Neoliberalism, native-speakerism and the displacement of international students’ languages and cultures

With the number of international students growing rapidly within (international) higher education, more attention has been focused on need to consider students’ experiences, particularly those from global south, critical, ethical and qualitative perspectives. This paper examines how lived experiences three multilingual at a Canadian university were impacted by ideologies stemming neoliberalism native-speakerism education. Through in-depth interviews with each student, findings point complex ways in which such gradually worked displace languages cultures through processes othering inferiorisation. More specifically, combined sociocultural material impact resulted appearing reject participation affiliation their cultural groups, repositioning as deterrents development English language proficiencies, adopting behaviours that could linguistically socially approximate them an imagined native speaker ‘standard’ English, including attending speech therapy. The conclusion critically discusses importance reform education respect language, diversity social justice.