INTERNATIONALIZATION OF BRAZILIAN HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE LINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF THE EDUCATIONAL COMMONS

Abstract

The internationalization of higher education in Brazil has been presented as a promise of openness and democratization of knowledge, but its practices are deeply shaped by historical and linguistic hierarchies. This theoretical essay aims to critically analyze this process from a glottopolitical perspective, highlighting how university rankings, mobility policies, and the hegemony of English reinforce structural asymmetries between the Global North and South. The study adopts a qualitative approach, based on a bibliographic review. The findings indicate that Brazilian internationalization remains predominantly reactive, guided by external calls and metrics, without consolidating autonomous long-term strategies. This dynamic reproduces the coloniality of knowledge (Quijano, 2020), displacing local epistemologies into zones of invisibility and naturalizing the centrality of the North as the scientific elite (Santos & Meneses, 2013; Santos, 2019). Moreover, the predominance of English Medium Instruction undermines both linguistic plurality and pedagogical quality, functioning as a mechanism of exclusion and epistemicide. In contrast, alternatives such as solidarity-based internationalization, promoted by UNESCO regional conferences and South-South networks, point to the possibility of an epistemological justice horizon and the valorization of epistemic diversity. The essay concludes that internationalization will only have emancipatory meaning if recognized as a political practice oriented toward the construction of a plural and dialogical educational commons.