View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarBank@NUS CONTACT ZONES IN INTERNATIONALIZING ASIAN UNIVERSITIES: IDENTITIES, SPATIALITIES AND GLOBAL IMAGINATIONS FOONG HUI EE, MICHELLE (B. Soc. Sci., Hons.), NUS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2013 DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis is my original work and it has been written by me in its entirety. I have duly acknowledged all the sources of information which have been used in the thesis. This thesis has also not been submitted for any degree in any university previously. ___________________________________ Foong Hui Ee, Michelle 23/01/13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This academic journey has been immensely fulfilling not least because it dealt with a topic close to my heart---as a student who was hungry for international experiences and later, as a teacher whose same insatiable appetite for travel has brought her to live and work with young people in several countries including Japan. However, the process of writing up this dissertation has often been gruelling as I painfully came to realise that my priorities have shifted (rightly so) since a decade ago when I had graduated from university. To this end, words cannot express how grateful I am to the following people, without whom I would have faltered along the way. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to my supervisor and mentor Professor Brenda Yeoh, who had also supervised my honours thesis. Her unwavering confidence in me, as well as tireless encouragement, was more than what any student could ask for. Leading by example, she continues to be my role model as a ‘super-woman’ who seemed to be able to impeccably juggle the many hats she wears. Special mention also goes out to Prof Yeoh’s secretary, Amelia Tay, whose gentle demeanour and kind words always soothed my soul (especially when a deadline was closing in). I would like to thank Professor Ho Kong Chong for granting me the precious opportunity to be part of the Globalizing Universities and International Student Mobilities in East Asia (GUISM) project, through which I had the privilege to work with a team of passionate and high-calibre researchers in the region. Among them, special thanks to Dr Francis Leo Collins (University of Auckland), who had patiently helped to refine the scope of my research in its early stages, Satoru Ando (University of Tokyo) who provided immense support to me in my fieldwork in Todai, Eugene Liow (NUS) for always lending a hand, and Kat, Emily and Yi’en, my fellow ‘international student’ researchers who selflessly share their findings, and whose passion inspires me. This research would not have been possible without my 46 respondents in both NUS and Todai, who had been so forthcoming and generous in sharing with me their stories, fears, hopes and dreams. My life has been enriched by these stories. I am indebted to Wen Liang and my parents, for their constant belief in me, bearing patiently with my grouchiness especially in those dreary ‘no inspiration’ moments. Note: This research was fully supported by the Singapore Ministry of Education, (Academic Research Fund Tier 2 grant), Grant number: MOE 20089-T2-1-101, Principal Investigator: Assoc Prof HO Kong Chong, National University of Singapore. The project name is Globalising Universities and International Student Mobilities. i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements i Table of Contents ii Summary iv List of Appendices v Chapter One – Introduction 1.1 Trend toward internationalization of universities in East Asia 1 1.2 Geographical contributions in student mobilities 2 1.3 The case of NUS and Todai 2 1.4 Contact zones and research design 3 1.5 Research objectives and thesis Map 3 Chapter Two – Theoretical Junctures 2.1 Geographies of mobile youths in transit 6 2.2 International student mobilities and identity negotiations 7 2.3 International student mobilities, urban processes and campus micro-geographies 10 2.4 International student mobilities and cosmopolitan sensibilities 11 2.5 Contact zones 13 2.6 Safe houses 16 Chapter Three – Internationalizing universities in East Asia 3.1 Introduction 18 3.2 The ‘Singapore brand’—to be an education hub 19 3.2.1 The National University of Singapore (NUS) and its internationalization pathway 20 3.2.2 Advocating overseas/international experiences 23 3.2.3 UTown—merging of learning and living spaces 24 3.2.4 Challenges 25 3.3 Internationalizing Japanese universities—An overview 26 3.3.1 The Global 30 project and its dilemmas 27 3.3.2 Challenges towards internationalization 30 3.4 The University of Tokyo (Todai)—Propelling from national to international status 31 3.4.1 PEAK and the dilemma of English as the language of 34 internationalization 3.4.2 Concluding remarks--Drawing parallels between NUS and Todai’s 35 internationalization pathways ii Chapter Four – Research Design 4.1 Biographical interviews with international students 37 4.1.1 Interview matrix and process 38 4.1.2 Table 1: Profile of NUS respondents 40 4.1.3 Table 2: Profile of Todai respondents 43 4.2 Discourse analysis of print and online resources 47 4.3 Participant observation in campus ‘international’ events 48 4.4 Positionality and reflexivity 48 Chapter Five – (Re) constructing identities in the contact zone 5.1 Introduction 50 5.2 Contact zones challenge international students’ notions of nationhood, ethnicity and belonging 51 5.3 Confronting national politics in the contact zone 58 5.4 Being an ‘ambassador’ in the contact zone 61 5.5 A trigger to consider obligations to one’s family and country 63 5.6 Contact zones, identities and the experience of time 66 5.7 Concluding thoughts 69 Chapter Six – Spatializing contact zones in internationalizing Asian universities 6.1 Introduction 70 6.2 Institutionalised/ Routinised contact zones 71 6.3 Spontaneous contact in social/ casual settings 77 6.4 Conflation of learning and living spaces—the beginnings of cosmopolitan sensibilities? 84 6.5 Episodic and catastrophic events/encounters 86 6.6 Summary—towards building global imaginations 89 Chapter Seven – Global imaginations in the internationalizing university contact zone 7.1 Introduction 91 7.2 Multiple articulations of a global identity 91 7.3 Global imaginations in university settings and programmes 97 7.3.1 ‘International’ events on campus spaces 98 7.3.2 ‘Take me to places’ 100 7.4 Cities and limits to global imaginations 104 Chapter Eight – Concluding remarks and the way forward 107 Bibliography 112 Appendices 123 iii SUMMARY In the last decade, East Asia has experienced exponential growth in student mobility within the region, fuelled by factors such as strengthening economies and increased recruiting efforts from East Asian universities. The National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of Tokyo (Todai) represent two top universities in East Asia with globalizing ambitions---both have an explicit agenda to recruit international students primarily within Asia. This study conceptualizes the globalizing East Asian university as a series of ‘contact zones’ which, according to Mary Louise Pratt (1997:63) are ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in the contexts of high asymmetrical relations of power such as colonialism…or their aftermaths’. These ‘spaces’ include the study environment, everyday activities and social networks. The complex ethno-historic links among East Asian countries further complicate the dynamics within these contact zones. Specifically, this research investigates how international students in NUS and Todai are prompted to reflect, question and negotiate their ethno-national identities as a result of encountering differences in contact zones. Challenging dominant discourses of footloose global youth cultures, I illustrate the multiple and creative ways in which students continue to articulate emotional ties to home. Secondly, responding to recent calls to pay attention to the microgeographies of internationalizing university campuses (see Hopkins 2011 and Anderson et al 2012), I analyze contact zones on three interlinked spatial fronts of routinized, causal and episodic encounters, highlighting the politics at work and how safe houses, as spaces of refuge in frictional contact spaces constitute an integral coping strategy for international students. Finally, I interrogate the intersecting processes of students’ unique biographies, past mobility trajectories and experiences in the contact zones in shaping their multiple global imaginations, as well as students’ experiences of campus spaces and programmes that seek to develop ‘cosmopolitanism’. Through a comparative perspective of students’ experiences in NUS and Todai, I wish to uncover common themes and where they depart, thereby contributing to a more nuanced, regional understanding of the complex identities of international students in Singapore and Japan, as well as to the growing transnational literature on youth and mobilities within East Asia. Drawing primarily from 46 in-depth biographical interviews conducted with international students in NUS and Todai, the questions were designed to pay close attention to the particular pathways and experiences of individual students as they move through transnational education spaces, while encouraging respondents to develop their personal narratives. I also employ other qualitative methods of inquiry such as participant observation in campus-wide events and discourse analysis of print and