Determinants of International Students' Educational Mobility: a Comparative Study of Japan and Germany

在2021财年，主要研究目标是文献综述，研究国际教育政策，收集已发表的日本和德国国际学生统计和访谈数据。通过与德国杜伊斯堡-埃森大学的Karen Shire教授的合作，该团队在5名研究助理的协助下，成功收集了120多名在日本和德国的国际学生的深度访谈。同时，我们收集了在德留学生的政策文件和统计数据。团队使用MaxQDA建立了访谈的定性数据库。由于新冠肺炎疫情限制旅行，我们无法在海外进行实地调查。而是在2022年7月进行了实地工作，并举行了一次国际会议。PI分析了对中国学生的采访数据，并在德国富尔达举行的国际学生流动国际会议上公布了结果，题为“更容易的道路的困难：中国学生在德国和日本的教育经历和从学校到工作的转变。”该报告讨论了中国学生在德国和日本留学的动机和经历，并指出国际教育的过程涉及不同的利益相关者，他们对学生流动的逻辑可能是相互冲突的。本报告提出了“社会建构的必要性”的概念来描述在个别学生中观察到的动机。

In FY 2021, the main research goals were literature review, researching policy regarding international education, and collecting published statistical and interview data among international students in Japan and Germany.Through the collaboration with Professor Karen Shire, our German counterpart at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the team, with the assistance of 5 research assistants, managed to collect over 120 in-depth interviews with international students in Japan and in Germany. At the same time, we collected policy documents and statistics of international students in Germany. The team set up the qualitative data base for interviews using MaxQDA.Because of the travel restriction due to COVID, we were not able to do field research overseas. Instead, the field work, combined with an international conference, took place in July, 2022.The PI analyzed the data from the interviews with Chinese students, and presented the results at the International Conference on International Student Mobility in Fulda, Germany, titled: "The difficulties of an easier path: Chinese students’ educational experiences and school-to-work transition in Germany and Japan."The presentation discusses Chinese students’ motivations and experiences of studying abroad in Germany and Japan and points out that the process of international education involves different stakeholders whose logics for student mobility might be conflicting. This presentation presents the concept of “socially constructed necessity” to describe the motivations observed among individual students.