“Internationalization” has been regarded for over a decade as one of the urgent goals for many universities in the world, including in Japan. Many policy makers and university administrators widely believe that providing EMI (English Medium Instruction) and increasing the number of study abroad programs with partner universities with EMI are essential strategies to facilitate student and faculty mobility, which in the end will contribute to global competitiveness and rankings in research and education.
On the other hand, Japanese language education is also an issue of great importance for international students living in Japan, as the Japanese government’s plan to accept 300,000 international students by 2020 has caused a significant change to their JSL (Japanese as a second language) learning purposes and expectations.
However, few empirical studies have been conducted to investigate what is happening in developing international programs in Japanese higher education (e.g., Iino & Murata, 2016), despite the fact that these programs have a large influence on the sociolinguistic habitat on and off campus as well as the epistemological challenge for students’ linguistic capital. This study focuses on two typical study abroad cases, one case representing a contemporary Japanese EMI context (i.e., outgoing Japanese students to the U.S. for one-year study abroad), and one representing a Japanese learning context (i.e., incoming Indonesian students to Japan who graduated from a Japanese department of an Indonesian university).
Based on the qualitative analysis of the interviews, reflective writings and questionnaires with students, graduates, and administrators, and classroom observations, it was found that participants in such international programs were struggling to negotiate the meaning of ‘language learning’ and ‘studying abroad’, navigating the paradoxical space of the English-dominant academic domain and everyday multilingual/translingual interactions. As more diverse learners move across various ‘borders’ beyond mere academic purposes, they are also taking advantage of commodification of multilingual capital, such as engaging in off-campus jobs and preparing for long-term career developments. It is suggested that more explicit opportunities be provided to reflect on sociolinguistic dilemmas so that policy makers and learners can sustainably deal with the complex superdiversification of Japanese higher education.
