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Psychological studies on international research students' resilience to mental distress have attracted much scholarly attention. Yet, sociological inquiries into resilience to 'invisible' pressures such as power imbalances remain limited. Drawing insights from Bourdieu's relational sociology, we recast the psychology of resilience to adversities into a sociology of resilience to symbolic violence. To delve into the latter, we surveyed 220 Chinese international Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students across Australian universities using a self-designed instrument and analysed the data through Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Findings revealed that Chinese international HDR students were drawn into a space of forces fraught with the symbolic violence of supervisor authority, English hegemony, and neoliberalism; yet, simultaneously, they ventured into a space of struggles with such forms of symbolic violence by virtue of their agency and reflexivity as well as peer and supervisor empowerment. Such resilience practice was complicated by their capital portfolio and habitual dispositions, which in turn, contributed differently to their perceptions of symbolic violence and resilience to it. We thereby offer diverse stakeholders strategies in building resilience for (Chinese) international research students within and beyond Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With English hegemony sustained in ‘multicultural’ Anglophone universities, non-English speaking research students often develop diverse strategies to improve their English. While such strategies demonstrate a form of resilience, the symbolic power of English remains intact. To grapple with this paradox, we draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to probe Chinese international research students’ academic language practice in response to English monolingualism in Australian universities. Findings from semi-structured interviews with 18 Chinese international research students in Australian universities indicate that participants’ academic language practice is influenced by both the doxic English monolingualism and the evolving exercise of academic multilingualism. Drawing insights from Bourdieu-informed sociology of resilience and post-monolingual theorising, we problematise English monolingualism and provide recommendations for (Chinese) international research students, supervisors, and universities to capitalise on linguistic repertories for the sake of enriching academic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]