International Student Mobility Research Articles

Social Occupational Therapy, pandemic, and interculturalities: thematic workshops in the context of international student mobility

Resumo Introdução A pandemia de COVID-19 desencadeou transformações profundas nos modos de vida dos sujeitos, com reverberação significativa nas formas de socialização e nas práticas de ensino-aprendizagem. Objetivo Apresentar os resultados da experiência de criação e desenvolvimento de oficinas temáticas interculturais vinculadas ao acolhimento e ao ensino de português de estudantes internacionais junto ao Programa Estudantes Convênio de Graduação (PEC-G) na Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp) coordenado por docentes do curso de letras — Português como Língua Adicional (PLA) — e de terapia ocupacional social. Método A interpretação crítica da experiência, seu ordenamento e reconstrução foram guiadas pela perspectiva da sistematização de experiências (SE), como proposto por Oscar Jara Holliday. O trabalho de campo envolveu duas perspectivas: análise dos diários de campo com registro das estagiárias de terapia ocupacional entre abril e outubro de 2020 e a realização de roda de conversa com os estudantes internacionais. Resultados Foram tematizados quatro eixos de análise, interdependentes, que refletem percepções e releituras sobre os momentos iniciais da pandemia e seus reflexos no Brasil, especificamente no contexto da migração e do ensino superior. Conclusão Pretende-se contribuir com reflexões sobre ações em terapia ocupacional social em contexto interdisciplinar, intercultural e multilíngue no âmbito da mobilidade para fins de estudo e da internacionalização do ensino superior, bem como analisar tecnologias desenvolvidas em tempos de distanciamento social e enfraquecimento de redes de suporte.

The impact of political factors on international student mobility

AbstractInternational student mobility contributes to a knowledge‐based economy and forms an important component of a highly educated migration. This paper aims to identify how far political factors—including political discrimination, restrictions, freedom, UK migration policies and social cultural norms and policies—enhance or inhibit individuals' capabilities to become mobile. It offers a novel conceptualisation of mobility, drawing on structuration theory and the capability approach, to reveal the link between structure, capability and agency in the mobility process. Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were conducted with 40 PhD students, two professors from Turkey in the United Kingdom and three international education experts. A capability list established shows how mobility occurs when students' capabilities (freedoms) fail to flourish and they lose their power (capacity) to influence society due to the political environment in the home country. ‘Impo‐mobility’, derived from the word ‘imposed’, is proposed to refer to highly educated people having to become mobile as a result of impositions placed upon them by home and host‐government political practices. An appealing political environment is necessary if Turkey is not to lose highly educated individuals and the United Kingdom is to remain a global player in international higher education.

International Study tours to India: Tour Operators and Tour Leaders perspectives

In today's age of globalization, international students’ mobility is on the rise and projected to reach around 8 million annually by the year 2025 (OECD, 2012). One of the lesser known reasons for international students mobility is the International Study tour, which is a short duration, unique mode of students’ travel organized by a parent educational institution/association to one or more foreign destinations. Such tours incorporate touristic elements and are also a limited-duration travel like tourism and yet one of the most neglected area in tourism research. In this paper the perception of two very important stakeholders was taken into account; that of the tour operators and the tour leaders. The specific objective was to understand existing marketing approaches and other related operational aspects of such tours in the Indian context. These inputs will add to the body of knowledge about international study tours from the tourism perspective and will also have tourism policy planning implications. Research Approach:The study is mostly qualitative in nature. Two sets of Questionnaires were prepared and the responses were examined for meaningful new insights and knowledge to supplement already existing literature on international study tours. For open-ended questions, thematic content analysis with an inductive latent approach was adopted. Narrative analysis was another method found suitable for this paper. A clearly specified list of problems and challenges that have emerged from this study presents a suitable basis for designing the right responses/solutions to address them.

Five Academic Challenges of Chinese International Students in U.S Higher Education: Educational System Adjustment and Classroom Transition

Recent years have witnessed a growing mobility of Chinese international students into the U.S higher education institutions, however, many scholars suggested that international Chinese students were inclined to think it was challenging for them to adapt to the college education in the U.S. While pursuing higher education and academic careers in the U.S continuously being an irresistible trend of Chinese society, there have been increasing attentions to the major academic challenges of international Chinese students in the American educational system adjustment and classroom transition. Drawing on what literature exists combined with research addressing Chinese international students’ adjustments with educational system and classroom management, this article examines the five major academic challenges of Chinese students studying in U.S colleges: 1) language barriers; 2) critical thinking skills; 3) in-class participation; 4) teamwork and cooperation; 5) understand new academic expectation and goals. This article focuses on discussing and analyzing the deep reasons of the five academic challenges for Chinese international students, which brought by Chinese traditional culture and the students’ previous learning experiences in China. Through recognizing and understanding about the major difficulties of Chinese students as well as the reasons behind them, U.S institutions of higher learning are able to provide useful strategies and particle policies to assist Chinese international students successfully overcome the challenges and make the adjustment in a new educational environment.

What can explain the socio-economic gap in international student mobility uptake? Similarities between Germany, Hungary, Italy, and the UK

International student mobility (ISM) prepares young people for the challenges of global and multicultural environments. However, disadvantaged students have lower participation rates in mobility schemes and, hence, benefit less from their positive impacts on career progression. Therefore, policymakers aim to make mobility programs more inclusive. Nevertheless, it is far from clear how policy design can achieve this aim. This study investigates factors driving inequality in international student mobility uptake. The study’s novelty is twofold: first, in contrast to most existing studies it does not only investigate individual but also university characteristics as possible drivers of unequal uptake. This is possible due to the use of rich graduate survey and administrative data merged with university-level European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) data. Second, the study compares results across four European countries. Results show that the socio-economic mobility gap remains still sizable even when taking university characteristics into account. However, universities matter considerably and especially student compositions in terms of socio-economic background and ability contribute to unequal ISM uptake. As a consequence, intergovernmental policies should aim to distribute grants and mobility opportunities more equally across all universities, independent of their student composition.

Pécsett és Debrecenben tanuló külföldi orvostanhallgatók: egyetemválasztási és beilleszkedési kérdések

With the headway of globalization and knowledge-based economy, international student mobility is promoted as the main indicator of the internationalization of higher education. In Hungary the number of foreign students – similarly to global trends – shows an increase, representing a significant economic interest. Besides this, the international students make a growing impacton the development and the economic and cultural life of the cities where the universities are based. In our empirical research, we analyzed international students at the Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy foreign language programs of the University of Debrecen and the University of Pécs with the help of personally requested anonymous, self-completed questionnaires (n=602). Theself-developed questionnaire focused on three issues: the motivation of the students, their satisfaction with the university and the process of their integration. The research was conducted in the spring semester of the academic year 2015/2016 at both universities.Based on the results it can be stated that from the perspective of medium- and long-term policy development of the university and the city, it is indispensable to survey the motivations and satisfaction of the students arriving to Hungary due to international student mobility as well as to facilitate their integration. The general medicine major of the University of Pécs andthat of the University of Debrecen are very popular among foreign students but there are significant differences in their choices behind which we can discover the different cultural background of the matriculated students and this factor determines their personal choices and their later plans. Concerning the difficulties at the beginning we can state based on the results that for thestudents of the German programme the different language medium and the local bureaucracy mean a bigger challenge, while for the heterogeneous community of the English programme contact building with the tutors and the integration into the socio-cultural medium mean more difficulties. Concerning the integration we can state that from the point of country of origin the integration means a little less challenge for the more homogenies student community of the German programme than for the heterogeneous community of the English programme behind which most probably the stabilization of the acculturation process can be trailed.

Remain or return? An empirical study of influencing factors on the return of Chinese international students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 is now a global public health crisis with unprecedented political, economic, and social consequences affecting nations across the world. It also has a profound impact on the mobility of international students. When the COVID-19 was under control in China, and it was spreading dramatically in the United Kingdom, Chinese international students studying in the United Kingdom have been caught in a double bind over whether to return home or not. This study aims to explore the factors that influenced Chinese international students' choices of return during the COVID-19 pandemic when the COVID-19 was under control in China, while it was spreading dramatically in the United Kingdom. Taking Chinese international students studying in the United Kingdom as an empirical case, this study used qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore the factors that influenced their choices of return. Based on the Rational Choice Theory and qualitative analysis of text data, this paper constructed the influencing factors model of returning to China. On this basis, we developed a questionnaire and collected data from 1,333 students in late April and early May 2020. Binary Logistic Regression with 95% CI for odds ratio (OR) was used to identify significant factors. The reserve of epidemic prevention supplies (OR = 0.712), transportation expenses (OR = 0.618), and quarantine expenses (OR = 0.702) negatively affected the return choice of overseas students. The supply of daily necessities (OR = 1.495), the anti-epidemic policy of the United Kingdom (OR = 1.684), and the demand for job hunting after graduation (OR = 1.661) had positive effects. The institutional rationality had the biggest promoting effect, replaced development rationality, and became the most important factor for overseas students to return to China during the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic rationality, which has a significant negative effect, is the biggest obstacle to returning home. These conclusions have policy implications for governments' response to the COVID-19 epidemic and improvement of the quality of services for overseas students.

Factors Motivating Chinese Malaysian University Students’ Educational Mobility to Taiwan

Abstract Based on a project on Chinese Malaysians’ educational mobility across the Chinese-speaking world, this paper highlights their reasons for attending university in Taiwan while examining their subjective formations as ethnic Chinese vis-à-vis transnational processes. Resulting from ethnographic and interview-based research conducted in 2019–2021, the findings demonstrate that the students’ choices for higher education are, to a great extent, culturally driven and historically contingent. Thus they provide an alternative view to the dominant paradigm of international student mobility that emphasises economic and future career incentives. By focusing on three factors—state racism, historical connections, and Sinophone cultural consumption—that motivated them to leave Malaysia and go to Taiwan, this paper moreover draws attention to the transnational infrastructures (e.g. policy, media, interpersonal networks) that have continually reproduced and transformed a long-existing migration pattern.

TÜRKİYE-İRAN GÖÇ SİSTEMİ: SÜREKLİLİK VE DEĞİŞİMLER

Amaç: Son yıllarda Türkiye’ye dair göç çalışmalarında ciddi bir artış gözlense de Türkiye-İran göç koridoruna dair araştırmalar sınırlı sayıdadır. Bu makalede Türkiye-İran Göç sisteminde son dönemde yaşanan gelişmeler incelenecektir. Bu bağlamda tartışılacak üç kategori: yıllardır süregelen uluslararası korumaya tabi kişiler; sayıları gittikçe artan uluslararası öğrenciler ve yatırım yoluyla vatandaşlık hareketliliklerini kapsamaktadır.Yöntem: Türkiye-İran göç koridorunda son yıllarda artış gösteren öğrenci hareketliliği ve konut alımı ile aynı süreçte Türkiye’ye gelerek sığınma başvurusunda bulunan İranlı bireylerin sayısında ciddi azalma olmuştur. Tarihsel süreçte bu değişimi iz sürme yöntemiyle sunan çalışma bu noktada verilerin ne ifade ettiğini göstermek adına TÜİK, YÖK ve GİB’den yararlanmaktadır. Azalan ve artan trendi anlamak adına ise makro politikalardaki değişiklikleri analiz ederek, makro değişimlerin yeni olan etkisini ortaya çıkarmaktadır.Bulgular: 1980’lerin başından itibaren İranlı bireylerin sığınma temelli Türkiye’ye olan hareketliliğiyle sınırlı olan Türkiye-İran göç koridorunda 2011 sonrası süreçte önemli bir dönüşüm yaşanmıştır. Özellikle 2011 sonrası dönemde İranlı öğrenciler ile İranlı ailelerin Türkiye’de konut edinimi yoluyla göçü her yıl sürekli olarak artış göstermektedir. Bu iki kategorinin varlığı ilk olarak Türkiye ve İran arasındaki göçü bir göç sistemine dönüştüğünün göstergesidir. Daha da önemlisi çalışma, bu iki düzenli göç kategorisinin varlığı Türkiye’nin göç politikalarının neoliberalleşmesiyle ilgili olduğunu tartışmaktadır.Özgünlük: Türkiye’ye olan İranlı bireylerin hareketliliği temel olarak İranlı sığınmacı ve mülteciler ile onların üçüncü ülkelere yerleştirilmesi üzerinden tartışılmıştır. Son dönemlerde Türkiye’de artan sayıdaki İranlı yabancı lisans öğrencisi ve konut satın alan İranlı bireyler akademik olarak yazında irdelenmemiştir. Çalışmanın özgün tarafı bu iki kategorileri makro politikalardaki değişikler ile ilişkilendirmesi, Türkiye-İran arasındaki hareketliliğin bir göç sistemine dönüşmesini göstermesi ve Türkiye göç yönetiminin giderek piyasa mantığına uygun politika tercihleriyle neoliberalleşmesini göstermektir.

From place disruption to attachment: another perspective for international student mobility

ABSTRACT Places can hold the most significant experiences of peoples’ lives, and place attachment rests in these people-place meaningful connections. Traveling abroad for international students is a mobility where changes and mixed emotions entangle to one another. It represents distancing and loosening ties from a familiar place (home) and creating and connecting new ones with another place (host destination). This voluntary relocation is considered a disruption in place attachment and impacts the overall experience of the international student mobility. Nevertheless, the creation of attachment to a place derived from a place disruption remains scarce within international student mobility literature. This case study explores the production of place attachment in international students in the host destination through the conceptual lens of disruptions to attachment via changes in places. Thirty-three in-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with international students from different nationalities who have finished a Master’s degree in Tourism at the University of Girona, Spain. This investigation demonstrates the motives and process of place disruption in international student mobility and the power of a host destination to create new emotional bonds and connections, becoming another home for international students.

Institutional Gap and Mobility–Immobility Transition: International Students’ Study-to-Work Experience in China

Individuals’ transnational mobility trajectories are shaped by personal life stages and intertwined with migration infrastructure. In the case of international student mobility, graduates may seek to ‘stay put’ in the host country for career mobility. However, this mobility–immobility transition is heavily mediated by regulatory institutions, especially in a relatively new migrant-receiving country like China. This article unpacks the process of study-to-work transitions in China. The preliminary findings from policy analysis and two case studies reveal that institutional gaps in China’s migration infrastructure can manifest in multiple forms, including intransparent information accessibility, administrative barriers, and institutional timeframe clashes. These gaps also have a temporal dimension and can shape graduates’ post-study mobility path as their transnational biographies develop. The human cost of individuals in navigating these gaps thus hinders their socio-economic mobility and entails questions regarding the implication of China’s ‘rise’ as an international student/migration destination.

Clashing rationales for international student mobility? The case of the EU and Russia

ABSTRACT After 2014 student mobility between the EU and Russia has remained high. International academic mobility (IAM) is an important part of the internationalisation of higher education, and the EU and Russia have multiple rationales for it – academic, economic, political and social, among others. This article analyses the rationales of stakeholders at institutional and individual levels. The article focuses on the cross-cultural experiences of European and Russian students, and compares their rationales to stakeholders’ rationales at the (supra)national level. The article applies an interpretive approach to analyse students’ narrations collected with semi-structured interviews. The study confirmed that the EU had succeeded in its political and economic rationales with regard to European and Russian students. The Russia's rationales had been met only partially. The study revealed complex rationales of individual stakeholders that partially corresponded with the rationales of institutional stakeholders. Although the political and economic rationales of stakeholders at the institutional level are ‘driving forces’ for the continuing internationalisation of higher education, including IAM, individual stakeholders succeeded in realising economic, academic and social rationales that were important for their professional and personal development. The later contributed to better understanding at a people-to-people level, which could have a long-lasting effect in terms of improving EU-Russia relations.

‘Shi men’ as key doctoral practice: understanding international doctoral students’ learning communities and research culture in China

ABSTRACT Research has been widely conducted to understand international student mobility, particularly from Global South to North. However, there is little attention paid to international doctoral students’ research and learning experiences in non-traditional destinations, particularly in the Chinese context. Drawing upon the concept of Communities of Practice, we administered semi-structured interviews with six international doctoral students and their supervisors at a prestigious Chinese university to understand how they experienced intercultural research and supervision in ‘shi men’, a culturally and pedagogically informed collective and semi-closed learning community. Our research findings help elucidate how the different social and academic practices have created various types of ‘shi men’. Each of these academic families reflects the unique features of doctoral learning in China and has implications for international doctoral students’ overall learning experience. This timely study offers distinct insights into cross-cultural learning, research, and supervision practices in China.

Attracting international students to a developing Asian country: Push–pull factors for a niche market, the case of a Vietnamese higher education institution

Student mobility has become a global phenomenon with an upward trend in the past two decades, and Asian countries are becoming important receiving countries. Such phenomenon has been increasingly investigated producing a growing body of literature on Asia-bound international student mobility. However, while some countries stand in the spotlight of international student scholarship, other lesser known destinations remain underrepresented. This article provides an exploratory effort to examine factors that attract international students to Vietnam, a country which has not been visible on international student mobility landscape as a receiving destination. The study employs push–pull factors framework and a mixed methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods (n = 94) to examine the push–pull factors that influence the decision of international students to choose Vietnam as the destination country and a Vietnamese higher education institution as host institution. Research findings show that major push factors include aspirations for new experiences, home country economic outlook and pessimistic job prospects at home. Regarding pull factors, at national level, bright economic prospect is the top pull factor attracting international students to a developing country like Vietnam, and at institutional level, the university’s reputation and its Vietnamese Studies and language programmes are the most important pull factors attracting international students to the university to study. Based on the research results, recommendations are proposed for higher education institutions in Vietnam and other developing Asian countries to attract international students with implications against the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Empirical Analysis of Degree-Mobile Students

The current study aims at providing empirical and theoretical support to the important topic of international student mobility (ISM) in Europe. Specifically, it provides empirical analysis of degree-mobile students in 32 countries: the European Union (EU), the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the United Kingdom. The study is based on the aggregate data from the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER). The goal is to construct indicator (benchmark) for analyzing degree mobility of students at the country level. The empirical analysis is conducted from the perspective of a receiving country. It effectively helps to establish the context and content of future discussions on how to address the practical problem of measuring and evaluating the dynamics of students flows in Europe.

State-university relations and its implication on internationalization of higher education

There has always been a power struggle regarding control over the administration of the university. In the Enlightenment era, the contenders were the State and the Church. However, as the role of the Church in modern educational institutes declined, the state clamoured for greater control ( Delanty, 2001b ; Rüegg, 1992 ). In the 1990s, academic autonomy was under the purview of the university. This in turn gave impetus to greater mobility of students across borders and to the larger process of Internationalization of Higher Education (IHE). However, in the post-democratic era, the autonomy of universities was severely restricted and research and curriculum were tainted with a protectionist attitude ( Altbach and De Wit, 2018 ; Jenkins et al., 2018 ). Emerging conflicts between the state and the university highlight the urgent need to understand and assess state-university relations in the new political climate. Under these circumstances, the process of IHE has borne the brunt and in the last decade, we have seen a decrease in international outbound student mobility, an increase in the cancellation of offshore campuses and other cross-border education activities. While the process of IHE is still maintained, the original aim of this process, to tackle global issues with a local perspective while providing an inter-cultural university education is at risk. This paper examines the changing dynamics of state-university relations and their implications on the process of IHE.

ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКА ПРОЦЕСІВ ІНТЕРНАЦІОНАЛІЗАЦІЇ ВИЩОЇ ОСВІТИ ПОЛЬЩІ НА ФОНІ КРАЇН ЄС

The purpose of the article is to analyze the processes of internationalization of higher education in Poland and compare them with other countries of the European Union, which will allow us to assess the state's place in the European educational space and form further development prospects. It was noted that the most important impetus for the development of internationalization in Europe was the Bologna process. The joining of the higher education system of Poland to it initiated the implementation of the pan-European development policy at the state level. The main prerequisites for the internationalization of the educational process in institutions of higher education have been determined. The international student mobility level in the countries of the European Union is analyzed. It was established that Poland is an active participant in internationalization, which allows increasing the competitiveness of universities against the background of preserving the best traditions and specifics of the national higher education system. Based on the study of the processes of internationalization of higher education in Poland against the background of the countries of the European Union, it was noted that they correspond to European trends and follow the best world trends in this field. It was established that this country's share of foreign students in higher education institutions is 3.86% of the number of enrolled students, which is significantly lower than the average value for the countries of the European Union (10.86%). According to the results of the analysis of the total number of foreign students in the host countries, it was determined that Poland belongs to the largest classification group (from 20 to 100 thousand people) and receives the main contingent of students from Ukraine, Belarus, India, the Czech Republic, Norway, and other countries. Certain developments and practices that are characteristic of the Polish higher education system in comparison with the countries of the European Union are summarized. Attention is drawn to the problems and challenges faced by internationalization participants. A set of measures aimed at the effective development of the internationalization of higher education in Poland has been formed, which should be implemented at different levels of management (national and university), which will increase the country's competitiveness in the market of educational services. Key words: higher education, internationalization of higher education, competitiveness, foreign students, student mobility.

Reconceptualising international academic mobility in the global knowledge system: towards a new research agenda

The cross-border movement of people in higher education has been attracting scholarly attention for decades, but the definition of ‘international academic mobility’ bears ambiguities. This article reviews the literature on international academic mobility published in the journal Higher Education and beyond. By bridging the literature on international academic mobility from higher education studies and other disciplines, this article proposes to redefine international academic mobility, which highlights the integration of both international student mobility and international faculty mobility. Furthermore, this article outlines a new conceptual framework and research agenda, on the role of international academic mobility in the national, regional, and global knowledge systems. The framework highlights the relationship between international academic mobility and worldwide knowledge acquisition, production, transfer, circulation, networks, and the geopolitics of science. The article also proposes further methodologies for future research on international academic mobility.

The Mobility of International Students from a Chinese Perspective

This paper focuses on examining the progression of the international education market, the number of international students in various countries, and China’s policy to support and liaise with the international universities. From the perspective of “talent demand,” this research will provide valuable insight into China’s acquisition of talents and higher education internationalization development.

International student mobility and labour market outcomes: The role of personality dimensions

International student mobility (ISM) is often perceived to enhance career prospects. Surprisingly, the role of personality traits in explaining why students go abroad and relationships between ISM and labour market outcomes have received scant scholarly attention. Based on survey data from Norwegian graduates, we found that degree and credit mobility graduates were significantly more extraverted and open than non-mobile peers and that degree mobiles were more agreeable than both credit and non-mobiles. Furthermore, results revealed that whereas degree mobility is related to both wage and Occupational self-efficiacy (OSE), this was not the case for credit mobility. However, personality did affect the associations between degree mobility and labour market outcomes. In sum, our study suggests that the distinction between degree and credit mobility is important when considering the labour market outcomes of ISM and that personality does play a role in the links between degree mobility and labour market outcomes.