Student Mobility Research Articles

Education‐migration brokers, international student mobilities and digital transformations in pre‐ and post‐pandemic times

AbstractOriginating in the early 20th century, international education migration has undergone significant growth to become a sprawling industry responsible for managing substantial student mobility. This process encompasses more than just the students themselves, incorporating a diverse array of actors, regulations, and technologies. Within this multifaceted system, commercial brokers play a vital role by actively facilitating the intricate and interconnected interactions involved in international education migration. This review takes a critical look at the evolving role of commercial brokers in international student mobilities, with a particular focus on the COVID‐19 pandemic and its aftermath. Brokers are presented as key intermediaries, bridging the gap between state mechanisms and migrating students, and contributing significantly to economic development through education migration. The review explores the layered relationships between brokers and students, taking into account not only economic aspects but also the social, cultural, and interpersonal factors that shape these interactions. Additionally, it considers the impact of digital transformation on commercial brokers, revealing how digital platforms have necessitated a reevaluation of their roles in an increasingly globalized educational landscape. In underscoring the growing importance of commercial brokers in the post‐pandemic education‐migration landscape, the review concludes that brokerage is best conceived as a complex, technologically‐mediated social practice that bridges state policies, migrants' aspirations, and the overarching digital landscape.

Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul, Stephanie K. Kim (2023)

Review of: Constructing Student Mobility: How Universities Recruit Students and Shape Pathways between Berkeley and Seoul, Stephanie K. Kim (2023) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 212 pp., ISBN 978-0-26254-514-3, p/bk, $40

Gaming in multicultural classrooms with refugee and migrant children: Exploring the potential of culturally tailored serious games as spaces for second language acquisition

Due to the emergence of technology and people’s dependence on it, coupled with global human flows causing intense student mobility in schools, the need for a new educational paradigm arises. On the one hand, people are becoming increasingly reliant on the satisfaction modern screens provide, and all other stimuli seem uninteresting and dull. In these terms, traditional educational methods appear outdated and ineffective for the modern classroom. Today, education is a critical factor influencing and preparing people to become citizens of a world without borders. Moving in this direction, educational tools should be diversified and adjusted to a multicultural context so that all students can emotionally relate and identify themselves with the knowledge they are taught. The use of gaming in education is a popular new addition to modern classrooms. This article will present the results of a research project that investigated the potential use of serious games in multicultural environments as a space for the acquisition of English as a second language. More precisely, the study focused on the culturally-tailored content of serious games and their ideal design features, according to English teacher practitioners working with refugee and migrant populations in Trikala, Greece.

A gift, a bond, a prize that binds: examining scholarship awards in the era of ‘Ethical internationalisation’

ABSTRACT The paper examines preconceptions and assumptions behind common understandings of ‘scholarship awards’ in international higher education research, and analyses how these influence the production of knowledge on scholarship programs and their effects. The paper aims to make a major theoretical contribution by proposing an alternative approach to studying these programs. First, drawing on a comprehensive review of the scholarships literature, the paper posits that prevalent theoretical approaches – often drawn from the logic of the scholarship programs themselves – limit our view of what scholarship programs do and can do. Such research constrains understandings of program design and its effects on and implications for sponsored students. Examples of underexplored ethical aspects of sponsorship arrangements are highlighted through examples and vignettes. Then, turning to contemporary discussions related to ethical internationalisation and student mobility, the paper asks which theoretical approaches could aid a focus upon and analysis of these programs in relation to ethics-related themes. Conventions theory (and specifically the orders of worth approach) is proposed as a useful theoretical lens. The paper then synthesises a novel framework using this approach to examine explicit and implicit aspects of sponsorship arrangements, explaining its suitability and potential to produce deeper insights into and more nuanced understanding of the consequences of modern scholarship program design for actors involved in sponsored international student mobility. In conclusion, the promise and significance of this framework utilizing the orders of worth approach for studying questions related to valuation processes and ethical internationalisation is recapitulated and future research is discussed.

Managing Student Mobility in Cameroon’s University Ecosystem: A FORM/BCS Approach

Nowadays, student mobility cannot be avoided in Cameroon university ecosystem. This phenomenon has many causes. Certain students live with their parents who are civil servants and they have to move with them when they are sending to a different region; another situation is link to universities newly created in cities where the cost of the live is better than in the home university city and students prefer move to these new universities. Since student circuit is not the same in each university, it is difficult to find his level in the new university and which courses he has to follow in order to complete his training. This problem is crucial in Cameroon university ecosystem and we tackle it in this paper. The Feature Oriented Reuse Method with Business Component Semantics (FORM/BCS) is a software domain engineering method that has been proposed to design an adaptable architecture for systems belonging in a same business domain. In this work, we apply the FORM/BCS method to manage student mobility in Cameroon university ecosystem. The result of this work is a management model that allows once a student gets an enrolment in a new university, to transfer credit from the student home university to the host one.

Imagined geographies of learning: student perceptions of what can be learned where

ABSTRACT This paper explores the ways in which Danish student teachers imagine different countries to be appropriate for different kinds of learning in the context of international student mobility. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper shows how geographical imaginaries are constructed and maintained by educational institutions and social networks. Furthermore, it shows that students ascribe different potentials for professional or personal development to different places. The paper finds that internationalisation practices risk reproducing stigmatised and hierarchical notions of the potential of places and the ‘right’ kinds of knowledge.

The influence of the Chinese hukou system in motivating and shaping the geography of Chinese international student mobility

AbstractThe hukou system (household registration system) is a long‐established and significant institutional barrier to population movement within China and, accordingly, has been the subject of a great deal of research. What has received scant attention, however, is the influence that this system has on the considerable phenomenon of Chinese international student mobility (ISM). This paper is based on an analysis of 50 semistructured interviews with Shanghai‐based returnee students. Utilising the notions of institutional barriers to migration and middle‐category migration, it illustrates the important role that the hukou system plays in motivating nonelite Chinese students to study abroad and how this institutional barrier shapes their strategic decision making across various temporal phases of the ISM process. These findings are of significance as they highlight the largely unacknowledged role of hukou in the Chinese ISM system. Conceptually, they emphasise the importance of sufficiently accounting for institutional barriers to internal and international mobility in the experiences of international students in migration studies.

Inter-Asian perceptions of studying ‘abroad’ in Asia: analysis of Japanese students’ discourse

ABSTRACT Today, Asia attracts more international students. A dominant paradigm in student mobility scholarship focuses on the presence or absence of push and pull factors, mainly practical, educational, cultural or financial ones. This perspective, however, pays little attention to students’ perceptions towards destination countries or regions. Through interviews, this study elucidates perceptions of a Japanese public university’s students towards Asia as a study abroad destination. Results reveal that students avoid Asia by employing a ‘strategy of ignorance’. Simultaneously, ignorance surfaced as a key motivation to study in Asia – a first step towards critical reflection on dominant views on Asia in Japan.

International Students as Sources of Income? Moving Beyond the Neoliberal Framing of Internationalization

This paper focuses on international student mobility and the funding of higher education. We theorize that relying on international students for funding is stronger for institutions in developed English-speaking countries because they more often adopt marketization practices. Compared to Northern and Southern European countries, we find that they had the largest decrease in public funding and largest increase in private funding. The relative number of international students has also increased for English-speaking countries, but not for other country groupings. Furthermore, we found associations between public/private funding and international student enrollments, but these patterns were not uniform. These results show that a decrease in public funding and a reliance on international students as a source of income is not equally important everywhere. This opens new avenues for research on the marketization of higher education, including the role that differences between cultures and types of governments play in shaping international student mobility.

Perceived effectiveness of assistive devices and support services provided to students with visual impairment in mainstream classrooms in the United Arab Emirates

AbstractStudents with disabilities such as visual impairment (VI) face challenges in accessing education, mainly owing to their inability to participate in learning activities in the classroom. While experts in special education have discussed the deployment of assistive technology (AT) to support the learning of students with VI, research on its impact is very scarce, especially in non‐western countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To bridge this gap, this study explored special education teachers' perceptions regarding the effectiveness of AT in supporting the learning and mobility of students with VI in schools. A total of 228 special education teachers from three regions in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, UAE, participated in the study. The participants completed an assistive technology for VI scale, and the data were subjected to mean score computation, multivariate analyses of variance and correlation and hierarchical multiple regression. Participants rated the impact of AT highly with regard to the reading, writing and orientation and mobility skills of students with VI. Interestingly, the orientation/mobility sub‐scale showed an association with teacher experience and location. The article discusses the practical implications of the findings as well as directions for future research.

The Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Tertiary International Students in South Korea

South Korea’s demographic problem has spurred Korean universities to expand their outreach and increase their stake in global student mobility. The desire for global expansion and diversity in Korean higher education clashes with the sensibilities of a nation lacking a multicultural tradition. This study documents this conflict of competing interests by narrating the cross-cultural adaptation experiences of 14 international students at a private tertiary institution in South Korea. Within the framework of cross-cultural adaptation theory, the researcher utilized questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group to better understand how international students are affected by their encounters with Korean society. From the qualitative analysis, the key themes of cultural affinity, language fluency necessity, and implicit discrimination were found to impact an individual’s cross-cultural adaptation. The results demonstrate that students' perceptions of Korea and their experiences constitute a feedback loop: either a positive cycle of adaptation stemming from a high interest in host language and culture that manifests into a higher student-perceived satisfactory experience in the host country or a negative cycle of dissatisfaction and rejection of the host society and culture. 
 
 Received: 9 July 2023 / Accepted: 17 October 2023 / Published: 5 November 2023

Students on the move? Intellectual migration and international student mobility

ABSTRACT International student mobility, taking place within the framework of globalisation, internationalisation and transnationalism, has attained much attention. This paper adopts the Intellectual Migration framework to further our understanding of mobility regarding international higher education. It simultaneously studies China-born students in both China and North America to empirically examine the propensity for student mobility across national borders and the determining factors behind the realisation of such mobility under the same set of geopolitical and international circumstances. The analysis is based on a set of cross-sectional surveys conducted in the 2017–2019 period that yields over 1600 data points. We compare the ‘who’, ‘why’ and ‘where’ aspects of migration between domestic students in China and Chinese international students in North America to delineate the factors underlying international student mobility. By highlighting aspirations and capabilities on mobility outcomes, this paper contributes to differentiating mobility between undergraduate and graduate students and the implications for social inequality. Our analysis also reveals the unequal spatial distributions of educational resources between intellectual gateways and peripheries, and by extension between the Global North and the Global South. The findings of this paper have policy implications on improving the quality, accessibility, and equity of higher education.

Intellectual capital and student mobility

ABSTRACT This paper advances the conceptualisation and application of intellectual capital, a key concept in the intellectual migration framework, to understand international student mobility. The intellectual migration framework contends that higher-education and highly-skilled migrants acquire, upgrade and utilise intellectual capital for upward career and social mobility. This paper argues that intellectual capital is not the sum of different forms of capitals, but a complete package with human, cultural and social capitals working in synergy through the agency of migrants. Focusing on higher-education students at the beginning of the intellectual migration continuum, it analyzes how intellectual capital is differentially accumulated at various stages of the educational process. Drawing on 51 semi-structured interviews with Chinese international students in North America, we learn that pre-migration intellectual capital, due largely to parents and family, reflects social inequality in contemporary societies whereas that obtained while studying abroad reveals more on individual agency. As such, intellectual capital accumulation abroad serves as a mediating process, especially for those with less privileged backgrounds. Supportive international higher education sectors in both sending and receiving countries can also assist students in their intellectual capital cultivation process and contribute to alleviating educational inequality.

Transnational Mobility of Chinese Students in Portuguese-Speaking Countries: The Role of a Non-hegemonic Language

Abstract The idea that the acquisition of and proficiency in non-hegemonic languages can be pivotal to international student mobility has thus far been insufficiently addressed. In this paper, we draw on 23 in-depth interviews with Chinese students to explore this question, showing how the perception of Portuguese-language learning and practice at Lusophone Higher Education Institutions (e.g., in Portugal, Macao, Angola, and Brazil) represents a decisive trigger for studying abroad, and an alternative strategy for acquiring linguistic capital in a non-dominant language in which skills can be converted into competitive resources on future professional paths. We conclude by arguing for the need to address this blind spot in transnational student mobilities, and by positioning “language acquisition and proficiency” as a structuring dimension, not just of the processes by which students decide to move, but also of their imaginaries of preparedness for their future career trajectories.

Internationalization of Higher Education: A Critical Literature Review of the UK Outward Student Mobility

Internationalization of Higher Education: A Critical Literature Review of the UK Outward Student Mobility

Academic mobility of Kazakh and Russian students: theoretical and methodological analysis

The relevance of the article is caused by the fact that education in Russia and the Republic of Kazakhstan is becoming more practice-oriented. The purpose of this work is to highlight the academic mobility of students in understanding and analyzing various aspects and factors that affect the success and effectiveness of the mobility process. Tasks: clarification of the conceptual apparatus of academic, professional and social mobility, consideration of the interdisciplinary aspect of these concepts, development of recommendations and strategies for improving academic exchange programs, creating conditions for successful academic mobility and promoting the development of students in the global educational space.The work applies the methods of modeling, classifying and analyzing the documents of the countries within the educational space. The authors highlight the features of the academic mobility organization in the field of higher education international cooperation that contribute to the development of mobility qualities. The higher education faces an urgent need to create and organize the conditions for the formation of the specialist, who is mobile in socio-professional terms. There is a need to carry out a targeted work on the organization of the academic mobility of students, as well as the development of a regulatory framework for this activity.Conclusions are drawn about the formation of a model for the organization of academic mobility of students who would be competitive in a rapidly changing world.

Сучасні методики технічної освіти в умовах дистанційного навчання

The article substantiates the trends and prospects for the development of distance education. It was noted that the development of methods and the development of remote forms of the educational process belong to innovative methods of training future specialists. A promising path for the development of distance learning has been revealed in accordance with the development of world trends related to the development of new information technologies and systems for establishing communications between various strata of population groups and, including, the educational sector.
 The expediency of the development of remote forms of education in Ukraine is substantiated and it is noted that such methods will motivate the students themselves to the need to increase their informational and intellectual level, capable of mastering new forms of acquiring professional abilities. It has been proven that the creation of remote forms of education will contribute to the improvement of the professional level of teaching staff and the level of mastery of computer technology, as it requires high professional abilities from teachers in the process of providing educational services using modern information technologies.
 Generalized features of distance learning methods are presented and brief characteristics of each of them are given. Separate information technologies, tools and the most popular online platforms used for organizing training in a distance format are considered. The main advantages that teachers and students receive when studying in a distance format are highlighted, and, in particular, the high mobility of students, which in turn does not require their strict presence in classrooms and laboratories of educational institutions. It is indicated that the introduction of distance learning allows to significantly reduce the expenditure items of the educational institution on utility payments. At the same time, the distance education system does not require the educational institution to have and maintain a wide list of basic funds, including classrooms for the full-time educational process in the presence of students. Such features of obtaining educational services are especially relevant in modern conditions, when Ukraine is waging a war of liberation with the Russian Federation.

International student mobility options following Brexit: An analysis of the genesis of Britain's Turing Scheme

AbstractThis paper examines the interplay between geopolitical goals, governance and International Student Mobility (henceforth ISM). It explores how the United Kingdom's newly envisaged domestic credit‐mobility programme (the Turing Scheme) is reshaping the spatiality of their outward student mobility flows to bolster a global sense of internationalisation through ISM. During its emergence, the Turing Scheme was often positioned as an antithesis to the pre‐established Erasmus+ Scheme which had a strong focus on European integration, instead it focused on promoting a ‘Global Britain’ narrative. This paper conducts a content analysis of Hansard (transcripts of debates in the U.K.'s Houses of Parliament), to reflect on ISM decision‐making, debating the choices made and unmade regarding the development of the Turing Scheme. This research illuminated multiple issues, adding to the debate about the importance of ISM for geopolitical purposes, and how these can underpin credit‐mobility schemes, and shape these during periods of large‐scale geopolitical change.

How do tuition fee increases affect international mobility? The case of European Union students in England

AbstractThis paper presents a descriptive analysis of the impact of tuition fee increases in England on the full‐degree mobility of undergraduate students from the European Union. First, we investigated whether the increase in tuition fees reduced the number of EU students in English higher education institutions. Our analysis shows that, on average, English universities suffered a sudden drop in EU enrolments in 2012/13 but recovered and then expanded their pre‐2012 enrolment levels in subsequent academic years. We observe that those English universities regarded as less prestigious experienced the sharpest decline and took longer to recover their pre‐2012 numbers. Second, we examined how changes in enrolment are associated with EU countries' macro‐level characteristics, using the push‐pull model framework. While there was a significant decrease in the number of students from Northern and Western European countries attending English universities after 2012, the tuition fee increase did not impact the number of students coming from Southern Europe. We found an association between EU countries' youth employment rates and higher education system characteristics with changes in enrolment in English universities. By examining the effect of changes in the tuition fee policy on international student mobility, our research provides new evidence on how tuition fee policies might change the behaviour of students.

Towards the ‘rationality–emotion nexus’ for approaching international student mobility: An ethnography of African student migrants at a Chinese university

AbstractThis paper examines how student motivations to study abroad are shaped by what might be called the ‘rationality–emotion nexus’. Drawing from 15 months of ethnographic engagement at a Chinese university, we show how rational factors (e.g., pursuit of financial resources) interact with emotional forces (e.g., love for family members) in dynamic and diverse ways to shape the pathways of African student migrants to higher education overseas. More specifically, we identify three distinct dynamics in the nexus: (i) rationality is entangled with emotions; (ii) rationality parallels emotions; and (iii) rationality and emotions transform each other. By foregrounding this nexus, the present study offers a critical intervention into international student mobility/migration studies as it develops ‘an integrative approach’ that transcends either a widely established rational framework of capital conversion or the emerging emotional geographies of transnational education migration.