Foreign-born Scholars in US Universities: Issues, Concerns, and Strategies

Abstract

This symposium focuses on foreign-born geographers pursuing careers in US colleges and universities. Though foreign-born scholars make up a significant portion of the US geography professoriate, little is known about their experiences, the cultural problems and legal issues they confront in the US, and policy and institutional changes that might be implemented to support them. These papers address some of these challenges—particularly in American classrooms—as well as some of the opportunities these scholars have to offer international perspectives on geographic issues to students and colleagues. While we address the situation in the US, the symposium suggests the need to consider the experiences of foreign-born academics in other nations experiencing similar growth in intellectual immigration.

Keywords:

• Foreign-born
• immigration
• internationalization
• intellectual migration

Notes

¹ Non-resident alien is a legal term used by US government agencies to refer to all legal migrants who do not possess permanent resident status, i.e. they are employed in the US on various temporary working visas.

² The Federation Fellowship programme in Australia, for example, offers lucrative five-year awards to attract Australian scholars currently working overseas or foreign scholars with the aim to “build and strengthen Australia's world-class research capacity, support ground-breaking internationally competitive research and develop strong links among researchers, industry, and the international research community”. Available at http://www.arc.gov/ncgp/fedfellows/ff_default.htm (accessed January 2007).