Original Research

Coloniality in motion: African international students as epistemic agents in South African higher education

David Naidoo

Received: 23 Sept. 2025; Accepted: 28 May 2026; Published: 19 Aug. 2026

Copyright: © 2026. The Author. Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

This study examines the experiences of international students (IS) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), interrogating the intersections of internationalisation, transformation and decolonisation within South African higher education. While internationalisation is often framed as evidence of institutional diversity, the research showed that it reproduced epistemic exclusions rooted in colonial hierarchies of knowledge. Drawing on a qualitative, narrative-based and critically interpretive approach, grounded in decolonial and postcolonial epistemologies, the study foregrounds the lived experiences of IS, particularly those from Africa, as epistemic agents navigating cognitive dissonance, hidden curricula and structural marginalisation. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews, participant observation and informal conversations, capturing how students experienced, internalised and resisted institutional norms that privileged Eurocentric knowledge systems. The study advances a novel conceptualisation of African international students as epistemic agents operating within institutional borderlands, offering an Africa-centred framework for rethinking internationalisation beyond assimilationist models. This article exposes contradictions within institutional internationalisation discourses and argues for a reimagining of universities as sites of cognitive justice, pluriversality, and co-produced knowledge.

Contribution: This article makes three interrelated theoretical contributions to scholarship on internationalisation and decolonisation in higher education. Firstly, it reconceptualises African international students not as marginal or deficit subjects within global mobility regimes, but as epistemic agents who actively produce, contest, and re-signify knowledge within historically colonial universities. Secondly, by bringing theories of internationalisation-as-coloniality into conversation with borderland and contact zone frameworks, the study theorises the university as a cognitive borderland: a space in which epistemic hierarchies are simultaneously reproduced and disrupted. Thirdly, the article advances an Africa-centred conceptual lens that foregrounds epistemic disobedience, cognitive justice, and pluriversality as analytic tools for understanding how internationalisation can function both as a mechanism of colonial continuity and as a site of epistemic possibility. In doing so, the study extends existing debates beyond descriptive critiques of exclusion, offering a theoretically grounded account of how African international students contribute to epistemic transformation within higher education institutions.

Keywords: international students; decolonisation of higher education; epistemic justice; cognitive dissonance; pluriversality; coloniality of knowledge.

Inclusion is not about the movement of people from their tenancy in the social margins into unchanging institutions. Integration requires the objects of policy to forget their former status as outsiders and fit comfortably into what remain deeply hostile institutional arrangements. There is an expectation that they will assume an invisible presence as they accept the dominant cultural order. (Slee 2011:107)

Introduction

Transformation and decolonisation in South African higher education remain pressing social concerns, intensified by student-led movements such as #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall. These protests exposed the persistence of colonial and apartheid-era logics embedded within curricula, institutional cultures and knowledge hierarchies. The epistemic violence at the University of Cape Town (UCT) has been described as ‘black pain’, reflecting the dehumanisation of black people by a system privileging whiteness (Ndelu 2016:63). Internationalisation in higher education is often described as an outward-looking exercise – seeking to benchmark the institution’s academic rigour with those of the western epistemologies (Posholi 2025). Much of the discourse has focused on decolonisation through racial equity, curriculum reform and access for historically marginalised South African students, thereby highlighting the need for inclusivity and internationalisation of the institutions of higher education. However, this study highlights how the process of internationalisation reinforces the colonial mindset of students – specifically those from Africa and the Global South. Examining their experiences provides a lens on the social implications of internationalisation, highlighting how ostensibly inclusive policies can reproduce exclusion and marginalisation. Understanding these dynamics is critical for creating higher education environments that are socially just, culturally responsive, and epistemically inclusive. By focusing on African international students (IS), this study foregrounds voices often overlooked in debates on transformation, emphasising the broader societal importance of epistemic equity and cognitive justice in the postcolonial university.

Knowledge gap

Despite the growing literature on inclusion, exclusion, decolonisation and internationalisation, research has largely overlooked the experiences of African IS at South African universities. Existing studies have emphasised domestic student populations, institutional diversity or structural reforms, leaving a gap in understanding how African IS navigate and resist epistemic exclusion. Furthermore, while current literature offers deficit views of IS experiences from the Global South, this study offers nuances of the epistemic uprising of African IS within the South African context. By foregrounding IS narratives, this study addresses a key knowledge gap concerning cognitive dissonance, hidden curricula, and epistemic agency within historically colonial institutions. It provides original insights into how internationalisation, often assumed to signify transformation and decolonisation, can instead reproduce entrenched knowledge hierarchies. These findings extend theoretical and empirical debates on decolonial transformation, offering conceptual and practical tools for higher education policy and curriculum reform that align with contemporary calls for epistemic justice and pluriversality.

Recent scholarship has critically interrogated the contradictions of internationalisation within many African higher education institutions, particularly its entanglement with colonial epistemic hierarchies (Heleta & Dilraj 2024; Heleta & Chasi 2023). These studies highlight how internationalisation often reproduces asymmetrical knowledge relations even as it is framed as progressive and inclusive. Similarly, Mittelmeier (2025) draws attention to the uneven epistemic positioning of IS within global mobility regimes, cautioning against approaches that celebrate diversity without addressing structural power. Building on these critiques, this study extends the literature by foregrounding African IS as epistemic agents operating within institutional borderlands, rather than as passive recipients of internationalisation policy.

The study is grounded in decolonial and postcolonial epistemologies, integrating key concepts such as the coloniality of the mind, epistemic disobedience and cognitive justice. Colonialism operates through language, identity, and consciousness, fostering psychological dependency, self-perception and knowledge (Maldonado-Torres 2007; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1986). While there is a call for the decolonisation of universities through internationalisation and inclusion, African universities continue to reflect Eurocentric epistemologies, which privilege Western knowledge while marginalising African perspectives (Mbembe 2016; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018). These views provide a segue into understanding why students from the African sub-continent leave their countries in search of colonially ranked institutions in South Africa. As an alternative to the colonised curriculum, Visvanathan (2009) and De Santos (2014) advocate for a recognition of plural knowledge through an ecology of knowledge and cognitive justice – calling for the validation of indigenous, African and subaltern epistemologies. However, the colonised curriculum vis-à-vis subaltern epistemologies should not be viewed as binaries. They are often negotiated in an academic contact zone within the institution.

The University of Cape Town may be viewed as a contact zone (Pratt 1991) – a space where cultures and knowledge systems meet under unequal power conditions, shaping IS experiences. While Pratt’s (1991) concept of the contact zone informs analysis, this article primarily uses the term cognitive borderland to emphasise epistemic contestation within the university. Together, these frameworks enable an analysis of how IS engage with, contest, and sometimes transform dominant epistemic hierarchies, highlighting the possibilities for cognitive justice and the co-creation of knowledge in postcolonial universities.

The University of Cape Town, originally a historically white, English-medium colonial institution, is now both globally competitive and positioned as distinctly African. International students constitute around 18% of the student body, with over 5000 students from more than 100 countries enrolled in 2023 (UCT 2025). While their presence is celebrated as a marker of diversity, it raises important questions about epistemic belonging, cognitive inclusion, and the extent to which internationalisation fosters genuine transformation rather than assimilation into dominant norms. The study adopted a qualitative, narrative-based, critically interpretive approach, privileging participants as epistemic agents whose stories reveal the affective, cultural, and cognitive dimensions of navigating a historically colonial institution.

This article begins with the research objectives and methodology – highlighting the sampling methods, ethical considerations and reliability of the study. The findings are then discussed, juxtaposed with the existing literature. The conclusion argues that universities must undergo a deep, dialogical transformation that dismantles colonial epistemic hierarchies, values diverse knowledge systems, and centres IS as co-producers of knowledge in order to achieve genuine inclusion, justice, and epistemic freedom.

Conceptual framework: Epistemic agency in the Borderland University

This study is guided by a decolonial conceptual framework that brings together three interrelated concepts: internationalisation-as-coloniality, the university as a cognitive borderland, and epistemic agency. Together, these concepts provide an analytic lens for examining how African IS navigate, contest, and reconfigure dominant knowledge hierarchies within historically colonial higher education institutions.

Internationalisation in higher education is often framed as a progressive and inclusive project; however, decolonial scholars have cautioned that it frequently operates through colonial logics that privilege Eurocentric knowledge, global rankings, and neoliberal forms of academic capital (De Santos, 2014; Mignolo 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018). Within this framing, internationalisation functions less as a mechanism of epistemic openness and more as a continuation of colonial hierarchies of knowledge, positioning African and Global South epistemologies as peripheral or supplementary. This study conceptualises such dynamics as internationalisation-as-coloniality, foregrounding the ways in which global mobility and diversity discourses can mask enduring epistemic inequalities.

The university is therefore theorised as a cognitive borderland or contact zone (Pratt 1991), where multiple knowledge systems, identities, and epistemic traditions encounter one another under conditions of unequal power. In this borderland space, inclusion is often conditional, requiring assimilation into dominant academic norms rather than the mutual recognition of diverse epistemologies. Hidden curricula, linguistic hierarchies, and assessment practices operate as mechanisms through which epistemic boundaries are policed, shaping whose knowledge is recognised as legitimate and whose is rendered marginal.

Within these cognitive borderlands, African IS occupy liminal positions that are simultaneously constraining and enabling. Drawing on decolonial theory, epistemic agency is conceptualised as the capacity of historically marginalised subjects to actively produce, legitimate, and circulate knowledge in ways that challenge dominant epistemic orders (De Santos 2014; Maldonado-Torres 2007). In this study, epistemic agency refers not merely to participation in learning, but to students’ capacity to interrupt dominant epistemic orders by asserting alternative knowledge, interpretive frames, and intellectual genealogies within institutional spaces that routinely marginalise them. Epistemic agency is enacted through what Mignolo (2007) describes as epistemic disobedience – acts that refuse the presumed universality of Western knowledge and assert the pluriversality of intellectual traditions. In the context of this study, such agency is expressed through practices including the strategic citation of African scholars, the mobilisation of home-country knowledge, and the formation of informal intellectual communities that function as counter-publics within the institution.

Figure 1 illustrates this conceptual framework by positioning African IS as epistemic agents operating within the cognitive borderlands of a historically colonial university shaped by internationalisation-as-coloniality.

FIGURE 1: Conceptual framework for understanding epistemic agency among African international students.

The framework highlights how epistemic agency emerges relationally, shaped by institutional structures, while also holding the potential to disrupt and reconfigure them. While grounded empirically in the context of UCT, this framework offers analytic tools that are transferable to other South African and African higher education institutions characterised by similar tensions between global competitiveness, transformation, and decolonial aspirations.

Research objectives

The study aimed to explore the experiences of IS at UCT, focusing on the intersections of internationalisation, transformation, and decolonisation. The objectives were to:

• examine how IS experienced epistemic exclusion, cognitive dissonance and marginalisation within curricula and institutional practices
• investigate forms of epistemic resistance and agency employed by IS to challenge dominant knowledge paradigms
• assess the implications of these experiences for decolonial transformation, epistemic justice, and the co-creation of inclusive knowledge environments in higher education.

Research methods and design

Data were collected from March 2018 to March 2019 through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and informal conversations, capturing student experiences, both academically and socially for the duration of their study. Participants were purposively sampled to reflect diverse geographic origins, faculties and levels of study, ensuring a broad range of perspectives on cultural, linguistic, and epistemic challenges. Ethical protocols ensured confidentiality, voluntary participation, and sensitivity to the intellectual and emotional processes involved in recounting experiences of marginalisation and resilience. The study employed a qualitative, narrative, and critically interpretative methodological approach, grounded in decolonial and postcolonial epistemologies. These frameworks emphasise the situatedness of knowledge and the centrality of power relations in knowledge production. Narrative inquiry formed the backbone of this approach, recognising participants not simply as subjects but as epistemic agents whose stories offered vital insights into the affective, cognitive, and socio-cultural dimensions of life within a historically colonial university context. This orientation aligned with a critical inquiry framework, which seeks to uncover and challenge systemic structures of epistemic inequality and exclusion within higher education.

The study population comprised IS enrolled at UCT. Inclusion criteria required participants to be formally registered as an IS at the institution for at least one academic year. A purposive sample of 28 participants was selected to capture diverse geographical, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. The majority of participants originated from African countries, including Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Namibia, and Ghana, while others came from the Global North, including the USA and Ireland. Participants represented undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels across multiple faculties, allowing exploration of both commonalities and differences in experiences of academic life, epistemic exclusion, and engagement with dominant knowledge systems.

Data collection primarily involved semi-structured, in-depth interviews lasting between 60 min and 90 min, designed to elicit reflective narratives regarding motivations for studying at UCT, academic and social integration, perceptions of inclusion and exclusion, and engagement with knowledge production and epistemic authority. Interviews were complemented by participant observation in academic and social settings, including lecture halls, study groups, and cultural events – providing additional contextual insights. A small number of focus group discussions facilitated collective reflection, the observation of shared experiences, and divergences among IS. All interviews and focus groups were audio-recorded with informed consent, transcribed verbatim, and anonymised to protect participants’ confidentiality.

Transcripts and observational notes were systematically analysed using thematic analysis within the narrative inquiry framework. Data were first read multiple times for familiarisation and then coded inductively to identify emerging patterns, categories, and themes. Codes were iteratively refined, and themes were cross-checked against the raw data to ensure consistency and accuracy. Reflexive memos were maintained throughout the analysis to document interpretive decisions and researcher positionality. Themes were further validated through peer debriefing and comparison across participants, ensuring trustworthiness and credibility of the findings. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, providing material for reliability and validity checks by my supervisor (McMillan & Schumacher 2010).

Reflexive engagement with positionality was central to the study. As a researcher, I acknowledge my dual positionality – sharing certain proximities with participants as an African navigating the postcolonial educational space, while also occupying an academic and institutional position distinct from participants. This facilitated both rapport-building and critical distancing, enabling trust in participant narratives while maintaining analytical rigour. Reflexivity involved ongoing self-examination of potential biases and assumptions regarding coloniality, internationalisation and transformation, thus ensuring ethical and epistemically just research practice.

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval was obtained from the University of UCT Human Research Ethics Committee (Ethics clearance number: EDNREC2017-03-09). All participants provided written informed consent and were informed of their right to withdraw at any time without penalty. Confidentiality was strictly maintained through anonymisation of transcripts and secure data storage in accordance with institutional protocols. Given the sensitive nature of discussions around marginalisation, identity, and epistemic exclusion, interviews and focus groups were conducted in supportive environments, with participants encouraged to set boundaries and express discomfort if needed.

Results

The findings reveal that the experiences of African international students are shaped by four interrelated dimensions that collectively influence their access, participation and sense of belonging within the university. At the macro level, power, colonialism and university rankings frame institutional priorities and practices, positioning international students within broader global hierarchies of knowledge, prestige and mobility. At the institutional level, spatial and academic inclusion reflects the extent to which students are able to navigate both the physical and pedagogical spaces of the university, influencing opportunities for meaningful engagement. Students’ day-to-day experiences are further mediated through academic participation, social capital and belonging, highlighting the importance of classroom interactions, peer relationships and support networks in fostering inclusion. Finally, resilience and self-inclusion emerged as a critical dimension through which students exercised agency by adapting to institutional challenges, developing coping strategies and actively creating opportunities for participation despite experiences of exclusion. These four dimensions do not operate independently but intersect to shape students’ overall experiences of access, participation and belonging, which emerged as the central organising concept of the study. The findings therefore suggest that institutional inclusion is a dynamic process that is simultaneously structured by historical and institutional power relations while being negotiated through students’ own social practices and epistemic agency.

Discussion

To interpret the narratives shared by IS at the institution, this section is organised around four interrelated thematic categories:

• Cognitive Dissonance and the Hidden Curriculum
• Negotiating Belonging: Language, Race, and National Identity
• Epistemic Disobedience: Resistance and Reimagination
• UCT as a Borderland: The Contradictions of Internationalisation.

Each theme illustrates how students experience, internalise, and at times resist the colonial residues embedded within academic and institutional life at the university. These findings are read through the theoretical lenses of coloniality of knowledge, contact zones, and the politics of recognition and misrecognition. The findings are drawn from my doctoral thesis, ‘Institutional Inclusion in Higher Education: An Analysis of the Experiences of Access, Belonging, and Participation of International/Foreign Students at the University of Cape Town’ (Naidoo 2021). This article further illuminates the institutional dynamics that shape these experiences and the ways students navigate, contest, and reimagine their place within the university.

Cognitive dissonance and the hidden curriculum

Many participants described an early sense of cognitive dissonance upon entering the institution – a subtle but persistent feeling that the curriculum, pedagogy, and even disciplinary language were not designed with them in mind. Students reported feeling that their prior educational backgrounds, intellectual frameworks, and linguistic habits were seen as ‘deficient’ or ‘less rigorous’ compared to dominant Eurocentric academic norms. This deficiency was not necessarily voiced explicitly by faculty but embedded within what several students called the ‘unspoken expectations’ of the institution – what we might term the ‘hidden curriculum’. Consider the following responses from participants, which underscore the cognitive dissonance:

‘Decolonized education will never be decolonized for me because I’m not from South Africa and the people here that teach me or that lectures me, most of them are White South African males.’ (C. Namibia, Female, 3rd year of study)

‘There’s secret manner in which to behave here – to toe the line … No one ever tells you about this, but if you don’t follow it, you get side-lined.’ (B. Ghana, Male, Honours)

‘UCT stands for a celebration of diversity, but when you speak up, it’s as if you are not welcome. It’s in the unspoken words, the gestures, the looks. This makes me question myself.’ (F. Pakistan, Male, 2nd year of study)

‘UCT curriculum speaks to transformation, but everyday experiences prove otherwise. All resources reflect the western canon. Where is the African voice in the curriculum.’ (Z. Ghana, Male, 3rd year of study)

These statements reflect the tension between official institutional discourses and the implicit ‘rules of the game’, which is the essence of cognitive dissonance in the hidden curriculum. The research reinforces this theme by highlighting how IS often feel compelled to ‘perform academic legitimacy’ by aligning with dominant Western paradigms. Students internalise a hierarchy of knowledge that privileges Euro-American theorists, while African scholars are either marginalised or instrumentalised to serve Western narratives. This leads to ‘epistemic self-censorship’, where students suppress their own intellectual traditions to conform to institutional expectations.

Participants described curriculum content as overwhelmingly Western in orientation, with African or Global South thinkers either absent or tokenised. Several participants found that when African content did appear, it was often framed within discourses of underdevelopment, violence or crisis, reinforcing stereotypical representations rather than offering epistemic depth.

This theme speaks directly to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s (1986) and Posholi’s (2025) critique of education systems, which continue to privilege colonial knowledge hierarchies while sidelining indigenous and local epistemologies. Students internalised a tension between the desire to succeed within the institution and a growing discomfort with the epistemic violence implicit in the denial of their own contexts and contributions.

The participants similarly described a ‘pedagogical silence’ around African intellectual traditions. Even when African theorists were cited, they were often used to illustrate problems rather than offer solutions. This subtle framing perpetuates a deficit model of African knowledge, reinforcing the idea that intellectual authority resides elsewhere.

Moreover, the study identifies the hidden curriculum as a mechanism of exclusion that operates through academic norms, classroom interactions and assessment criteria. Students often feel that success requires not just mastering content but decoding the cultural and epistemic assumptions embedded in academic practice. This creates a double burden: learning the material while simultaneously learning how to be legible to the institution - that is, how to be recognised as a legitimate academic participant within the institution. The second theme to be discussed revolves around belonging and identity.

Negotiating belonging: Language, race and national identity

The second key theme centred on how students negotiated their sense of belonging in relation to language, race, and national identity. The following quote highlights the stratified layers of belonging and xenophobic oppression:

‘“Umm, where are you from? What are you doing here? When are you going back?” And that last question, when you tend to not know when you are going back or you don’t show signs about when you are going back. Some will openly tell you, “No, you have to go back.” So, you guess what I am trying to say? So those types of things make me feel like I don’t feel like associating with this group or people cos they don’t seem welcoming.’ (G. DRC, Female, 2nd year of study)

While xenophobia is a global issue, incidences of oppression of foreigners in South Africa is often characterised by violence. The case for the institution is highly contradictory to the cause for epistemic decolonisation – especially considering UCT’s vision of becoming a progressive African university.

English, while the official medium of instruction, emerged as both a bridge and a barrier. For many, especially those from Francophone, Lusophone or Arabic-speaking African countries, English acts as a gatekeeper that limits academic expression and contributes to feelings of linguistic insecurity. Even for those fluent in English, the academic register demanded at the institution often felt alienating:

‘I was very isolated, umm when I came. I did not know who to speak out to for help, umm. I did not know how to ask questions because when I came here, and I’m like oooh these people speak English in such a high, you know on such a high level that I was so intimidated to go up to someone and ask them in my Namibian accent what it is that I needed from them and I was actually very timid to go up to someone and say that “hey, I dunno what I’m doing or who do I go speak to if I wanna change a course?”.’ (C. Namibia, Female, 3rd year of study)

The study expands on this by showing how language functions as a marker of academic legitimacy and social inclusion. I argue that IS often experience ‘linguistic stratification’, where fluency in academic English becomes a proxy for intellectual worth. This stratification not only affects classroom participation but also influences how students are perceived by peers and faculty. In other extremes, language is used to marginalise and exclude IS. Consider the following experience of a Black IS in a laboratory setting:

‘Another time, I was talking with someone in the lab and the Prof came and started speaking Afrikaans – Afrikaans! I was just standing there not knowing anything. It made me feel like a drop of water in oil. They just laughed.’ (G. Kenya, Female, Masters)

While the official language of learning and teaching at the institution is English, the Professor chose to ignore the presence of a Black IS and continued to speak in Afrikaans – a language seen through political lenses of the liberation struggle as the language of the oppressor. Indeed, the remnants of coloniality have been successful in emphasising the ‘otherness’ of people – rendering black internationals ‘invisible’. Students felt simultaneously racialised and foreign – viewed as both ‘African’ and ‘other’ in ways that made integration difficult in both academic and social spaces. Consider, for example, the following narratives on social acceptance and support at UCT:

‘Orientation was with international students only. What good is that? It’s important to have orientation with South African students as well. Although they had freshers braais and parties, we had to buy pricey tickets.’ (N. Cameroon, Male, 3rd year of study)

Participants echoed these sentiments, describing a ‘double marginalisation’, being excluded from dominant white spaces, while also being peripheral to Black South African student movements. This reflects a ‘racialised geopolitics of belonging’, where African IS are caught between solidarity and exclusion. Consider the following experiences around the #fallist movements at UCT:

‘Yes, we do experience exclusion on a broader spectrum. And also with the protests, you know, “you are not black enough to support this because you think that white people should not be blamed for everything.” Or “you’re not Black enough because you don’t support the ideas of some of the political members from a particular political party.”’ (B. Cameroon, Male, 3rd year of study)

‘We marched with you. We campaigned with you but still all it was the South African students who benefited from it all – the fees did not increase at the end of that year. International students had to pay the increased fee anyway.’ (N. Zimbabwe, Female, 3rd year of study)

These tensions point to Mbembe’s (2016) notion of the university as a colonial archive – where the symbolic and structural inheritance of apartheid and colonialism continue to shape which bodies and voices are recognised as fully present, and which are marginalised or rendered unintelligible. The study also reveals that institutional discourses of diversity often fail to engage with the lived realities of IS. While the institution celebrates its pan-African identity, this celebration rarely translates into meaningful inclusion. Students are expected to assimilate into dominant norms rather than co-create institutional culture. Despite the involvement of IS in the #Feesmustfall movement, they were penalised with fee increases while South African students benefitted from the protests. This speaks directly to the discriminatory practices of the institution.

Juxtaposed to the negative experiences of students from the global south, students from Western countries are treated with more respect and dignity:

‘For us from Anglo-Saxon countries we have very different things that we have to adapt to, compared to students from black countries. For me the adjustment has been a lot easier than a lot of other people I’ve spoken to. There’s generally a feeling that we are treated better – people want to assist us more. There’s just a lot of everyday racism that I benefit from. At the university there is the sense that we are paying more and so if we have a good experience, more will come.’ (N. Ireland, Male, 1st year of study)

Scholars have long argued that race and national origin significantly shape the experiences of IS (Hanassab 2006; Mitchell et al. 2017). Students from Western, predominantly white nations often face fewer cultural and institutional barriers compared to those from the Global South. The notion that ‘we are treated better’ reflects racial hierarchies embedded within global and institutional structures, where whiteness is normalised and afforded unspoken advantages (Ahmed 2007; Ladson-Billings 1998). McIntosh’s (1988).Seminal work on white privilege outlines the invisible advantages that white individuals often take for granted, including being perceived as competent, receiving better service and not being subjected to racial profiling.

In the context of international education, White students from English-speaking countries may find their linguistic, cultural, and racial identities aligned with institutional norms, making their adaptation processes easier (Brown & Jones 2013). This contrasts with students from non-Western or racialised backgrounds who often face microaggressions, exclusion, and additional academic scrutiny (Marginson 2012). However, epistemic marginalisation is not without resistance – as seen in the next section on epistemic disobedience.

Epistemic disobedience: Resistance and reimagination

Despite their experiences of marginalisation, many students demonstrated subtle and overt forms of epistemic disobedience – deliberately questioning, challenging or working around the dominant norms of knowledge production at the institution. Some described resisting course content by introducing alternative references, citing African or indigenous scholars in assignments, or drawing on home-country case studies that were more relevant to their lived realities. In doing so, they enacted acts of re-centring, shifting attention away from Eurocentric canons towards more pluralistic and situated knowledge frameworks:

‘And then after that I became brave – I broke out of my shell and then I went up to lecturers after class and I would tell them that actually I don’t understand what it is that you tried to say earlier so can you please make it more, can you elaborate more on that subject. And, at other times, I would raise up my hands in class and I would tell them that they should actually repeat themselves, cos I actually did not get what it is that they actually said.’ (C. Namibia, Female, 3rd year of study)

‘And then I raised up my hand and told him that, that in itself is very exclusionary because most of us don’t speak Xhosa. Yes, you have people in the class who are Xhosa users, but then you have people from Zimbabwe, like myself or you have people from Cape Town who just don’t speak Xhosa – they speak English.’ (B. Zimbabwe, Female, 3rd year of study)

The study further identifies these acts as ‘micro-resistances’ – small but significant interventions that challenge the epistemic status quo. It documents how students use assignments, presentations and informal networks to introduce alternative perspectives. These acts are often invisible to the institution but deeply meaningful to students. Empowerment closely relates to the ‘power to’ theory (Bourdieu 1986), which in this instance, students voice their feelings on their perceived injustice.

Others described collective acts of resistance, including informal reading groups or cultural societies where they could engage in conversations that validated their lived experiences and epistemologies. These spaces served as counter-publics, where students created alternative intellectual communities that challenged the unspoken hegemony of Euro-American thought.

This form of agency aligns with Mignolo’s (2007) concept of epistemic disobedience, which encourages disavowing the universalism of Western epistemology and instead foregrounding the pluriversality of knowledge. It also echoes De Santos’ (2014) call for an ecology of knowledges – spaces where knowledge systems can co-exist, interact and co-inform one another without hierarchisation.

The study adds that these counter-publics often emerge in liminal spaces – corridors, WhatsApp groups and off-campus gatherings, where students feel free to express themselves. These spaces are not formally recognised by the university but serve as vital sites of intellectual and emotional sustenance.

However, these acts of disobedience were not without consequence. Some students noted that their ideas were misunderstood, dismissed or marked down in assessments – especially when they deviated from the dominant frameworks expected by academic staff. The tension between conformity and critique became a recurring emotional and cognitive dilemma for many.

This is described as the ‘cost of critique’ – where students must weigh the risk of academic penalty against the desire for intellectual authenticity. This dilemma underscores the need for pedagogical reform that values diverse epistemologies rather than punishing deviation. In the last theme, I draw attention to the contradictions of internationalisation.

University of Cape Town as Borderland: The contradictions of internationalisation

The final theme reflects students’ perceptions of UCT as a ambivalent space for both opportunity and exclusion, as well as for progress and contradiction. Many students expressed deep respect for the institution’s academic reputation, valuing the exposure to new ideas, networks, and research capacity. However, these benefits coexisted with a growing awareness that internationalisation, as practised, did not automatically equate to inclusion or transformation:

‘I had to fight the system. It is very superficial. There is no social orientation, we don’t get socialised … no teambuilding … we basically have to find our own feet.’ (R. Norway, Female, 1st year of study)

‘Orientation was very romanticised. We went to places in groups, like you know you feel safe as Americans – you stick together. But it makes it difficult to mingle with other students.’ (M. USA, Male, 1st year of study)

‘We pay a lot of money – R104 000 versus locals who pay R42 000. Fee increases affect us most. I’m frustrated that I don’t get value for money. This is supposed to be world class university, which charges the world but delivers an inferior experience.’ (R. Norway, Female, 1st year of study)

This tension aligns with critiques of internationalisation as a neoliberal project – one that prioritises marketability, global rankings and institutional prestige over genuine intercultural engagement or epistemic justice. Students observed that while the institution promotes itself as a pan-African and a global institution, the lived experiences of IS often reflect a more transactional relationship. Inclusion is frequently symbolic, with limited opportunities for co-creation or structural transformation.

This study critiques this model by arguing that internationalisation at the institution often reproduces existing hierarchies rather than dismantling them. There should be a call for a reimagining of internationalisation that centres student agency, epistemic diversity, and institutional reflexivity. This would require moving beyond tokenistic gestures towards a more substantive engagement with the knowledge, cultures, and experiences that IS brings.

The narratives of IS at UCT reveal a complex interplay of dissonance, negotiation, resistance, and contradiction. While the university offers significant opportunities, it also demands conformity to norms that may marginalise alternative ways of knowing and being. Recognising and valuing these narratives is essential for building a more inclusive, pluralistic, and transformative academic environment.

Limitations and future research

While this study provides rich insights into the epistemic experiences of IS, several limitations should be acknowledged. Firstly, the research is based on a single institutional case study at the UCT. Although UCT offers a particularly salient site for examining the intersections of internationalisation, decolonisation, and epistemic justice, the findings are not intended to be statistically generalisable. Rather, they offer analytically transferable insights that may resonate with other South African and African universities shaped by comparable colonial histories and global mobility regimes.

Secondly, the study relies primarily on self-reported narratives generated through interviews, focus groups and participant observation. While narrative inquiry is well suited to capturing lived experiences and epistemic meaning-making, it may be influenced by participants’ retrospective interpretations and emotional investments. To mitigate this, the study employed triangulation across data sources and maintained reflexive analytic practices throughout the research process.

Thirdly, the conceptual framework advanced in this article –particularly the theorisation of African IS as epistemic agents operating within institutional borderlands, remains emergent. While grounded in robust decolonial theory and empirical data, further research is needed to test and refine this framework across different institutional, national and disciplinary contexts.

Future research could adopt comparative or multisite designs to examine how epistemic agency manifests across diverse African higher education settings. Longitudinal studies may also offer insight into how students’ epistemic practices evolve over time and in response to institutional change. In addition, policy-oriented research could explore how internationalisation strategies, curriculum design and assessment practices might be reconfigured to better recognise and support epistemic plurality and co-produced knowledge.

Implications for policy and practice

The findings of this study carry important implications for higher education policy and practice, particularly within South African and African universities seeking to reconcile internationalisation with decolonial transformation. Firstly, internationalisation policies should move beyond numerical indicators of diversity and global mobility to explicitly address epistemic inclusion. This includes recognising IS – especially those from Africa and the Global South – not only as recipients of knowledge but also as contributors to curriculum content, pedagogical practice, and scholarly debate.

Secondly, curriculum design processes should intentionally create space for epistemic plurality by valuing diverse intellectual traditions and allowing students to draw on home-country knowledge, languages, and contexts in assessments and classroom engagement. Assessment practices that implicitly reward conformity to Eurocentric canons risk silencing alternative epistemologies and undermining epistemic agency. Institutions should therefore encourage flexible assessment frameworks that recognise multiple ways of knowing and reasoning.

Thirdly, staff development initiatives play a critical role in enabling epistemic justice. Academic staff require opportunities to critically reflect on how hidden curricula, linguistic norms, and disciplinary conventions may reproduce epistemic exclusion. Professional development programmes that foreground decolonial pedagogy and epistemic reflexivity can support more inclusive teaching and learning environments.

Finally, institutional support structures for IS should prioritise meaningful social and intellectual integration rather than symbolic inclusion. Creating formal and informal spaces for intercultural and inter-epistemic dialogue – such as co-curricular forums, reading groups, and collaborative research initiatives can foster the co-production of knowledge and strengthen students’ sense of epistemic belonging. Taken together, these practices offer pathways for reimagining internationalisation as a transformative, rather than an assimilationist project within African higher education.

Conclusion: Towards epistemic liberation

This study has argued that dominant approaches to internationalisation in South African higher education often reproduce colonial epistemic hierarchies, even as they claim commitments to diversity and transformation. By foregrounding the lived experiences of African IS at the UCT, the article has demonstrated how internationalisation operates as a site of epistemic tension – simultaneously enabling mobility while constraining epistemic recognition. In response, the study advances a novel conceptualisation of African IS as epistemic agents operating within the cognitive borderlands of historically colonial universities. The theoretical contribution of the article lies in its integration of decolonial theory, borderland thinking, and empirical analysis to reconceptualise IS not as passive beneficiaries or marginal outsiders, but as active producers of knowledge who engage in practices of epistemic disobedience and intellectual re-signification.

Empirically, the findings reveal that the academic journeys of many African IS are marked by cognitive dissonance and encounters with a hidden curriculum that privileges Eurocentric epistemologies while marginalising or erasing knowledge from the Global South. Despite institutional discourses of inclusivity, curriculum content, pedagogical practices, and assessment regimes often remain deeply embedded in colonial hierarchies of knowledge. In such contexts, students experience not only structural exclusion but also epistemic self-censorship, as pressures to conform to dominant academic norms discourage the articulation of alternative perspectives, histories, and intellectual traditions.

Importantly, this study does not position African IS as passive victims of these epistemic conditions. Rather, the findings illustrate how many enact forms of epistemic agency through practices of epistemic disobedience. These include citing African scholars, mobilising home-country case studies, and forming informal intellectual communities that function as counter-publics within the institution. Such practices challenge the assumed universality of Euro-American knowledge and assert the legitimacy of plural epistemologies. Although often rendered invisible within formal institutional structures, these acts represent meaningful interventions in the struggle for cognitive justice and epistemic inclusion.

Conceptualising UCT as a cognitive borderland further illuminates the contradictions inherent in contemporary internationalisation. While IS are frequently celebrated as symbols of diversity and global engagement, the institutional cultures and power structures they encounter often treat them as outsiders – present in body but marginal in voice. As critiqued in this study, dominant models of internationalisation tend to prioritise institutional prestige, market competitiveness, and global rankings over epistemic inclusion and intercultural dialogue. Within such models, students are expected to assimilate into largely unchanging institutional norms rather than participate in the co-creation of more inclusive and just academic spaces.

What emerges from this research is a call for a fundamentally reimagined university – one that moves beyond symbolic inclusion towards genuine epistemic transformation. Epistemic liberation requires more than curriculum reform or demographic diversification; it demands a reorientation of institutional values, pedagogies, and power relations. Transformation must be dialogical, reflexive, and co-produced, recognising IS not merely as recipients of knowledge but as contributors to theory, critique, and intellectual innovation. Only by confronting the coloniality of the mind as a lived institutional reality can universities such as UCT become spaces that honour epistemic plurality, foster cognitive justice, and support the full intellectual participation of all students. In this project, the voices of African IS are not peripheral – they are central to rehumanising the university and shaping a postcolonial academic future grounded in justice, dignity, and epistemic freedom.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on research originally conducted as part of David Naidoo’s doctoral thesis titled, ‘Institutional inclusion in higher education: An analysis of the experiences of access, belonging and participation of international/ foreign students at the University of Cape Town’, submitted to the Department of Education, University of Cape Town in 2020. The thesis was supervised by Alan Cliff. The supervisors were not involved in the preparation of this article and were not listed as co-authors. The manuscript has since been revised and adapted for journal publication. The original thesis is available at: https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/33880/thesis_hum_2021_naidoo%20david.pdf.

Competing interests

The author declares that no financial or personal relationships inappropriately influenced the writing of this article.

CRediT authorship contribution

David Naidoo: Conceptualisation, Formal analysis, Project administration, Visualisation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. The author confirms that this work is entirely their own, has reviewed the article, approved the final version for submission and publication, and takes full responsibility for the integrity of its findings.

Funding information

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Data availability

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and are the product of professional research. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The author is responsible for this article’s results, findings and content.

References