Immobility in Mobility during COVID-19: Reflections on 'Being Stuck' in the Home Country of an International Doctoral Student

ABSTRACT

While international education has long been characterized by mobility, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted our attention to immobility when thousands of international students have experienced immobility in various ways, one of which is being stuck in their home countries. This paper records how the new situation of immobility challenged an international doctoral student's identity and presents her efforts to find and give a new meaning to her educational mobility. Through the sensemaking framework, this paper not only illuminates the consequences of disrupted mobility on an international doctoral student's academic learning but also highlights the student's sensemaking process, which then offers a research area that may yield interesting insights in this unprecedented time of uncertainty.