Gür Geden, Ayşe; (2023) The Infrastructure of Brokering: Language, Higher Education and Institutions. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) has shaped trends and strategies for higher education (HE) institutions in various corners of the world. Although well- established in universities in the Global North, the aims of these strategies and their accompanying rationales often differ from those of the HE systems in developing and non-Anglophone countries where IoHE is a relatively more recent phenomenon. This is the case of Turkey in which such strategies are aimed to serve a developmen- talist political economy drawing on peculiar constructions of nation(alism) around faith and historical ties extending across the global South, and variegated neoliber- alism that merges local and global market logics. In this context, the thesis adopts a sociolinguistic ethnographic approach to focus on the particular meaning of “inter- national” pertinent to HE institutions and students joining these spaces from devel- oping and underdeveloped regions— among them, the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) holds enormous potential for business and trade. In particular, the thesis zooms in on SSAn students targeted under an attractive funding scheme (run by state in- stitutions) and recruited as potential brokers so as to bridge Turkey and SSA and facilitate economic and diplomatic relations. The study details the intersection of language and communication practices, institutional processes, and identification trajectories of these students against the background of official attempts to instru- mentalise Turkish language training in order to promote values and ideas deemed critical for conveying the vision of the brokering project (e.g. Ottoman imperial nos- talgia, decoloniality, South-South solidarity) while at the same time making Turkish proficiency essential to gain communicative and entrepreneurial skills required for the enactment of broker roles. The thesis details the close alignment among diverse elements of the brokering infrastructure, (i.e state and HE institutions, NGOs, trade organisations and student-led communities) and how SSAn students’ subjectivities take shape as they navigate these spaces where affective investment in language learning, enactment of certain figures of personhood, and self-positioning can lead to access to different forms of capital or situations of vulnerability.

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