“Whiteness” and Future “Imaginaries”: Pakistani Test-Takers Perspectives on Mobility and High-Stakes English Proficiency Tests
Khan M.Y. Manan S.A. Hajar A.
2026John Wiley and Sons Inc
TESOL Quarterly
2026
According to the World Migration Report 2024, transnational educational mobility has increased significantly worldwide, with numbers rising from 2.2 million in 2001 to over 6 million in 2021. As a proxy of English-language proficiency, the International English-Language Testing Service (IELTS) has emerged as one of the most popular high-stakes English tests, with around 4 million test-takers in the year 2023 alone (IELTS, 2024). Since it is a popular proxy of English-speaking skills, this study explores test-takers motivations, experiences, and perspectives in Pakistan regarding IELTS tests to examine the factors motivating mobility among graduate test-takers to pursue higher education in the Global North, and to reflect on how test-takers socioeconomic background influences their test-taking experiences. Grounded in “colonialingualism” and “Whiteness as futurity” framework, the study reveals how the test-taking bodies, figuring within the neoliberal globalization, respond to and interact with the needs of the test-takers. The test-takers perspectives also shed light on the interaction between the local and the global demonstrating how the international high-stakes English testing bodies interact with and capitalize on the “colonialingual” status of English and the political and socioeconomic conditions of the test-takers and facilitate an asymmetrical mobility of “imaginaries”, “resources” and “people” between Global North and Global South.
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Graduate School of Education, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan
Graduate School of Education
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026