2023
Cairn
Lei Huang, « ‘The distance between dreams and reality is COVID‑19’. Impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the study experience and mobility of Chinese students in Turin », Journal of international Mobility, ID : 10670/1.edty9p
The global pandemic situation caused by COVID-19 disease has led to dramatic enforced changes in overseas students’ study and social lives that are unprecedented in modern history. Faced with this situation, this study examines how Chinese students in Turin conceived their mobility by analyzing the impact of the pandemic on their view on overseas study, social behavior, and relationship with parents before, during, and after the COVID-19 crisis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve Chinese students in Turin at different pandemic stages. The result reveals that the context of the pandemic has not only awakened students’ underlying individual needs and personality traits but also competed their desire for western transnational mobility with their intensifying filial piety to parents, which eventually might leave to a shift of their mobility flow to East Asia-oriented countries. The findings suggest that the psychological consequences of the pandemic depend on cultural and individual motivations and thus highlight the importance of tangible interventions for international students in the post-pandemic period.