Local Meanings of Internationalization of Higher Education Under Economic Crisis: A Critical Case Study at a Swedish University

The paper is an analysis of local meanings academic employees confer to internationalization of higher education at their own work place in a context of economic cuts and institutional restructuring. The argument is that internationalization of higher education is interpreted in this local context more as a controversial means to access resources rather than a meaningful translation of internationalization policy into practice. The fieldwork data gathered through participant observation at a social science department at a Swedish university indicate that the local meanings of internationalization are largely determined by two main aspects of the local context in which they are constituted: a) the local practices of decision-making, priority setting, and resource distribution at the university and departmental level; b) the increasing local participation of employees in forms of symbolic resistance to these decisions. The findings should be read in light of the author having had extensive collaboration with the department under study, a positioning that confers her the possibility to move away from the traditional role of the researcher as a neutral observant toward a more participatory role that entails becoming critically engaged with the research field and moving the application of theory, methods and practice towards action and activism.