International Student Mobility and Immobility

The international circulation of higher education students expanded in the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that during the pandemic universities faced challenges in maintaining the integrity of international study programmes and supporting large numbers of fee-paying student migrants. In this chapter, focusing on the Portuguese context, the authors note that programmes like Erasmus were also potentially compromised by the lack of opportunities to engage in convivial activities during the successive lockdowns, limiting the capacity to generate intercultural competencies. However, students who had migrated for the duration of a degree course benefited from more settled status, helping to explain why student migration increased in Portugal at a time when other forms of student mobility declined. Other issues include the challenge of moving learning online, and the future prospects for virtual mobility.