| Abstrakt: |
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unpredicted disruption to international students' mobility, which has created challenges for the principal host and sending countries (i.e. the UK and China). This study focuses on the UK's prospective Chinese master's students who have, reluctantly, deferred their education abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic and explores the factors influencing their choice of deferral and how they strategically reimagine their overseas education in the future. A mixed-methods approach was adopted using 16 semi-structured interviews and 102 questionnaires. In addition to the health crisis and varying travel policies that have significantly impacted the outward mobility of prospective Chinese students, the findings highlight that the intensified geopolitical situations during the COVID-19 have confined students' overseas education destination to the UK as the 'choice of no choice'. Additionally, the unanticipated and unconventional 'gap year' was identified to impel this cohort to choose the shorter duration of postgraduate programmes in the UK as a potential 'life circle remedy'. Students who participated in this study also demonstrated their strong agency on their deferral and education destination decisions—that is their 'agency in immobility' which facilitates their international education progressions. This paper draws insights from these findings and discusses implications for the mobility of international students from China in the coming years and provides recommendations for how UK universities can better support this cohort and other international students who may be in similar situations during and post the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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