An Archipelago of Belonging: Community, Conflict, and Coping of Filipino International Students in Hungary [before doctoral defense]

Kivonat, rövid leírás

Anchored in the concept of knowledge migration as a transnational mobility—understood as the dual process of students moving to accumulate cultural capital and navigating a pathway intended to link education to future labor mobility (see Findlay, 2011; Findlay et al., 2012; King & Raghuram, 2013)—this research critically engages with and complicates dominant narratives of transnational student flows. The study explicitly rejects the idea that international students are a homogeneous group of "migratory elites" (see Murphy-Lejeune, 2003)—a view that ignores significant differences within this group. In accordance with Pásztor (2015), this study affirms that international students have many different and unequal socio-economic, cultural, and institutional positions on a spectrum; they do not all belong to one elite category. Within this framework of stratified knowledge migration, the presumed seamless trajectory of personal and professional advancement is revealed as deeply problematic. The unanticipated outcomes of students who study abroad, including access to jobs; barriers to "settling" in the host country; and the precarious "portability" of foreign credentials, are heavily influenced by the resources, networks, and commonly available services that influence the lived experience of students (see Knight, 2012; Moskal, 2017). For students from non-elite backgrounds, the transition will have been marked by "class disadvantage and resource inadequacy" as they navigate through "compromise and complicity," rather than being a transition of elite status, as it is perceived by the individualist human capital model (see Brooks & Waters, 2010). Hungary has become an important hub for international higher education students in recent years, especially through governmental scholarship programs like Stipendium Hungaricum. Within the context of Filipino Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship holders, Tempus Közalapítvány (2020) reported that there were two Filipino students in 2016-2017; nine in 2017-2018; eighteen in 2018-2019; twenty-three in 2019-2020, and forty-four in 2020-2021, becoming a constant 35 slots allotted for Filipino international students up until the present. This shows an increasing number of Filipinos in Hungary, more than fifteen times since 2016; thus, it is becoming relevant to study this student group.