How to Decolonize Your Education Abroad Experience (and What It Means)

Here you are, ready to participate in a meaningful global experience. What exactly makes a global experience meaningful? For many, meaningful experiences include intentional engagement, openness to learn and grow and expand, and a commitment to cultivating life-affirming and life-altering relationships and pathways.

Meaningful means something different to everyone.

In order for global engagement to be meaningful for all who participate—including local communities, staff, and faculty, local organizations and partners, as well as you and your fellow peers—it is important to consider the ways in which global education, travel, and higher education are situated within a historical legacy of colonialism and white supremacy.

Further, it is essential for us all to consider the ways we may perpetuate these systems of oppression, sometimes unintentionally or subconsciously, even when our hearts are in the right place.

So, what can we do to engage with purpose and intention during our global education experience? Let’s consider decolonization together.

What is decolonization? What does it mean?

While there are many calls for decolonizing education, decolonizing travel, and decolonizing study abroad, you may be asking, what does decolonization mean? Decolonization itself is rooted in Land Back and dismantling colonial power dynamics and control, efforts to re-Indigenize our ways of thinking and being, and nurturing interdependence amongst human and nonhuman beings across all of nature, globally. It is important to remember that decolonization is not a metaphor.

Our individual positionality matters in these spaces, therefore to more accurately move forward, we can reframe the conversation from decolonization to an effort to unsettle our minds (especially since many of us are settlers ourselves) and commit to a decolonial framework. Below, we ask ourselves what does decolonization mean within our experiences abroad?

Please note: This article will inherently be unfinished, imperfect, and biased. The information included here serves as an opening to a conversation, but does not claim to hold complete answers or solutions. We offer this space to begin to think differently about our global experiences in order to ensure they are mutually beneficial and meaningful. This is an on-going, emergent, and evolving process.

7 ways to decolonize your experience abroad

1. Unsettle your mind

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Education abroad experiences can easily replicate a View from the Veranda where you, the student-traveler, enter into a new host country and observe, as if from above. You may observe the local community through a lens of separation (meaning: an us vs. them mentality), judgment (meaning: my way of living is the right way), and lack of integration (meaning: you never actually engage with the culture, language, and people).

As such, it is important to name that this perpetuates ethnocentrism, which centers your culture and ways of being as the norm and assesses the new culture you are experiencing as outside of, or as a deviation from, that norm. In reality, there is no norm—things are just different, no more or less important than the other.

To begin decolonizing, it’s important to realize there is no one right way of being, thinking, doing. Let your experience abroad open your eyes and heart to different possibilities. It is okay if this shakes your understanding of the world. Spoiler: it should.

2. Consider your power, privilege, and positionality

Expanding on the concept of ethnocentrism, it is important to consider:

• Your power—the ways you hold control and agency
• Your privilege—everything from your ability to travel, access a passport, and enter and exit communities, to the ways your race (particularly in relation to whiteness), gender, or class grant you the ability to move through the world
• Your positionality—the ways in which your privileges grant you power and agency in a given situation compared with those around you

Of course, intersectionality matters here too; not all of us hold privilege and power in every situation, and even further, the ways in which we experience oppression and discrimination compile upon one another based on our intersecting identities.

Our power, privilege, and positionality may impact the way others engage with us, feel safe around us, or how they perceive us. We hold the responsibility to choose how we engage with our own power, privilege, and positionality.

To help decolonize your experience, keep reflecting on how these show up now and throughout your education abroad.

[Read About Privilege in Travel: What is Travel Elitism? 7 Tips to Avoid Being a Travel Snob]

3. Belonging versus fitting-in

Try not to isolate yourself in the face of conflict—reach out for support.

One way to integrate these considerations is to set your expectations about belonging and fitting-in within your education abroad experience. You belong to yourself first, and that is an opportunity for you to show up vulnerably within your experience abroad.

However, you also hold the responsibility to yourself to be discerning about when and where you can show your full self. During your education abroad experience, you will need to fit in—meaning you will need to assess your surroundings and adjust accordingly.

This is not only expected, but is where growing and learning happens. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to change who you are, but rather you will have the option to show different parts of yourself in different situations with different people. And in return, you will learn about parts of yourself you may have never known existed.

Safety is important during your education abroad experience. If, for example, you identify as queer and your host community does not socially, politically, or legally support LGBTQ+ folks, you may choose to keep those identities close to your heart, or choose another location to immerse yourself within.

That doesn’t mean you are wrong for being who you are, but you are needing to practice fitting-in in order to maintain safety for yourself. This is not always possible for folks—you are the person who best understands your experience, so decide accordingly.

Talk with your education abroad advisor or program staff to determine how to best support yourself during this time since your goal is to learn about where you are, including the colonial history of many global anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments, and not to attempt to change where (or who!) you are.

4. Localize your global experience

Supporting the local economy in the local currency is a great way to lessen the impact of colonization.

It might be tempting to go to McDonald’s because it is familiar, a well-known hotel because it has amenities you are used to, or to order an Uber because it is more comfortable than taking public transportation. However, there are many opportunities to choose local during your time abroad.

Just like supporting small businesses at home has a major impact on local communities, the same is true while you are in other places around the world. And it can play a big part in decolonizing your experience.

Supporting that family-run restaurant may keep food on the table for a family, whereas supporting a major food chain will only serve to benefit global capitalism (which has roots in colonialism and enslavement). Taking a pedicab, rickshaw, or train may not only support local people financially, but it may also help make your trip more sustainable by lowering your carbon footprint through shared, or non-carbon emitting, forms of transportation.

Plus, you will have more opportunities to meet people within the community you are visiting when you follow local norms and ways of engaging!

[Read About Connecting With Your History: Heritage Travel: What it is & How it Can Benefit You]

5. Consider your impact, not just your intention

Even when you have the best of intentions, you may cause harm. Your good intentions will never absolve you of the harm you have caused. Accountability is how we take responsibility for our actions, even when our intentions are “good”.

We will never be perfect in our actions and will often fall short based on our assumptions, biases, and preconceived notions, but don’t fret—falling short is not a failure, but rather an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, repair the harm that has transpired, and commit to doing better moving forward.

Progress is more important than perfection (which is a characteristic of white supremacy culture anyways), and aiming to align our intentions with our impact means committing ourselves to accountability and responsibility. This is an excellent way to begin decolonizing your education abroad.

You likely are already aware that there will be cultural differences present during your time abroad, so it is important to also recognize that there will be different power dynamics at play. The inherent presence of power dynamics cannot be avoided, but it is good to keep in mind how power dynamics may keep us stuck in our intentions rather than holding ourselves accountable for our impact. You get to decide what you do with your power.

6. Understand the historical & geopolitical context

Research your destination before you arrive! Historical context provides framework for understanding norms.

You can gain meaningful and necessary context for your host country or city by asking:

• Who holds power where you are traveling?
• What governance structures are in place?
• What is the colonial legacy?
• Who are the Indigenous people whose land you are on?
• What is the current social and political climate?
• What social movements, past and present, have occurred?
• What voices are included/excluded from public discourse?

Asking questions about how and why things are the way they are will open up opportunities for you to learn more about the place you will be visiting.

When thinking about decolonization examples, you can look into the history of colonization where you are and consider how the colonial legacy may persist. Have you considered the history of museums that house artifacts from other regions? How were those artifacts obtained? Who has control of the narrative?

We often understand there is deep complexity within our home country, so it is important to realize that of the host country you are visiting as well. Things may not be as simple as they seem, and it is always worth diving further into the nuance!

[Read About Staying Civically Engaged: How to Vote While Living Abroad]

7. Leave your expectations at the door, but continue to walk the walk

While you are abroad, remember that you are here to learn and connect, not here to teach, extract, or change. It can be easy to fall into the white savior complex, so embrace a learning role and remember that your liberation is connected with those around you.

Your education abroad experience isn’t a product/service that is meant to meet your expectations as you might when you buy/consume something. Rather, global education is an opportunity to learn beyond the classroom (possibly changing how you perceive the concept of a classroom), challenge you and your understanding of the world, cultivate community, and become an active part of social change and critical consciousness, globally. We all hold different roles in achieving collective liberation. While you are abroad, be mindful of the roles you play and the space you take up.

Your voice matters. Does something you experienced or witnessed feel off? Do you feel like your program crossed boundaries of ethicality or sustainability? Share your thoughts and reflections with your peers, as well as with program staff and faculty.

It is important to engage in these hard conversations in order to create change, even when clear solutions or answers are not present. We are all a work in progress, which means we need to rely on each other to keep moving forward.

Education abroad only stands to benefit from decolonization

Think critically about your experience and act responsibly.

Now that you’ve considered decolonization examples, and understand more about the calls for decolonizing education and decolonizing study abroad, don’t let your global engagement and critical reflection end on your flight home.

Find ways to get involved locally in disrupting systems of oppression wherever you are, including your campus. Keep supporting the organizations, communities, and individuals you met while abroad. Global citizenship is active, not passive—so stay engaged, take accountability, and commit to the long haul aiming towards liberation for all.

"Simply having liberty is not the same as having freedom. Freedom is a kind of responsibility that is connected to belonging” —Lewis Gordon