international student population in Canada are international students who are racialized where they study. While international students are often lauded for the diversity they bring to campus, race is often omitted from the discourse. This is a major oversight as international students of colour are marginalized by not only international student status but also race. Understanding these intersections is a critical component in framing how racialized international students experience their destination countries of study. Failure to address the importance of race in research contributes to the erasure of these experiences, untailored resources of international students, and less impactful research. Using a critical lens, this chapter encourages stakeholders and researchers in international higher education to shift the ways in which they think about the intersections of race and international student status by (a) highlighting systemic racism encountered by international students, (b) examining representations of racialized international students in international higher education discourse and important omissions, and (c) demonstrating the need for meaningful, intersectional analysis on international student data.
