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Mexico is the main Latin American country sending students abroad for international education. In 2018, there were 34,000 Mexican students enrolled in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) outside their country of origin. From those, over 12,000 thousand (36%) studied in a European country. One of the most longstanding sources of funding for International Student Mobility (ISM) in Mexico has been the National Science and Technology Council (CONACYT) scholarship programme. This has funded graduate ISM since 1970 for the training and consolidation of human resources. In 2018, 58% of awardees studied in Europe. Some debates suggest these types of scholarships mainly benefit students with privileged backgrounds and reproduce inequalities in HE. This paper examines the socio-demographic profiles of former CONACYT scholarship doctoral awardees along with their different previous HE trajectories and decisions to study abroad.
This paper is drawn from my doctoral research using transformative learning theory concepts and the capabilities approach, exploring the transformative nature of ISM associated with individual meanings of the mobility experiences, capabilities developed, and implications for social change. In this paper, I present findings of the socio-demographic data collected through a cross-sectional survey and qualitative data from in depth semi-structured interviews. The findings show significant participation of students from less privileged backgrounds and a complex mix of drivers for outward mobility linked to previous educational opportunities and future life aspirations. This paper brings insights from a human development approach, showing how these scholarships are instrumental in increasing ISM opportunities, contributing to social mobility and facilitating career development.
European Commission along with its member states are targeting to attract and retain an increasing number of international students. Much of the earlier focus has been in what happens within the higher education context or in the public policy sphere while less attention is targeted on the communicative practices and how they (re)produce and position international students in the society. Communication forms the basis of social practices and the creation and continuation of social institutions like society (Voss & Lorenz, 2016) and higher education institutions. By taking the ongoing COVID19-pandemic as an example, we analyse the crisis communication targeting higher education students.
The aim of the paper is to analyse and compare actors, channels and content targeted at the international HE students in Finland during the pandemic time. The focus is particularly on the communicative practices of the national level actors. The main research question is how the communicative practices targeting higher education students differ between Finnish and international students. Using communication inequality (Ramandhan & Viswanath 2008, Viswanath 2006) as a theoretical framework, we specifically focus on the linguistic choices to differentiate these two student bodies. The data consist of ministerial documents and news pieces that are digitally provided at websites and social media sites. In a preliminary observation, we find some discrepancies among the actors in terms of the information provided and channels used supporting Palttala et al.’s (2012) observation on governments’ failing to communicate all different groups of people during a crisis.
This presentation will summarise the preliminary findings of our study which aims to document and analyse the experiences and well-being of Chinese and Chinese-presenting international students in the UK. The important contextual factors of this study include (1) the rise in hate crimes against East Asian communities in the early part of the COVID pandemic and (2) the continued increase in the number of Chinese students, who comprise the largest group of international students in the UK. Earlier research suggested that concerns around safety – both in relation to the COVID pandemic and racist incidents could affect student mobility from China.
Our study draws together data from freedom of information (FOI) requests, an online survey and semi-structured interviews to investigate (1) perceptions and experiences of aggression and (2) students informational practices during the pandemic. The latter refers to how students may have communicated their experiences of aggression and with whom. We employ insights from media studies, law and criminology, cultural sociology, and sociological studies of ‘resilience’ and social capitals to interpret our data. Our findings are intended to establish an evidence base to enable university staff and local communities to improve strategies and practices of safety and well-being of these students.
The idealised internationally mobile student is presented as seamlessly transitioning across space, translating and neutralising themselves within a globalised higher education (HE) sector. We argue, however, that enacting ‘coming to know’ and writing for doctoral students is a practice which often reinforces ‘otherness.’ We draw on research funded by the UK Council for International Student Affairs, involving running a writing group for international doctoral students in two UK HE institutions and interviewing the participants about their UK HE experiences of academic writing in English.
We identified the challenge for doctoral students of transitioning into an educational landscape whereby they feel ‘caught between places’. Academic writing in this context emerges to produce sensibilities of misinterpretation and (un)belonging, occupying a position characterised by ‘translating cultures.’ As such, the ‘mobile’ international student occupies a precarious space, epistemologically and politically. Within the current political context of Brexit and associated impacts, including ending UK participation in Erasmus student exchanges, decreasing numbers of incoming international students and what is identified as a ‘hostile climate’ (Griffiths & Yeo 2021), the status of the international student in UK HE appears increasingly problematic. Recent calls to decolonise universities (Bhambra et al, 2018) contrast with ‘nostalgia for empire’ (El-Enany, 2020) associated with Brexit. Drawing on a writing workshop pedagogy we are evolving, we explore the cultivation of spaces for academic writing that might traverse the tight borders of what constitutes legitimate knowledge, such that ideas might flow across the confines of space.
References:
Bhambra, G., Gebrial, D. & Nisancioglu, K. (Eds) Decolonising the University. London: Pluto.
El-Enany, N. (2020) Bordering Britain: Law, race and empire. Manchester University Press
Griffiths, M. & Yeo, C. (2021) ‘The UK’s hostile environment: Deputising immigration control’ Critical Social Policy https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018320980653
International student mobility has been increasingly affected by politics, culture, economics, natural disasters and public health. The Covid-19 pandemic caused unpredicted disruption to international students’ movement, which has challenged the primary host and sending countries, including the UK and China. This study focuses on UK’s prospective Chinese master students who have, reluctantly, suspended their studying abroad during the Covid-19 pandemic, and explores how these students strategically reimagine their overseas education in the future. A mixed-method approach was adopted, utilising survey and semi-structured in-depth interviews to investigate prospective Chinese international students’ experience and reflections in their deferral of overseas degree education. Besides the influence of health crisis, findings highlight the geopolitical situations, such as the somewhat tense relations between mainland China and the US, Australia, or Hong Kong has confined students’ overseas education destination to the UK as the “choice of no choice”. Regardless of parents’ pressure or suggestions in pursuing master’s degrees in Chinese universities as a safe alternative, students in this study demonstrate their strong agency and careful considerations on their education destination choices (e.g. academic climate, education quality, intercultural experience, etc.). UK universities are further suggested to better understand and support prospective international students who may face more unpredictable and even overwhelming challenges during and post the COVID-19 so as to facilitate better preparation for these students’ international education mobility in the future.
Existing scholarship on international student mobility has thus far focused primarily on where students have studied or pursued their degrees. However, this tends to obscure institutional differences within the same educational context. Drawing on a qualitative research project conducted in 2018, this paper examines a significant, yet understudied, role of higher education institutions in shaping international students’ experiences during and after their studies in the UK. Contrary to the relatively homogenised accounts of experiences and outcomes of those studying in the UK, it will show how they vary in important ways depending on institutions and students. These variations are explored in terms of educational status (i.e., the university’s position in global and national university rankings), organisational practices (i.e., the quality and quantity of careers support), and cultural and expressive characteristics (e.g., the place/location of institutions, the class and race/ethnicity of students and staff). The paper also delineates how individual students are differentially positioned in relation to each institution, pointing towards differences within the institution. The analysis speaks to wider debates concerning international higher education (particularly the implications for (re)producing social advantage across borders), while highlighting the complexity of international student mobility in the UK.
For a long time, internationalization strategies of higher education institutions across the world focused was on mobility abroad. However, international student mobility is a socially selective process, whereby students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to participate. Consequently, in recent years ‘internationalisation for all’, ‘inclusive internationalisation’ and ‘internationalisation at home’ have become prominent terms in internationalization strategies, aiming to provide internationalisation activities to all students, including those who remain at home. To our surprise, however, existing scholarship today did not investigate whether offering a broader array of internationalisation activities also reaches the objectives of such new internationalisation strategies, namely to reach a broader group of students, including those from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds. To this end, in this paper we investigate the likelihood of different (social) groups to participate in different internationalisation activities, both at home and abroad, through an online survey conducted in 2019 at three institutions in two countries (hidden for peer review, n = 2,567). Our findings clearly indicate that the social composition of student populations needs to be taken into account when designing internationalisation strategies. Our results indicate that simply broadening the type of activities is not sufficient, as students from lower socio-economic backgrounds showed to be less likely to participate in any internationalisation activity. Overall, the findings suggest that inclusive internationalization might best be reached through integrating internationalization into the formal curriculum, in order to circumvent the barriers that might exist to participate in activities outside of the formal study schedule.
Since the introduction of social distancing measures to control the Covid-19 pandemic, the merge between young people’s digital lives and dating lives is now more pronounced than ever, as is the exacerbation of pre-existing social inequalities posed by harmful aspects of youth digital culture. In particular, as recent events have underscored, the blight of male violence on the lives of women and girls remains an urgent issue. Entering this policy space and contemporary debates on male sexual entitlement, the present paper reports original empirical research documenting “everyday” forms of violence apparently motivated by women’s sexual rejection of men in the dating app space. It discusses two complementary studies: one a digital ethnography of the Instagrams Bye Felipe and Tinder Nightmares, which crowdsource and post harmful messages men have sent women; the other, a narrative analysis of interviews with 13 women in their early twenties to thirties about relevant in-app and face-to-face experiences. Using Gavey’s (2005) work on the “cultural scaffolding” of sexual violence as a conceptual framework, the findings reveal how cultural narratives about heterosexual dating app culture prioritise men’s sexual interests and perspectives and obscure the moral wrongness of the actions of men who become abusive when rejected by women. The paper highlights the need for creative thinking about how to improve ways of holding such men accountable in the semi-anonymous environment of the dating app. It concludes with a call for a zero-tolerance approach towards misogyny to be adopted by practitioners and policy makers working across both “online” and “offline” anti-violence efforts.
This paper explores the legal and ethical implications of the use of digital technologies in the schooling environment which has become increasingly important since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. It expresses concern that the use of digital platforms in this context is not upholding children’s rights and puts children at risk of unnecessary, unethical and potentially harmful data processing. This paper acknowledges that there exists a tension between the protections offered under law and the reality of a digitised and connected learning environment. This presents a confusing and potentially hazardous path for the child, their parents and the school to navigate. Although schools act lawfully, the data processing that occurs when digital platforms are used can put children at risk. There is often no alternative option for a child who wants to, and must by law, receive an education, but to accept the invasive data practices now commonplace. The provision of alternatives is also logistically challenging for schools. We suggest that changes in digital schooling practices are needed. Until society reaches a stage in which all digital platforms are designed with the child’s rights and safety as the paramount consideration, there needs to be a realistically possible way that children can exercise their right to object (Article 21 UK GDPR) in the schooling context as well as greater awareness of how this can be practically achieved.