Does knowledge have borders?

International education is often promoted through discourses of openness, cross-cultural relationship-building and global understanding. But how inclusive is the kind of knowledge offered in the so-called “global” learning environments? The paper explores possible limits to knowledge production and sharing in international study environments, suggesting that course contents and contexts might exclude rather than include non-native learners.

As a conceptual point of departure we take the idea of an academic field evoked by Pierre Bourdieu in Homo Academicus (1988). Bourdieu describes a knowledge system embedded in a specific national and institutional environment, and from this research follows that certain frames of reference, or contexts, are taken for granted by local staff and students. With internationalization, however, comes a change in the make-up of the student cohort, including an increasing number of non-native learners who may not recognise knowledge when this is set within very particular local or national contexts.

In a series of qualitative research interviews we have asked lecturers at three Danish international study programs to reflect on the contexts of knowledge presented and represented within their course and academic discipline. We will present in the paper the preliminary findings of our research, pointing to some of the visible and invisible borders that one finds within the field of global education.