Questioning the prevailing discourse and practice of internationalization of higher education in Latin America

Abstract

This essay puts forth an epistemological reflection of the prevailing discourse and practice of internationalization of higher education in Latin America. The reflection is based in the following arguments: 1. Under the foundation of a global hierarchical imaginary, internationalization of higher education in Latin America is immersed in a cultural matrix that potentially reinforces unequal geographies of power, knowledge and being; 2. Higher education refers to a relational field of disputes, with questions, fissures and contradictions to the prevailing order; and 3. An effective and emancipatory way of facing the hegemony and coloniality of the internationalization of higher education is to promote a counter-hegemonic and anti-colonial internationalization, that provokes other ways of thinking, doing and living the university institution. In order to reflect on the perspectives and limits of “other forms of internationalization of higher education” in Latin America, reference is made to the idea of Modernity/(De)Coloniality, as well as to historical evidence of South-Global’s distancing from the predominant order.