Welcome to the Intersectional Travel website, and thank you for visiting us. We hope you will have a pleasant and meaningful journey with us... Actually, we need your help. We recognize that we all face different challenges in terms of studying abroad and for resources to be helpful it needs to be inclusive and applicable. By contributing to this resource, you will just do that! Remember, this is really a work in progress.
This project forms part of the Mozilla Open Leaders programme. Here is my case study, which I had to present in our last session.
I am working with students and fellow colleagues at Stellenbosch University to develop open and inclusive study abroad resources so that from a international student mobility perspective we can achieve the goal of “inclusive internationalization” and make studying abroad more accessible and inclusive. I am also hoping to work with colleagues at other partner universities. I am working open (with students and colleagues), to ensure that we have the buy-in of the respective stakeholders and that the material represents the perspectives of the different stakeholders and campuses.
Important proviso: I realize that international student mobility can be a double edge sword in terms of inclusive internationalization: on the one hand it can contribute to inclusive internationalization on campus by giving more students from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to study abroad. At the same time, the endeavour of studying abroad is financially costly and this makes its reach limited. For that reason, thinking about international student mobility requires an awareness of this, but also a commitment to think about how we "do" international student mobility so that it will contribute to the larger goal of inclusive internationalization.
De Wet and Jones (2018) says:
Internationalization is not an isolated phenomenon in higher education; it is embedded in the broader context of higher education in the global arena. Elitism, commercialization, high costs of study, corruption, fraud, and quan- tity versus quality are all common global themes in international higher education, influencing internationalization and vice versa. An inclusive approach must take into account the varied sociopolitical, economic, and demographic contexts in different parts of the world, and must address the issue that current internationalization policies and prac- tices are not inclusive and leave out the great majority of students worldwide.
An important reference point for this project is the Nelson Mandela Bay Global Dialogue Declaration on the Future of Internationalisation of Higher Education. For more information about the declaration please refer to this article on University World News.
With the following tool we can see what helps making international student mobility inclusive: The ABC guide to inclusive international mobility for all. The latter resource was developed by the European Association for International Education (EAIE).
Drawing Inspiration from the following organizations:
It is important to think about what makes an activity open and inclusive. To help us conceptualize and actualize this, we recognize the importance of intersectionality to better understand the world we live in. In this regard intersectionality is an important analytical/critical tool for us. See our discussion regarding intersectionality.