'The air is hostile...': Learning from an African International Postgraduate Student's Stories of Fear and Isolation within a South African University Campus

Abstract

In this article, we – a research team of academic staff and postgraduate students – take a narrative inquiry stance to explore what we can learn from one African international postgraduate student‟s stories of experience on a South African university campus. We use the medium of narrative vignettes – brief evocative scenes or accounts – to re-present data generated through unstructured interviews and collage-making. Framed through a multiperspectival theoretical lens, the vignettes reveal how the student‟s everyday life on campus is constrained by fear of xenophobic harassment and violence. We argue that the setting or backdrop for his learning can therefore be understood as pedagogically unsound, even when effective teaching and learning activities might be seen to be taking place in designated spaces. To conclude, we consider possibilities for cultivating pedagogic settings that are beneficial and safe for all those who learn, teach and live within them.