Paper short abstract:

By ethnographically tracing their affective registers from encountering the practice of reading out land acknowledgement statements- this paper asserts that alternative relationalities are innovated, produced, and contested against the salvationist tendencies that orient the practice.

Paper long abstract:

In reframing the ontological limits and possibilities, this paper situates a group of international students at the academic margins of the internationalised Canadian higher educational classroom. By ethnographically tracing their affective registers from encountering the practice of reading out land acknowledgement statements- this paper asserts that alternative relationalities are innovated, produced, and contested against the salvationist tendencies that orient the practice. However, in order to become more tuned to the rhythms of alternative possibilities this paper must turn its axis of focus onto the ordinary, banal and the everyday spatial enfoldment(s) that international students occupy outside college and university spaces. This paper puts into analytical description the importance of affective relations in social movements for justice by looking at conversations that took place amongst a group of six international students at migrant rights-based grassroots organisation Migrant Students United(MSU). By asserting that fostered social relationships with transformative potentials aren't always realisable immediately, this paper furthers the a social justice orientation by demonstrating through the six interlocutors that life-making practices of resistance are uneven and ethically often messy.