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Positive attributes stick to higher education internationalisation, and it is a policy paradigm with performative effects. Internationalisation draws on imagined virtuous flows of knowledge production and exchange, and is presented as an assemblage of detraditionalisation, expansiveness and epistemic and cultural opportunity for individuals, organisations and nation states. Policies target bodies, minds and affect, yet are presented as an unquestionable good in an imagined genderneutral, borderless, meritocratic and benign global knowledge economy. This paper explores the affective economy of internationalisation drawing upon interview data gathered in fifteen private, five national and eight public universities in Japan with thirty-four migrant academics and thirteen international doctoral researchers. We aim to contribute to internationalisation theory by exploring the sticky micropolitics of internationalisation in relation to affective assemblages, and how the gendered, racialised, linguistic and epistemic inequalities constituting academic mobility are frequently disqualified from discourse. Our discussion includes consideration of the Japanese policy context, the concept of affective assemblages, navigating gender regimes, precarity and linguistic imperialism. We conclude that the immaterial or affective labour that is required to unstick, install and maintain an internationalised academic identity and navigate the translations and antagonisms from everyday encounters with difference is substantially under-estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cross-case analysis explores national level internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) policies in Singapore and Japan. Through comparison of the state level internationalisation strategies, this paper aims to highlight how each country's unique policy environment impacts their approach to IoHE. The analysis suggests that despite the differing national circumstances and ultimate approaches to internationalisation, both states use it primarily as a means to stay competitive in the twenty-first century global knowledge-based economy. This suggests that while IoHE does build bridges between nations, institutions, and individuals within and between regions, within these cases it is being driven by nationally-centred rationales. While some criticize a competition orientation in IoHE, even with such rationales it may still serve to drive greater collaboration and integration among East Asian higher education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]