(De)construction of stigma attached to global South-South student mobility: voices from Chinese doctoral students in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Despite an emerging mobility of Chinese doctoral students to Malaysia, little is known about how this cohort perceives their study sojourn, especially in relation to a salient yet under-researched discourse widely circulating in the Chinese media that calls into question doctorates obtained from Southeast Asian universities. Utilizing a qualitative method based on 10 Chinese doctoral students, guided by a theoretical framework incorporating Whiteness and agency in mobility, this study unpacks how this cohort understands and addresses the disparaging discourse. Findings reveal that the pejorative discourse is tantamount to a process of stigmatization entrenched in the legacy of Whiteness, which is reinforced by the students’ voluntary practice of Whiteness as aspiration, investment, and malleability. Confronting this discourse, the participants established themselves as agentic actors who mobilized collective agency for contestation to rectify the erroneous conception and restore their esteem. This study ends with some implications and future research directions for international student mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• South-South mobility
• Chinese students
• Malaysia
• Whiteness
• Agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In using these terms (i.e., global South, global North), we are not essentializing country groupings as a homogenous entity. In the literature, however, these terms are commonly used. White/non-White, West/Rest, North/South are used interchangeably as pairs of synonymous terms. As a matter of convenience, we use the terms with the acknowledgement of the diversity and complexities encompassed by these descriptors.

2 This is based on summation of numbers in 2022, as shown in the EMGS website at https://educationmalaysia.gov.my/student-data/.