Immobility infrastructures: taking online courses and staying put amongst Chinese international students during the COVID-19

ABSTRACT

This paper draws attention to the current and possible effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the (im)mobility trajectories of international students (IS) and the global higher education landscape. From the perspective of migration infrastructure, this paper specifically focuses on the immobility experiences amongst Chinese international students (CIS) who planned to enrol overseas in 2020 but instead chose to take online courses in China due to the COVID-19. It asks how online courses are both facilitated and constrained by a set of institutional and technological infrastructural forces. Particularly it also explores how some CIS exercise agency to mobilise their infrastructural surroundings and overcome certain infrastructural deficiencies they encounter, with the aim of improving studying/living quality while inhabiting immobilities in a transnational context. As such, this paper challenges the oppositional nature of mobility and immobility, arguing that immobility is not the ‘flip side’ to mobility or an outcome by default, and that being immobile can be affirming and empowering. Essentially, the paper brings this infrastructurally sensitive theoretical approach into international student mobility (ISM) studies, shifting the focus from examining how infrastructures move people to how they enable people to stay, and to how they are lived and reconstructed at an everyday level.

KEYWORDS:

• Immobility
• infrastructure
• Chinese international students
• online courses
• COVID-19

Introduction

COVID-19, assessed as a pandemic on 11 March 2020 by World Health Organization (WHO), has swept around the world and radically changed the way people move and live throughout the globe. Along with the initial lockdown in Wuhan, subsequent shut-downs and closures spread across China mainland and then reached Hong Kong and Macau around early February 2020 (Zuev and Hannam 2020). Countries experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks all implemented a set of travel regulations and restrictions, including tightening visa application procedures, closing (part of the) borders, suspending total or partial flights, and quarantines, in order to decrease further spread of the pandemic (Lin and Yeoh 2021). For example, the EU, for the first time in history, had to close all its external borders to non-citizens, and thus all kinds of non-essential human mobilities to and from EU were strictly prohibited (Salazar 2021). Overnight, shops, restaurants and factories were closed, children were kept away from school, and people who live in affected countries were required to work from home (Adey et al. 2021). As of 18 May 2020, 75% of destinations worldwide had their borders completely closed, bringing international tourism almost to a standstill (UNWTO 2020). Essentially, overwhelming and forceful infrastructural operations that shut everything down were at work at a global scale, turning mobility into a high-risk activity needing repetitive evaluations or even being forbidden, especially in a transnational setting. Instead, immobility becomes the new ‘normal’ during this unusual period (Chakraborty and Maity 2020; Salazar 2021). Subsequently, the way people work, socialise, eat and travel were all disrupted, and new material assemblages and temporal patterns emerged – many everyday forms of human mobilities were brought to an abrupt halt or greatly reconfigured (Adey et al. 2021).

Under this context, most major universities worldwide launched different sets of measures (e.g. online teaching and deferring international admissions) to avoid personnel mobility while guaranteeing fundamental educational activities/services (Dhawan 2020; Nguyen and Balakrishnan 2020). As a result, international students (hereafter IS)’ daily life and future planning have been severely affected. Notably, many Chinese international students (hereafter ‘CIS¹’) who were expected to travel overseas for their studies in 2020, made the decision of staying put in China to circumvent unnecessary risks by taking online courses, deferring admissions or altering studying plans (Feng 2020; Kai 2020). These CIS were put into a state of immobility and may have to grapple with a sense of uncertainty and frustration as their aspirations of studying and living abroad encountered abrupt delays and interruptions even before their international mobilities began. Critically, much like mobilities, the occurrence and maintenance of their immobility are also far away from being straightforward but rather requires a series of institutional, material and social infrastructural supports at different levels (Salazar 2021; Zuev and Hannam 2020). Policies, regulations, computers and internet connections, as well as spaces and practices, are all required to be mobilised in order for students to not move, so that they can start their overseas studies while inhabiting immobility at their home countries (Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019).

In this respect, engaging with the perspective of migration infrastructure, this article investigates how the immobility experiences amongst CIS are facilitated, constrained and refined by infrastructural forces and individual agency. Over the past decade, an ‘infrastructural turn’ has already emerged in migration studies (Collins 2013; Xiang and Lindquist 2014). Migration infrastructure refers to ‘the institutions, networks, and people that move migrants from one point to the other’ (Lindquist, Xiang, and Yeoh 2012, 9). The infrastructural approach provides a more comprehensive and multi-layered lens to understand migration as an interlinked process of mediation. Yet, studies conducted under this framework have predominantly focused on how migrants are moved by infrastructures (Lin et al. 2017; Xiang and Lindquist 2014), rather fewer attempts have been made to examine how individuals encounter and confront the state of being immobile.

As such, this paper explicitly asks how taking online courses and immobilities amongst CIS during the pandemic are both supported and limited by institutional (e.g. regulations regarding online courses) and technological (e.g. digital equipment) infrastructural factors. Particularly it also explores how some CIS can actively mobilise and reconfigure surrounding infrastructures to overcome certain infrastructural restrictions or deficiencies they encounter, thus ultimately improving their studying and living experiences while being immobile in a transnational context. In so doing, this paper expands the analytical power of migration infrastructure by shifting the focus from examining how infrastructures move people to how they enable people to stay, and to how they are lived and reconstructed at an everyday level. In addition, the paper challenges the oppositional nature of mobility and immobility, arguing that immobility is not the ‘flip side’ to mobility or a passive-by-default outcome.

Immobilities and the infrastructural turn

Mobility has been often perceived as empowering and a key pathway to capital gain and refined lifestyle, whereas immobility has been associated with involuntariness and capital deficiencies (Carling 2002; Hannam, Sheller, and Urry 2006; Sheller and Urry 2016). This understanding is particularly relevant under the context of natural disasters where immobility is seen as a forced and precarious choice of disadvantaged social groups (Linder 2017; Sheller 2012, 2016). Immobility in this paper specifically refers to the immobile state amongst CIS who planned to enrol in 2020 overseas but instead chose to take online courses in China due to the pandemic. Their immobility can be perceived as ‘acquiescent² immobility’ as these students do not wish to conduct international mobilities and are unable to do so due to the COVID-19 crisis. That is to say, involuntariness relating to being immobile shouldn’t be over-emphasised, but rather the relationship between mobility and immobility should be seen from a more dialectical and comprehensive perspective.

Hence, this paper raises three essential issues to enrich and deepen the understanding of immobility. First, immobility is not necessarily involuntary but can be empowering and actively pursued. Indeed, the decision of being immobile also includes rich aspirations, desires and imaginations as mobility does (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013; Mata-Codesal 2018). Second, immobility is not fixed or static – mobility and immobility are rather relational, and people shift between mobilities and immobilities (Adey 2006; Sheller 2014). Third, immobility is not an outcome by default, but requires structural support and individual agency (Mata-Codesal 2015, 2018; Schewel 2019). The immobility experiences of different individuals need to be read in relation to their social demographic attributes and the specific external structural conditions in which they are situated.

Alongside the focus on mobility, there has, however, also been increasing recognition of the factors conditioning immobility (Stockdale and Haartsen 2018). As argued, similar to mobilities, the happening and continuation of immobility is necessarily infrastructurally supported and inhibited (Salazar 2021; Zuev and Hannam 2020). In the past ten years, the ‘infrastructure turn’ has appeared in the migration research field and attracted more and more scholars’ attention (Collins 2013; Faist 2014). This theoretical approach helps to better unpack the discursiveness and complications of migratory activities and aspirations that are constantly generated, facilitated, constrained, and reproduced across different stages of the journey (Lin et al. 2017; Robertson 2017).

The majority of extant literature conducted within the analytical frame of migration infrastructure has examined migration groups that are controlled and heavily regulated, such as low-skilled labour migrants (Xiang and Lindquist 2014), refugee and forced migrants (Massa 2020; Schapendonk 2018), and marriage migrants (Yeoh, Chee, and Baey 2017). It is worth noting that some scholars have already started to explore the migration infrastructures amongst more regular and elite forms of migration groups, such as Thieme (2017) on international student mobility (ISM), Liu and Lin (2017) on academic migration, Robertson (2017) and Khan (2020) on skilled migration. More importantly, scholars have predominantly focused on the infrastructures of mobility, whereas what has to be mobilised to enable or sustain immobility has received much less attention. It is necessary to examine the particular ways of ‘staying put’ and the lived experiences of immobility, to reveal the wide variety of reasons and degrees of (in)voluntariness involved in immobility (Mata-Codesal 2015, 2018). In order to achieve these research goals, this paper outlines the following three points to further understand immobility infrastructures.

First, the generation of immobility is not by default but either an involuntary/acquiescent choice or an actively pursued state relying on infrastructures. The fundamental role played by infrastructures in immobilities may not be evident in the normal state, but its importance can be further highlighted when the original infrastructures are damaged but the new ones are still imperfect under extraordinary circumstances (Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019). In the context of the COVID-19, risk aversion becomes a top priority and being immobile serves as an option to reduce personal risks and capital losses. By utilising infrastructural resources, immobility then becomes a state that is pursued by IS to obtain overseas higher education which could only be obtained through mobility in the past. Based on the classification of migration infrastructure of Xiang and Lindquist (2014), this article concentrates on three categories of infrastructures that enable online courses: institutional infrastructures (e.g. degree certification system and online course system), physical and technological infrastructures (e.g. tangible and intangible digital equipment), and social infrastructures (e.g. social networks including peers, family, classmates and professors from online courses). This paper aims to understand what kinds of infrastructural forces are utilised to secure the implementation and operation of online courses so that CIS can stay put in China.

Second, infrastructures can be deployed by individuals to achieve an immobile state, but they can also undermine their experiences of immobility. Different macro-structural factors and individual social-demographic attributes result in uneven access to infrastructures (Salazar 2021). Lack of certain infrastructures can bring a sense of insecurities and displacement into their process of realising and maintaining their state of being immobile (Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019). Natural disasters tend to jeopardise certain existing infrastructures and those urgently established new ones may have internal defects (Sheller 2012). In the case of the COVID-19 crisis, a set of infrastructures including cross-border policies, air traffic and offline teaching systems were replaced or halted, and the global online course system thus came to the scene. Inevitably, there are a set of regulatory and technological deficiencies constraining the operation of this online education system, which may put students into difficult situations on the emotional, physical and temporal levels. This paper attempts to understand what kind of obstacles CIS encounter while taking the online courses during the pandemic, examining how certain infrastructures negatively affect their daily immobile experiences in China.

Third, although migrant infrastructures can exert constraining effects over individuals’ immobile state, individuals do not passively accept these negative consequences, but instead, they can exercise agency to mobilise surrounding infrastructures to sustain their immobilities with more ease. Thieme (2017) pointed out that migration infrastructure can be understood as a ‘training ground’, something actively employed by social actors who design it to produce and condition particular kinds of mobility, but more importantly, it can also be one utilised by migrants themselves as a means to gain capital and upward social mobility. Similarly, it has been argued that the interlinked institutional, technological and social infrastructures that shape migrant lives could in turn, to a certain degree, be reshaped and recreated by migrants’ own agentive will and actions (Khan 2020; Xiang and Lindquist 2014). Indeed, migrants’ thoughts, actions, and aspirations greatly influence how and which infrastructures are experienced and transformed across different stages and phases of the migration journey (Franck, Arellano, and Anderson 2018; Khan 2020). As to CIS in this paper, they have undergone tremendous changes with the replacement of migration infrastructure and are required to reframe temporal rhythms of their study and life, in order to readapt to the new immobile state and related infrastructures.

The following sections of this paper will analyse the facilitating and constraining effects of infrastructures over the online studying experiences of CIS, and ask how some CIS reconfigure their infrastructural conditions to enhance their immobility process and better achieve capital accumulation in a transnational setting. Before zooming into these questions, however, I turn to an introduction of CIS during the pandemic and the methodology used in this study.

CIS during the COVID-19

As migration is becoming more temporary and circular, IS have been exposed to multiple uncertainties and precarities at legal, economic, personal and temporal levels during their cross-border moving processes (Collins 2018; Gilmartin, Coppari, and Phelan 2021; Robertson 2014). The difficulties IS encounter can be further intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some IS lack adequate medical coverage and welfare relief while being away from their families and suffering from racial discrimination (Li 2020). Some others are stranded at home due to restrictions on flights, visas and campus closures, struggling to continue their studies overseas as planned (Ma and Miller 2021; Nguyen and Balakrishnan 2020).

Early in the outbreak, the COVID-19 was stigmatised as the ‘Chinese Virus’ and CIS were subjected to severe racial discrimination and unfair treatment as a result (Cheung, Feng, and Deng 2020; Pretara 2020; Yu 2020). The virus has since spread globally and CIS have faced a variety of challenges staying in a foreign country (Ma and Miller 2021). On the one hand, China and their host counties may have conflicts regarding the pandemic information and prevention strategies, such as the opposing attitudes of wearing masks, which makes those CIS feel confused and uncomfortable (Ma and Zhan 2020). Second, some CIS are not only discriminated against overseas, but also experience stigmatisation from Chinese society. Returning students are condemned as virus carriers and face the emotional dilemma of ‘double exclusion’ (Zhu 2020).

Existing studies on CIS during the pandemic have dominantly focused on the hardship they encounter overseas and their struggling process of returning home (Ma and Miller 2021; Ma and Zhan 2020). However, the complex immobility experiences amongst CIS who chose to stay put in China remain overlooked. As argued, immobility has long been viewed as an involuntary choice due to lack of capital, yet being immobile under the pandemic has multiple connotations. For one thing, as the COVID-19 rapidly spread worldwide, many governments have restricted the cross-border mobility and the immobility state of some groups is indeed somewhat forced (Chakraborty and Maity 2020; Nguyen and Balakrishnan 2020). For another, being immobile is an important way to prevent viral infections, which can be read as a voluntary choice (Dhawan 2020; Feng 2020; Kai 2020). Many CIS who were expected to go abroad in 2020 are deeply affected by the pandemic, and thus chose to stay in China, either taking online classes or postponing their enrolment, or even cancelling their original study plans.

This paper specifically focuses on those CIS who decided to undertake online learning during the pandemic. Online learning here is defined as ‘learning experiences in synchronous or asynchronous environments using different devices (e.g. mobile phones, laptops, etc.) with internet access’ (Dhawan 2020, 7). Different kinds of digital and technological infrastructures of online teaching have been introduced in many countries over the last two decades as part of national and institutional strategies (Sidhu et al. 2021). These pre-pandemic efforts made in e-learning have facilitated the online courses to become a panacea and emergency response to university lockdowns worldwide (Sidhu et al. 2021). As an emerging international education pattern, online learning has allowed universities to transcend physical boundaries and become a widely-extended education system, enabling IS to access education across regions and time without mobility, which makes universities not just physical facilities located in fixed places but also an entity possessing mobile and imaginative features (Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019; Sheail 2018).

Taking online courses during the COVID-19 period is essentially about IS reconfiguring their mobility aspirations and optimising life course progressions under a particular context. It is produced, facilitated and constrained by the interweaving of institutional, physical and technological as well as social infrastructural forces (Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019). Universities need to build a virtual education system to provide IS with online course content (e.g. live lectures, electronic materials), enabling IS to learn courses across time and space without conducting transnational mobilities. CIS in this paper, who are exposed to time differences and distinct teaching modes, need to readjust their emotions, embodiments and their infrastructural environment so that their aspirations of studying abroad can be better materliased in a state of immobility in consequence.

Methods

To collect data, this paper conducted 23 in-depth biographical interviews with CIS who planned to enrol in 2020 overseas but instead chose to undertake online learning in China due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These CIS received admission offers between 2019 and early 2020 from universities located in the Global North, mainly Anglophone countries/regions. Most of them were recruited using a snowball method, which involves the researcher circulating advertisements to potential participants through posts on the personal webpage, WeChat³ account and a set of relevant group pages. All interviewees received Participant Information Sheet (PIS)⁴ and then gave their informed consent to participate in the research. To ensure anonymity, pseudonyms have been allocated to every interviewee cited in the paper. More detailed information regarding their profile is charted in Table 1.

Table 1. Interviewees’ socio-demographic characteristics.

Age	Average Age	24
Gender	Female	16
	Male	7
Destination country/region	USA and Canada	9
	The UK and EU countries	9
	Australia	3
	Singapore and Hong Kong	2
Discipline	STEM^a (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)	3
	HSS (humanities and social sciences)	20
Degree to pursue	Masters	19
	Ph.D.	4
Duration of online learning	Less than 6 months	4
	6 months to a year	19

^a During the process of recruiting interviewees, it has been found that CIS of STEM background tend to either defer their admission offers or cancel their plan of studying overseas (by attending local universities instead), as they would struggle more with online learning. This is due to the fact that STEM students’ research is more laboratory-based and demands more in-person interactions and assistance from scientific research equipment. Hence, the sample of this study contains less CIS of STEM disciplinary background.

The interviewing process was between November 2020 and April 2021. All interviews were conducted online and audio-recorded. Each of them lasted from 60 to 120 min. Interview questions covered a wide range of themes, starting from personal/family, educational and mobility history to present studying/living situations, day-to-day routines, to explore their emotional and bodily experiences while taking online courses. During the conversations, participants were encouraged to share some of the defining moments, struggles and changes they encounter during the COVID-19 period. Interviewing focus was put on how their online studying is supported, limited and readjusted across their process of being immobile in a transnational setting. Although based on a long and detailed guide, interviews were conducted in ways that enabled respondents to spontaneously tell their own stories. The narratives were translated by the author before data analysis.

A hybrid approach of qualitative methods of thematic analysis was used in this study. The researcher thus could capture the themes emerging directly from the raw data by using inductive coding, while also being able to test and contest the data by utilising the codes derived from research questions and theories applied in the research. In what follows, drawing on exemplary narratives from qualitative research, this paper provides scope to identify the infrastructural factors that enable and limit the online studying experiences of these CIS, and how these CIS navigate through infrastructural barriers while staying put in China.

Infrastructures enabling ‘staying put’ and online learning

The Chinese government revised the regulation of degree certification for CIS in April 2020 so as to address their pandemic-led predicament of studying abroad. According to the predecessor model of Procedures and Standards for the Accreditation and Appraisal of Foreign (Overseas) Academic Diplomas or Degree Certificates, transnational distance education degrees and higher education diplomas are not within the scope of the Chinese Ministry of Education’s academic certification for CIS. In other words, students undertaking online education programmes, by the regulation, are neither qualified for academic degree certificates issued by the Ministry of Education nor recognised as IS. If so, they would lose the preferential treatments⁵ given by the government, such as subsidies in settling down in big cities. For this reason, the Chinese Ministry of Education has stated, ‘for international students who are unable to return to school on time and choose to take courses online due to the pandemic, their insufficient detention periods of staying abroad will not be a factor affecting their academic certifications (translated)’.⁶ These regulations constitute a major institutional infrastructure enabling CIS to obtain valid certifications via taking online courses without being transnationally mobile.

Many host countries for CIS, such as Canada and Australia, have also modified some of the regulations regarding student and work visas for IS who receive online education due to the pandemic. For instance, in Canada, distance education was not included in the length of study required by the post-graduation work permit (PGWP) in the past; however, during the COVID-19, ‘you can complete 100% of your studies online from outside Canada, and all your time studying online outside Canada between spring 2020 and December 31, 2021, counts toward the length of a PGWP’.⁷ Similarly, Australia has also made new regulations for the Temporary Graduate (Subclass 485) visa: ‘online study undertaken outside Australia as a result of COVID-19 travel restrictions will count towards the Australian Study Requirement for existing and new student visa holders’.⁸ Accordingly, Canada and Australia’s recognition of overseas online study in terms of visa policies prevents CIS from losing future overseas job opportunities due to staying outside the country for online courses.

Both the policies introduced by China and overseas host countries are institutional infrastructures that enable online courses to be generated and run effectively, reinforcing the regularisation and legalisation of the online education system. In addition to the institutional infrastructures at the national level, universities have also launched relevant institutional regimes to maintain the operation of online courses and bring students and staff in multiple locations together in digital environments. How to design the time schedules of online courses for IS who are in different time zones is a major challenge. The following interviewee Jin (F; 22; USA; Masters; STEM)⁹ indicates how the university manages to help the students alleviate the struggles brought by time differences:

Considering time differences, universities set up seminars at two or three different time periods, and so that we students can choose one of them to participate based on our own time zones.

This narrative of Jin and some other interviewees show that the university sets up a set of flexible institutional arrangements to cope with the asynchronous time between IS in different regions of the world. Many interviewees expressed that their universities have adopted a blended teaching mode, including the use of live and recorded teaching methods, increased course Q&A time, and reduced attendance requirements. These institutional infrastructures facilitate the function of online courses, enabling CIS to coordinate the time of online learning and daily life plans (such as finding internships and part-time jobs), helping them make the most out of temporal flexibility to better accumulate capital and achieve aspirations via immobilities.

Together with institutional infrastructures, technological and digital infrastructures, such as live broadcast platforms, recorded videos, course selection websites, also support and assist the operation of online courses. For example, Shu and Xiang have described the technological tools they use for the online courses:

We mainly use Moodle¹⁰ to communicate, and all the course content is on this. It is a course website, each university has its own port, and course information will be in it after entering. In some courses, the content of the course will be recorded in advance and then played in the live online seminars. (Shu; M; 22; UK; Masters; STEM)

The school has VPN,¹¹ you can connect to the school’s VPN. You may not be in the school, but you can connect to the VPN, log in to the school’s platform or click on some external links to download files if you need to. VPN is originally an American network, so connecting to school’s VPN is equivalent to connecting to an external network. (Xiang; F; 23; USA; Masters; SSH)

The narrative of Shu suggests that universities can connect IS from all over the world and provide online educational resources, through the utilisation of a series of technological infrastructures, such as Moodle (Gunter et al. 2020). At the same time, what Xiang has described indicates that CIS may encounter extra difficulties in online learning due to internet censorship and other policies for network security in the China context. Overseas institutions have thus provided VPNs for CIS to use, allowing them to obtain access to educational resources more quickly and efficiently. Thus, more advanced learning environments and technological facilities enable individuals to better maintain their state of being immobile. These network-related technological infrastructures are not just tools, but substances shaping individuals’ daily life experiences and aspirations for (im)mobilities in the future (Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019; Liu and Lin 2017). Fundamentally, it is these above-mentioned institutional and technological infrastructures that enable CIS to obtain international education without mobility.

Admittedly, physical mobility is an essential constitutive part of studying abroad and online learning in general has not been seen as a preferred alternative to the face-to-face teaching model when it comes to transnational education (Miliszewska 2007). CIS in this research indeed encounter more complex emotional dynamics and identity difficulties while taking online courses and not being able to go overseas. That is to say, the decision-making process of staying put in China was inevitably difficult, involving the configuration of the self, family and social networks (Barcus and Werner 2016). Nevertheless, although staying immobile in China for these CIS is somewhat indeed involuntary, it can also be perceived as a preferred alternative enabled by infrastructural operations in which they can achieve continuous capital accumulation during a pandemic crisis. Besides, roughly around mid-2020, the overall Chinese society returned to normal with precautions while the rest of the world grapples with the spread of the virus’ more contagious variants.¹² Since May 2020, mobilities have been not as severely restricted in China as in major CIS destination countries such as the US and the UK. China has thus become the first major economy to return to growth since the COVID-19 pandemic.¹³ China’s quick return to normality enables CIS to enjoy a high degree of everyday mobilities inside the country (e.g. socialising and taking on internships), which further justifies their choices of online learning and smoothens their process of staying put in China.

Infrastructures disrupting immobility and online studying experiences

Infrastructures are not necessarily empowering or facilitative, but also interfere with and hinder individuals’ experiences of (im)mobility (Robertson 2017). In this research, some infrastructures restrict the effective operation of online courses, undermining the experiences of online studying and being immobile amongst CIS. Although many schools have adopted recording and broadcasting, multi-session seminars and other particular curriculum systems to cope with the challenge of time differences, the overall arrangement of online teaching time still follows the universities’ local time. Consequently, this has caused some CIS to take online courses far into the night or early in the morning. The following narrative of Muji (F; 23; USA; Masters; SSH) illustrates how her daily life and emotions have been seriously affected by the ‘reversed’ temporal orders:

I can still recall that during the first few courses I chose at the beginning of this semester, my classmates from other countries might be attentively listening and studying online while the only thing I could do was sleeping away. It was like I was live broadcasting my sleep. I tried my best to keep myself awake, but I was physically exhausted and emotionally drained by the time differences. I felt like I was wasting my life, my tuition, my energy, and my sleep … I mean, there was nothing I could do, it was just the system of the college.

For CIS studying in American universities like Muji, the online courses’ time schedules inevitably disregard the time difference of 12–16 h between China and the U.S, which means that they need to spend part of their courses with the day-night reversal. As to Muji, the extremely chaotic and disordered daily schedules have brought her physical fatigue and discomfort. Emotionally, Muji was not only disappointed with her online studying efficiency, but also felt displaced regarding her identity due to the gap with classmates from other countries. It has been argued that online learning transforms the manner and expectation of interaction between student and institution, and that the university struggles to distribute both knowledge and equally a sense of belonging to the institution (Gunter et al. 2020). Therefore, in a state of immobility, these CIS still need to cross a set of intangible infrastructural barriers and borders, constantly being redefined and renegotiated by both physical and emotional dissonance across this journey.

Apart from institutional infrastructural barriers, online courses also encounter the risk of technical failures due to their strong reliance on technological infrastructures such as electronic equipment and transoceanic networks. Chongsheng (F; 23; UK; Masters; SSH) provides the following indicative example:

In the first two weeks, my experience of the class was very bad. To start with, the ‘ladder’¹⁴ (VPN) was unstable. Secondly, my network at home wasn’t so good either. So I can’t follow the classes as the VPN was constantly on and off. Many of my classmates also had network-related issues, which is actually the biggest obstacle to online courses. This is especially difficult for Chinese students, as there are certain websites that we cannot access at all.

The limitations of technological infrastructures such as network delays, hinder the orderly and effective operation of online courses, causing IS to fall into a state of inefficiency and frustration (Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019). As to CIS in this research, the instability of their VPN network makes them face more uncertainties and interruptions during the online courses. Therefore, it can be argued that certain institutional factors, such as the internet censorship regulations of China, may lead to uneven access amongst individuals to technological infrastructural resources (Salazar 2021). As in Chongsheng’s case, the lack of access to certain websites and educational information can bring a sense of insecurities and displacement into her process of undertaking online courses and her overall state of being immobile.

Besides, some interviewees stated that they struggle to build social relations due to insufficient interaction with teachers and classmates under the online learning context. For instance, Jin (F; 22; USA; Masters; STEM) states the following:

I have a lot of group work and then we need to communicate. If the project was offline, there would be no situation where I don’t know anything about my foreign classmates, as you would be forced to contact each other. If it was offline, the interaction experiences would be pretty good. Now we can only try to contact someone through video or online messages, which is quite difficult to make friends or build any real relations.

Accumulating social and cultural capital through cross-cultural interactions has been regarded as a critical component in the process of pursuing studies overseas (Brooks and Waters 2011). For Jin, she believes that the inherent virtuality of those infrastructures leads to inadequate social interactions in the process of taking online courses. Some other interviewees also expressed that they struggle to build meaningful and lasting relationship networks while undertaking online courses. Essentially, the lack of social infrastructures and a sense of community constrain the capacity of CIS to achieve their original aspirations of studying abroad, which ultimately brings a sense of negativity and frustration into their experiences of staying immobile in China.

Online courses can be perceived as a collection of new infrastructural operations jointly created by the state, university, IS and other parties to respond to the risks of being mobile under the COVID-19 crisis (Dhawan 2020; Zuev and Hannam 2020). Notably, online learning, as a part of a new transnational (im)mobilily system, involves inevitable risks and ‘manufactured uncertainty’ (Beck 1992). Many CIS in this study therefore expressed a sense of helplessness towards the option of studying online as their aspirations of studying and living abroad became severely thwarted. This sentiment of CIS can be partly understood in relation to those specific temporal expectations regarding Chinese people’s life course development, particularly in terms of the age of securing a job and settling down. There have been particular public temporal norms regarding the ‘appropriate age’ for personal or professional progressions in China. Moreover, ageism in Chinese work culture starts as early as 35 (‘age 35 phenomenon’) which is much younger than many places in the rest of the world.¹⁵ Facing temporal pressure for life advancement and age-based employment criteria, Chinese students are expected to obtain their degrees or accumulate internship experiences by a certain age to be employable or competitive in the job market.¹⁶ This is one of the reasons why many CIS had to choose online learning at all costs so that they can graduate no later than their peers. Yet it is worth noting that staying put in China is not necessarily disempowering, especially under the pandemic context. As some of the interviewees have demonstrated, they can agentively transform the period of immobilities into something productive and confirming, generating new possibilities for future mobilities.

CIS’ agency enhancing their infrastructural and immobile state

Facing the negative and constraining effects of certain infrastructures, many CIS in this research are not purely passive recipients, but are agentive subjects continually reshaping and mobilising their infrastructural conditions, with the aim of optimising their immobile state and preparing for future mobilities (Zhang 2017). Flexibly choosing courses is a major way of CIS exercising agency to enhance their online studying experiences. Jin (F; 22; USA; Masters; STEM) shares the following narrative:

I usually participate in recorded lectures or seminars. I won’t take the live lectures, especially those big ones, because it’s at 2:00∼4:00 in the morning. I can’t bear it, and the sense of participation is not that strong. But I would choose the lives one when they are those small-scaled classes as I can feel the interactions at the least … 

Similar to Jin, many CIS manage to agentively utilise technological infrastructures (e.g. the recorded broadcasts), to renegotiate the time system of the online courses and upgrade their online studying experiences. Cost of time differences and the value of real-time interactions/participations are carefully weighed for CIS to rearrange the ways of taking online courses in a strategic way. In addition, transforming their learning environment of online courses is also an important method for CIS to enhance their experience of being an international student staying at home. For example, Muji (F; 23; USA; Masters; SSH) shares how she sets up her study room:

I live alone in a rented apartment. I usually draw the curtains. But in order to feel some sunshine, I tend to place my computer against the window so that I could face in front of the window, then the morning sunshine would be on my face while I take the classes. I could almost feel like all the people in China wake up with me together to company me.

The learning environment in the context of online courses includes not only the digital/technological infrastructures, such as VPN and learning software, but also those quotidian physical settings, such as desk location and the overall room set up. Muji here exercises agency to mobilise those seemingly mundane infrastructural objects to refine her online studying quality. The apartment embodies her interactions with the university, and serves as a space materialising her original aspirations of studying abroad. Some other CIS choose to install more reliable VPNs to guarantee better internet connections and thus have easier access to educational resources. Similarly, the following two interviewees, Qing and Zhou, make every effort to create a comforting learning space to obtain more pleasant embodied experiences while staying immobile:

If you enter the online lab, you definitely obtain more resources than those who don’t. You can meet many professors as well as other awesome people, especially those senior Ph.D. students … I go to the lab to do the research, communicate with professors and doctors, and we can encourage each other. Besides, they will help you with your work. (Qing; F; 22; Canada; Masters; SSH)

The student union of Columbia University now set up offline study zones and alumni meetings in some cities … my friends and I went to attend one in Beijing before Halloween … we also joined a few WeChat groups filled with our peers. (Zhou; F; 22; USA; Masters; SSH)

Both Qing and Zhou improve their online studying experiences and mitigate the negative effects brought by immobilities by actively extending their social networks. They reach out to their teachers and classmates through online labs, and then take a step forward to join WeChat groups and alumni meetings to obtain more information and emotional support. During this process, CIS manage to not only improve their own social infrastructural surroundings to counterbalance the deficiencies regarding social interactions caused by online courses, but also forge a new sense of belonging and identity with their peers who co-inhabit the pandemic-led immobilities.

In addition, CIS in this research generally have courses distributed in the early morning and late-night due to time differences. Thus, some of them decide to make the most out of the abundant time in the day they have by participating in internships or other sorts of part-time jobs. For instance, Shu (M; 22; UK; Masters; STEM) takes part in multiple internship programmes while taking online courses:

I am doing an internship and taking online courses here in China. I feel I have accumulated some meaningful social and professional experiences, which is a big plus for me when I attend the job fair next fall. It is hard to say whether it’s worthwhile or not, sometimes misfortune is a blessing in disguise.

Many CIS including Shu usually organise internships in the day and online courses at the night. The capital accumulation brought from internships not only promotes the experiences of online studying and being immobile, but also, to some extent, helps them to better materialise their career aspirations. As Shu stated, doing internships in China contributes to his future employment competitiveness, making him more determined and confident to work and live in China after completing his studies. It proves, on the one hand, immobility under the pandemic, to a certain extent, has been transformed into a desired state. On the other hand, immobility is not the opposite of mobility; on the contrary, these two can constantly convert in the process of capital accumulation (Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019; Schewel 2019). In particular, one interviewee even expressed that he would still choose to stay put in China over mobilities if he is allowed during the post-pandemic period, as online learning delivered him low-cost and high-value studying abroad experiences.

These above-mentioned efforts show that instead of being unresponsive to the impacts generated by the infrastructures, individuals adopt a set of strategies to mobilise their infrastructural surroundings by utilising the strength of their networks and the materialities they have at their disposal both spatially and temporally (Gunter et al. 2020). Some of the CIS perceive ‘acquiescing to immobility’ (Ortiga and Macabasag 2021; Schewel 2019) as a part of their nomadic life journey or a more active process in which they can fully mobilise their immobilities to accumulate capital in facing implacable pandemic-led structural barriers. Therefore, these CIS agentively transform their supposedly precarious and ruptured time period during the pandemic into something meaningful or ‘a blessing in disguise’ that may lead to longer-term opportunities and life course advancement.

Conclusion

This paper has focused on the immobility experiences of CIS who planned to go overseas in 2020 but chose to undertake online studying in China due to the pandemic. It has examined the processes in which their online courses are generated, constrained and sustained from an infrastructural perspective. First, the generation and operation of online learning are supported by a range of infrastructures provided by national governments, universities and other social actors. Many national governments have strengthened official recognition of online courses, giving them an institutional basis for legalisation and regular operation. Universities, as the direct providers and administrators of online courses, ensure the orderly and effective functioning of online teaching by providing a specific set of institutional and technological infrastructures. Second, infrastructures can also constrain the function of online courses and undermine the immobility experiences of CIS. Infrastructural limitations such as time systems, network limitations and lack of social interactions expose some CIS to physical and emotional challenges and thus affect their immobility state on the whole. Particularly, this paper has asked how some CIS are capable of mobilising their infrastructural resources to refine their online studying quality and immobile status. They show their high adaptability to changing temporal conditions and capacity of handling temporal dissonance, making fuller use of the existing infrastructure to achieve multiple capital accumulation while staying immobile in a transnational setting. Hence, immobility, to some extent, can be transformed into something empowering and generative, providing individuals with access to more opportunities and mobilities.

In this regard, this paper makes the following contributions. First, empirically, by focusing on precarities CIS encounter while undertaking online learning during the pandemic, this paper reveals that the moving process of high-skilled migration groups is far away from being straightforward or ‘seamless’ (Axelsson 2017). At the same time, the majority of existing studies conducted under the infrastructural approach have placed their empirical focus on low-skilled labour workers, and therefore this paper serves as an empirical extension by taking IS as the case study. Moreover, this paper draws attention to the current and possible effects of the pandemic on the (im)mobility trajectories of (future) IS and global higher education patterns. More research can be done to further explore how a set of pandemic-led phenomena including the rapid digitalisation of universities, the sufferings IS encountered overseas, heightened racial antagonisms and intensified geopolitical tensions, may reshape the temporal-spatialities of ISM and transnational higher education landscape (Sidhu et al. 2021). After witnessing the hardships CIS have had to confront in terms of racial discrimination and returning home during the pandemic, CIS in general may reevaluate the pathway of pursing studies overseas and start to consider other alternatives such as attending Sino-foreign universities (SFUs) in China or other prestigious local Chinese universities. The value and attractiveness of studying in the Global North have been to an extent shaken by the pandemic, especially when students and parents take medical security and cultural ease into consideration. Governments and universities, especially those major higher education destination countries, need to further reflect and refine their support system designed for IS regarding everyday life and employment/settlement opportunities in the post-pandemic context.

Second, theoretically, this paper has further strengthened and expanded the analytical power of migration infrastructure, by unpacking the interacting dynamics amongst structural forces, individual subjectivities and agency embedded in their (im)mobilities. It has not only examined those institutional or ‘from the above’ forms of infrastructures (e.g. governmental policies) but also looked into those ‘from-the-below’ ones that are embodied in more mundane ways (e.g. digital technologies, social networks). The paper has investigated how these intertwining forms of infrastructures shape CIS’ daily routines and subjectivities during their state of being immobile. This is a necessary turn of perspective to produce a deeper understanding of the generative capacities of infrastructural processes in not just mediating or conditioning but also producing and reproducing migrant identities, aspirations and lived experiences which have been complicated further by pandemic uncertainties. More importantly, this paper has redirected the thinking on migration infrastructures by shifting the focus from mobility infrastructures to immobility ones, and by focusing not only on the infrastructures but also the infrastructural experiences and agency. The paper demonstrates that mobile individuals do not passively undertake or simply pass through migration infrastructures, but instead, they can actively reconstruct, reconfigure and extend their infrastructural terrains, thus reshaping their life course pathways, social worlds and subjectivities. Essentially, this paper has brought this infrastructurally sensitive theoretical approach into the research field of international student mobility (ISM), thus facilitating the ‘infrastructure turn’ (Collins 2013) in migration and mobility studies.

Third, this paper has shown that immobility is by no means a static state that is naturally possessed or can be taken for granted, but rather, much like mobility, immobility is a dynamic process being constantly facilitated and constrained by multiple infrastructural actors. The paper helps to identify some of the affirming and positive effects of immobility, further revealing the dynamics and complexity involved in it. Indeed, as this paper has shown, being immobile under certain circumstances can be utilsied to more effectively materialise individuals’ long-term capital accumulation, and immobility shouldn’t be simply associated with stillness, waiting or unproductive time (Bissell 2007; Breines, Raghuram, and Gunter 2019; Cresswell 2012). It is important to further address how events like pandemics that are beyond people’s immediate control transform people’s aspirations and capabilities to move or stay put over time and space (Martin and Bergmann 2021). Together with the burgeoning immobility literature, this paper further counterbalances the ‘mobility bias’ (Schewel 2019) in migration studies, and contributes to the view that staying immobile (either voluntarily or involuntarily) is also a conscious choice reflecting and demanding ongoing agency (Mata-Codesal 2018; Schewel 2019; Stockdale and Haartsen 2018). This view is especially relevant when all of us now inhabit a fragile and seemingly forever-pandemic world filled with unpredictable changes regarding (im)mobility regimes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese [grant number 19 BZQK239].

Notes

1 This paper focuses on those ‘CIS’ who planned to enrol overseas to pursue Master’s and PhD degrees overseas in 2020 but instead chose to stay put in China due to the COVID-19.

2 According to Schewel (2019), the word ‘acquiescent’ refers to non-resistance to constraints, its Latin origins meaning ‘to remain at rest’.

3 It is a Chinese app that covers a wide range of functions, such as text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, video conferencing, digital payment, video games, sharing of photographs and videos and social networking.

4 Within the PIS, information regarding researcher introduction, project description and invitation, project procedures, data use/storage/retention/destruction/future use, rights to withdraw from participation, as well as anonymity and confidentiality is provided. Ethics approval was granted by the ‘Ethics Committee of the Department of Sociology and Social Work’ at Sun Yat-sen University.

5 Some Chinese megacities (like Shanghai) grant a fast pathway to certain qualified returned overseas Chinese students to obtain permanent household registration. See https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/202102nd/20210429/56f895155ef74134a0b30120af31cb1a.html.

6 See https://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s5147/202009/t20200917_488449.html.

7 See more details at https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/coronavirus-covid19/students.html.

8 See more details at https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/student-visa.

9 ‘Jin’ is the code name; ‘F’ represents female; ‘22’ is her age at interview; ‘USA’ is the location where she planned to study aboard; ‘Masters’ is the degree type she is pursuing at interview; ‘STEM’ is her disciplinary background. This schema applies to all the interviewees cited in this paper.

10 This is one of the learning platforms used by CIS in this research. Meanwhile, most interviewees reported that they also utilise WeChat groups to communicate with their peers who take the same online courses.

11 ‘VPN’ stands for ‘Virtual Private Network’ which allows for a private and encrypted connection across a public network (such as the internet). CIS need to use VPN to circumvent China’s censorship of certain websites or services.

12 See more at https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-china-back-to-normal-us-europe-struggle-2020-10.

13 See more at https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/china-just-became-first-country-grow-its-economy-after-covid-n1243898.

14 ‘VPN’ is sometimes called the ladder, meaning people use VPN to climb over the firewall of China, to obtain access to blocked websites or internet-related services/apps.

15 See more at https://www.piie.com/blogs/china-economic-watch/chinas-population-ages-age-discrimination-chinas-workplace-needs-end.

16 More statistics regarding age-based discrimination in China can be found at Wu and Sun (2021).