The Challenges of Writing: The ‘Long and Winding Road’ of Belonging to Academia
The Challenges of Writing: The ‘Long and Winding Road’ of Belonging to Academia

Summary/Abstract: This paper highlights how international multilingual students’ experience with academic writing influences their sense of (not) belonging. Beliefs about ourselves as individuals are shaped by our experiences of belonging to being positioned in various groups. Drawing on the notion of writing as an act of identity, of self-representation, we explore the boundaries often set on international students in New Zealand, whose writing is frequently seen as deficient. This deficit view often allocates these socioculturally and linguistically diverse students to the margins, not belonging to the highly guarded and prestigious space of academia. Through taking an autoethnographic approach to their respective academic and doctoral journeys, Ana Maria and Smridhi situate the concept of ‘becoming’ a scholar as one that intersects with a developing sense of belonging. They address the impact of ‘homogenising’ expectations of academic writing, critique the ‘unawareness’ of academic gatekeepers, assumptions about master’s and doctoral writers’ knowledge, and the lack of recognition of power struggles and geopolitical contrasts for international students who are striving to develop their scholarly selves. Their scholarly identity is connected to students’ sense of belonging to academia and to the community of researchers at universities, often a very unequal context. The authors will discuss how those in an academic community align themselves with socioculturally shaped subject positions, thereby playing their part in reproducing or challenging dominant practices and discourses and the values, beliefs and interests they embody.

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