Empowered or disempowered by mobility? Experience of international academics in China
研究了中国三所大学中来自全球北方的国际学术人员的经历，发现他们在个人层面获得赋能，但在集体层面因专业价值观差异和权力动态而面临权力剥夺。
There is a noticeable reverse flow of academics from the Global North to the Global South in the recent decade. The study examines the emerging mobility trend by investigating three institutions in China. Based on case studies of traditional universities and Sino-foreign universities, the study argues that international academics in Chinese universities have experienced individual empowerment in terms of expanded academic networks and enhanced professional development. But they might face collective disempowerment due to the different professional values and protocols such as ‘routinised improvisation,’ and a lacking of bargaining power resulted from the university's inexplicit institutional power dynamics and a hierarchical approach to management. The findings suggest that the construction of international academics’ experience is a process shaped and re-shaped by the interplay across individual interpretation, institutional configuration and national context, and reveal the complexities of higher education internationalisation in countries at the periphery of the global higher education landscape.