This chapter explores how multilingual and minoritized doctoral students and faculty perceive the role of English in enabling or constraining their academic mobility in U.S. higher education, through the lens of linguistic citizenship. The study further examines the language practices and strategies these multilingual individuals adopt to participate in academic spaces within an internationalized university. To this end, we used a collaborative autoethnographic approach, in which four doctoral students and their faculty advisor each contributed reflective journal entries and participated in group discussions over six months. Our analysis highlights the dual role of English as both a bridge and a gatekeeper to academic mobility. While English facilitated access to and participation in international education, it also served as a site of tension, revealing a disconnect between the dominant norms of English-speaking higher education and the lived experiences of multilingual individuals. Over time, immersion in English led to a sense of linguistic insecurity or a shift toward English in our language practices. The findings also show that we developed a range of strategies to engage in academic discourse, shaped by the affordances of multiple semiotic resources and listeners’ perceptions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of pedagogical and institutional implications.