This article, emerging from a wider study on internationalization in the Republic of Ireland, explores internationalization through the everyday lived experience of faculty and its impact on their professional contexts. It highlights issues that faculty members face in a national context, where internationalization is viewed as an economic goal rather than an academic goal. This aspect, which has been under-researched in higher education literature, addresses the complexities and contradictions that internationalization can create for faculty. A social realist approach using Archer's morphogenetic framework was employed to facilitate an exploration of the variegated responses that internationalization produced. The performative response to internationalization was captured, which revealed different agential responses: from an acceptance of the instrumentalist discourse to feeling demoralized by the lack of recognition for professional commitment, the impact of non-engagement by colleagues and engagement with the process to advance other career objectives.