The Matter in Global Higher Education: A Collaborative Autoethnography of International Students’ Sociomaterial Experiences in the United States

Abstract

In this collaborative autoethnography, we challenge predominantly human-centered approaches in international student research by foregrounding the active roles that non-human entities play in shaping our lives. Drawing on sociomaterial theory and our experiences as international graduate students across multiple U.S. contexts, we examine how everyday encounters with space, transportation infrastructure, food, climate, and digital technology shape our access, participation, wellbeing, and sense of belonging in higher education abroad. We argue that these entities constitute material conditions whose shifting assemblages with social arrangements engender inequitable realities that remain underexamined in existing scholarship. In doing so, we join ongoing efforts to move beyond deficit narratives that attribute international students' challenges to individual shortcomings rather than to the systems that produce them. Our analysis further demonstrates the analytical value of experience-focused research in international education when it attends to the mundane as a site where these often-overlooked dynamics become visible. Ultimately, this paper calls for research, policy, and practice to engage more critically with the material dimensions of international students' experiences across diverse contexts and positionalities in order to better understand and address the inequities they face.