Emotion and imagination in English-medium instruction programs: Illuminating its dark side through Nepali students' narratives

This article reports on students' affective dimension in English-medium instruction (EMI) university pro-grams in Nepal. To unpack the affective dimension of EMI students, I conducted interviews and focus group discussions with students from different disciplines (e.g., business, nursing, pharmacy, and edu-cation). The data analysis revealed that the social and cognitive process of selecting an EMI program is embedded in "neoliberal imagination," in which they perceive EMI as a way to upward socioeconomic and symbolic mobility. Such neoliberal desire has implicitly appropriated EMI as a neoliberal endowment and created a discourse of unequal emotions. While EMI has engendered positive emotions (e.g., hope and pride) for some students, other students from non-EMI schooling backgrounds experience negative emotions (e.g., shame and anxiety). The paper, therefore, argues that the neoliberal desire for EMI can create a discourse of mixed emotions, also leading to emotional challenges and discrimination against some students.& COPY; 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.