Navigating Career Choices: Exploring the Influence of Technology and the Post-Pandemic Landscape on Gen Z International Students

• In Event: Roundtable Group 14
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Race, Religion & International Student Agency

Proposal

While there is an abundance of literature on international student mobility (ISM), there are few studies that explore students’ mobility during and after their undergraduate programs. In particular, there is a lack of literature on ISM regarding the students’ career paths for those who were born during the period of Generation Z (1995-2012) and developed a transnational sense of belonging from their intercultural experiences. Our study fills such a gap in the literature by conducting a qualitative longitudinal study over the span of 2019 to 2023.

The participants in our study are students who went to international schools in China, India, and the United Arab Emirates. There were 19 participants in the first round of interviews, 15 in the second round, and 10 participants replied so far to be part of the third round of interviews. The majority of them attended universities in the U.S. and the U.K. They are the first group of students who experienced the pandemic during their undergraduate programs. Even though COVID-19 disrupted their in-person campus experiences and forced them to relocate to their ‘home’ countries or other places, the students strived to continue learning for their personal and professional development in the midst of the global health crisis.

Our research questions include: To what extent does international students’ sense of belonging matter to their choice of careers and post-graduation migration plans? How do technology and virtual mobility shape the academic, personal, and future professional experiences of Gen Z international students?

To guide our study, we use the theoretical framework of Twenge et al.’s (2010) generation theory and work values and Tran and Vu’s (2018) international students’ agency in mobility.
In terms of methodology, three phrases of semi-structured, in-depth interviews lasting from 60-90 minutes were conducted between 2019 and 2023. Researchers coded the interviews with descriptive and pattern techniques using NVivo.

Our in-progress study highlights the students’ agency to defy the deficit-oriented narratives about international students, who are often portrayed as being linguistically and culturally challenged to navigate intercultural settings. Furthermore, our research participants contest the traditional conceptions of international students as academic migrants who move in a binary way, between their ‘home’ countries and their ‘host’ countries. As Wu and Wilkes (2017) note, there is an emergence of international students who cultivate a cosmopolitan sense of belonging, which could impact their post-migration destinations.

Our study focuses on Generation Z (Gen Z) because as Twenge (2023) states, they are the newest generation to enter the global workforce. While it matters to be attentive to intersectional nuances, Gen Z tends to be “concerned with authenticity, confronting free speech issues, pushing the norms of gender, and struggling with mental health” (Twenge, 2023, p. 347). Thus, our deeper understanding of their generational characteristics in the context of international higher education could provide insights for higher education practitioners, policymakers, and employers to create an environment that could support their well-being as persons and professionals.

Authors

• Asuka Ichikawa, Boston College

• Minghui Hou, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

• Natalie Irby Cruz, Emory University