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Student blogger: International students and democratic deficit?

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Enzo Rossi  (University of Oslo)

Enzo Rossi
(University of Oslo)

This guest entry is written by Enzo Rossi, who is a current student of the HEM programme, a former full-time student representative, and the co-founder of Internationalista, a platform that aims at increasing international students’ awareness of democratic processes and  involvement in governance at the University of Oslo. 

Are international students disproportionately underrepresented in formal governance, decision-making and leadership positions? Data for Norway seems to suggest that this is the case for all Norwegian Universities except Stavanger!

Democratisation has been hailed as one of the benefits of student mobility (Guruz, 2008). International students are expected to gain democratic principles from their adopted countries and go back home with an increased respect for democracy and a desire to uphold the rule of law and participate governance and decision making processes, becoming a positive influence for their community. But how can this be operationalised? How can democracy become an integral part of a study programme? One of the easiest ways to involve foreign students in democracy in their place of study is through being involved in student democracy.

Enzoblog2Norway has a long democratic tradition in its universities, and all decision making bodies must have student presence. Norwegian Students’ Unions have a pretty homogeneous way of doing things, they elect representatives for their “student parliament”, the highest decision making body for students, from different political factions present on campus. Several of those are linked to specific political parties and others are based on faculties or interests. Those elected then in turn elect students to take a paid sabbatical year working at the student parliament.

Theoretically, international and Norwegian students have equal opportunities to participate in these processes, but in practice, international students tend to participate in democracy disproportionately less than their home counterparts. Norwegian institutions do not currently publish a lot of data on student election voter demographics, but we if we look at  the composition of the parliaments we can have an idea of how they are  composed and what international involvement in democracy is like.

Enzoblog1Even though 10% of all students  (or 10897) are full-time international students, only 2% of elected members of  student parliaments at Universities in Norway are international students.

The institution with the highest number of international representatives is the University of Stavanger, who has recently elected 3 international students into their parlament board which has 19 students in total.

If one is to wonder why is this trend so widespread, one could pinpoint to several issues:

1. Language: International students are accepted into Norwegian Universities in most cases under the prerequisite that they speak English, Norwegian is not a requirement when you are doing a Master Programme in English. However, most governance on both the institution and the students’ side is conducted in English. Likewise, most information about democracy is not available in English. Most international students in Norway are here for a 2 year long Masters, meaning that by the time they are able to communicate in Norwegian, they are done with being a student! Language is probably the biggest barrier.

2. Lack of a collegiate democratic culture: Several students are not used to the idea of voting. When I worked with international students in England it was obvious to me that many students were simply not familiar with the concept of voting or holding their representatives to account. It is very important that during induction (and throughout the year) students are given an explanation about what their democratic rights are and how processes work at the institution. Institutions tend to ‘outsource’ the promotion of elections and democratic processes to students. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is in the best interest of the institution that more students are engaged in Democratic processes. Academics and administrators should take the time to explain how governance of the institution works and how students can influence these processes democratically.

3. Need for cross-cultural focus and expertise in student leaders. If international students are already not participating, and the leadership consists of local students, it is likely that unless they have gone through training or have spent a while doing “on the job” learning, that they will not have the expertise to reach international students. This is the case in parliaments, institutions and companies everywhere! Reaching a multicultural audience can be a big challenge if it has not been tried before

4. Lack of international students involved in elected positions. My experience in the UK shows that as soon as international students begin running for elected positions, international engagement with democracy greatly increases. Simple as that. The moment international students are encouraged and enabled to run, they attract with them their peers. More international students will vote, campaign, spread the word, or at the very least, be made aware of how democratic processes work. That means that for the next election cycle, you have a bunch of people that are already aware and willing to participate, and if they see that one of their peers had a successful campaign the previous year, they might even consider running themselves. Democracy is contagious!

Daniel Iniesta, one of the students elected into the parliament at the University of Stavanger (UiS), tells us that “the best way to influence and help on integration of International students at UiS, was to run a list to the Student Parliament at UiS, where we could work on internationalization, as well as improve academics and make a more active and live UiS by being present where decisions are made, cooperating with Norwegian students.”


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