Community, Identity, and International Student Engagement

Abstract

This article explores the insights of cosmopolitanism as they relate to questions of international student inclusion. Enacting policies and practices that highlight a rooted cosmopolitanism, one where particular attachments are partially constitutive of identity, offers one way to successfully foster inclusion. Membership in particular communities need not stand as an obstacle to engaging; instead, values provide not a barrier but a means by which intercultural engagement can occur. One approach is to create communities organized around shared markers beyond national identity alone. This article illustrates this by highlighting the process of organizing a diverse group of international students in order to create a sense of community, a home base, so to speak, which served to foster both a sense of belonging and further social engagement with the university community.