Racialized International Students and Their Experiences in a Canadian University During COVID-19 Pandemic

Internationalization is part of Canadian universities’ strategic priorities. Recruitment of international students is key to universities’ operational budget to compensate for budget cuts caused by a neoliberal emphasis on transparency, efficiency, productivity, and cuts in public spending. The latter measures have resulted in an increased enrolment of international students, primarily from India and China (Crossman et al., 2023), as well as the rise of international student tuition fees at Canadian universities. This research centers on racialized students’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on their voices and concerns with racism and microaggression as well as other challenges they have experienced during these critical times. Drawing on a case study methodology (Yin, 2014) and using semi-structured interviews, we interviewed six racialized students at one university in Ontario, Canada. The findings show that measures taken by provincial and federal Canadian governments lead to remote learning, isolation and, surprisingly, mitigated experiences of overt racism on university campuses. However, participants expressed instances of microaggression through social media that targeted mainly racialized students from China. They also highlighted the financial difficulties they encountered and the lack of institutional support that caused them emotional and mental stress which consequently impacted their academic progress.