5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

In 2021, there were over 6.4 million international students globally, up from 2 million in 2000 (UNESCO, 2023). Scholars have shown how such mobility for higher education tends to reinforce knowledge hierarchies across the globe. Students moving from the Global South to the Global North, for example, are typically taught a curriculum that is presented as encapsulating ‘universal’ principles and perspectives, but which often tends to privilege Western modes of thought and knowledge (e.g. Rizvi, 2000). Even within Europe such trends are evident, with cross-border mobility institutionalising the flow of knowledge from central points of power within the European university system to more marginal locations – in effect a transfer from ‘old’ to ‘new’ Europe (Kenway and Fahey, 2007). The growth of English-language courses in many parts of the world, as a means of attracting international students, has also been understood as a manifestation of both English hegemony and neo-colonialism (e.g. Choi, 2020).

This session will, however, explore the extent to which such knowledge hierarchies are being challenged by, inter alia, more diverse patterns of international student mobility (e.g. to the Global South as well as from it) (Waters and Brooks, 2021); the rise of China as a higher education powerhouse (Marginson, 2022); and the attention given to decolonising the curriculum in some nation-states, which has often been driven by international students (Begum and Saini, 2019). It will comprise five 20-minute papers, and will be run as a joint session between the Education and Youth Research Committees.