In this episode, Girish Daswani and Vedanth Govi provide the context for the episodes that will follow. They discuss recent developments in the treatment of Indian international students in Canada at the hands of the settler-colonial state, which sees these students faced with growing racism, housing and food insecurity, and a rapid erosion of their rights as residents of Canada.

Girish Daswani is a socio-cultural anthropologist at the University of Toronto whose research interests include Ghana, religion, transnationalism, postcolonialism, the University, and activism. Prof. Daswani is the recipient of the School of Cities “Urban Challenge Grant” that funds collaborative research on Indian international students in Toronto and Singapore.   

Vedanth Govi is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Socio-Cultural Anthropology, York University. As the lead RA and organizer on this project, funded by the Urban Challenge Grant, they have seen it through many stages: from doing interviews in the data collection phase to conceptualizing the workshop programming and co-creating this podcast. They are interested in tracing how international South Asians students exist within the larger infrastructures of internationalization and Canadian higher education.  

Join us as we trace the complex entanglement of education policy and migration within the Canadian neoliberal higher education landscape.

A transcription of the episode can be found here.

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This podcast is the outcome of a one-day workshop that was organized on Indian international students held at the University of Toronto in October 2024, funded by the School of Cities. It is hosted by Girish Daswani, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, and Vedanth Govi, a Ph.D. candidate at York University. Taylor Stark is the editor and producer.