Courtney, our guest blogger this fortnight, is a second year PhD student in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. Before starting her doctoral program she worked in international education for 10 years, most recently as the Associate Director of Study Abroad at the University of Washington Tacoma. Courtney has a B.A. in French and Elementary Education from Albion College and an M.Ed. in International Higher Education from Loyola University Chicago; she has participated in and led study abroad programs in France, China, Italy and Czechia. When not working on her research she enjoys reading romantasy, working out, exploring Montreal’s food/cultural scene, and travelling with her spouse, two kiddos and dog.

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«Vous venez d’où? » asked the man in the kebab shop. It was the first time I’d left North America; I was 20 years old and studying in Grenoble, France. When I told the man I was American, he scoffed and said « Mais vous n’êtes pas blonde. Vous êtes grande. Vous n’êtes pas grosse. Votre peau est bronzée ». No, I wasn’t blond, I was tall, I wasn’t fat, and yes, I have a semi-tan skin tone, but I was, in fact, from the U.S. Eventually, after being asked where I was really from several times, I just took my sandwich and said « Merci, au revoir ».

This was not the only time I was asked this question. I clearly did not fit the stereotype of what French folks thought an American was supposed to be, and it was jarring for both them and me. I now realize that this is a question that many racialized people are asked constantly. Having both participated in and taught study abroad courses in several countries, I have seen many students be similarly questioned. For better or worse, racialized students are generally used to it. They’ve built the skills and resilience to choose to either engage or disengage with the question and the racism/xenophobia that’s really lying underneath. But, for white-presenting students, this may be the first time they’ve ever considered how their physicality, racial identity and nationality are intertwined and perceived. As for myself, until this point I didn’t really recognize that I was white, did not acknowledge the power/privilege that came with that identity, nor what it meant to be perceived as not white. It was the first time I was Othered, and it made me question how the settler colonial nation of the U.S. positioned (my) whiteness as “default.”

As a white, heterosexual, upper-middle class, cis-gendered woman who grew up in suburban Detroit, Michigan, I felt little obligation to understand or analyze the privilege that came with my identities (McIntosh, 1998). My understanding slowly began to change when I studied abroad in 2005, and I started to experience life as a foreigner who spoke French poorly. For the first time in my life, I experienced intolerance: I was often not served when I spoke English with peers in restaurants or cafes; upon learning that I was American, I would be asked, “But where are you really from?”, and occasionally my French mistakes were mocked by locals.

While these experiences are minor when compared to overt acts of racism and microaggressions racialized folks can experience while abroad (Willis, 2015; Thomas & Luba, 2018), they did lead me to question systems of power and privilege. Thinking about these structures of power pushed me to reflect upon my own racial identity and positionality. I began to question how one’s positionality shifts while studying abroad (Young et al., 2014), how facets of one’s identity are perceived differently in different cultures, and particularly how stereotypes related to one’s country of origin impact how one is perceived (Stangor et al., 1996). Additionally, and unbeknownst to me at the time, I was beginning to consider the taken-for-granted benefits that white privilege (McIntosh, 1998) afforded me in my everyday life in the United States, and how being in a new cultural context slightly disrupted that privilege.

Several years later, during master’s degree coursework, I read “Why do all the study abroad students look alike?” (Salisbury et al., 2011). I read and re-read paragraphs about the low percentage of racialized study abroad students and was equally shocked and humiliated by my ignorance about how few racialized students studied abroad. This was the catalyst that motivated me to begin scrutinizing how racial identity influenced those who could or could not study abroad. I came to realize that many racialized students were having vastly different experiences abroad than a white woman like me, from experiencing overt racism to feeling liberated for the first time in their lives (Lott & Brundage, 2025; Mitchell & Maloff, 2016). And while study abroad administrators and practitioners were desperately trying to diversify study abroad participation, they were not ensuring that racialized students were prepared for how their racial identity may impact their time abroad. Looking back, it really was that one article that led me to focus my career on supporting racialized students and making sure they were prepared for the assets and challenges their identities brought with them into a study abroad experience.

Fast-forward 20 years and I am still thinking about my time in Grenoble, but through the lens of my PhD research.  My research assesses how faculty positionality training can better prepare racialized U.S. students for study abroad programs, bringing to the foreground students’ racial identity and positionality, something often overlooked in study abroad preparations. I will be collaborating with white faculty members who lead study abroad programs as well as racialized students participating in the programs these faculty are leading. I am particularly interested in working with white faculty because 76% of North American faculty members are white (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023; Universities Canada, 2019) and are less likely to discuss or confront racism (Smith et al., 2017). Consequently, faculty who lead study abroad programs often do not understand how racial identity and positionality, either their own or their students’, play a role in students’ experiences abroad (Shallenberger, 2015). Thus, I need to be exceedingly careful when considering how my own positionality as a white researcher interacts with structures of power that create inequity. My considerations often consist of questions like: What right do I have to be in this space? How can I do this work ethically without centering whiteness? Should a racialized person be doing this work instead of me? These are hard questions to reckon with.

I know that I need to acknowledge my own biases and accept that as an ally in this work I will never fully grasp the lived experiences of racialized individuals. While I recognize the privilege I hold, as well as the racist patterns of higher education, I understand that 10+ years of experience supporting racialized study abroad students make me a capable advocate and partner. I also recognize that I can utilize my whiteness, and my experience uncovering my own privilege, to guide white faculty to acknowledge their own positionality and the privilege it affords them, particularly within the context of study abroad. I know that most, if not all, study abroad students will be asked “Where are you from?”, and I want to make sure they are prepared for how their racial identity and positionality play a role in their answer.

References

Lott, J., & Brundage, T. (2025). Race, racialization, and racism: Students of color and short term study abroad learning. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 24(2), 468-482. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2022.2149532

McIntosh, P. (1998). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Race, class, and gender in the United States: An integrated study, 4, 165-169.

Mitchell Jr, D., & Maloff, A. (2016). Racial positionalities, professional development, and a master’s study abroad experience in Jamaica for preparing student affairs professionals. College Student Affairs Journal, 34(2), 3-15.

Salisbury, M. H., Paulsen, M. B., & Pascarella, E. T. (2011). Why do all the study abroad students look alike? Applying an integrated student choice model to explore differences in the factors that influence white and minority students’ intent to study abroad. Research in Higher Education, 52, 123-150.

Stangor, C., Jonas, K., Stroebe, W., & Hewstone, M. (1996). Influence of student exchange on national stereotypes, attitudes and perceived group variability. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26(4), 663-675.

Thomas, D. P., & Luba, Z. F. (2018). White fragility and the white student abroad: Using critical race theory to analyse international experiential learning. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d’études du développement, 39(2), 182-198.

Willis, T. Y. (2012). Rare but There: an intersectional exploration of the experiences and outcomes of Black women who studied abroad through community college programs [Doctoral dissertation, California State University]. ProQuest LLC. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED550342

 Young, J. T., Natrajan-Tyagi, R., & Platt, J. J. (2015). Identity in flux: Negotiating identity while studying abroad. Journal of Experiential Education, 38(2), 175-188. https://doi-org.proxy3.library.mcgill.ca/10.1177/1053825914531920