A Representação Social da Imigração dos Alunos em Mobilidade Acadêmica Internacional

Abstract

The internationalization of higher education has shown significant growth in the academic mobility of students and teachers. This is a period of high effervescence in higher education, in which many universities are investing in the area of internationalization, organizing work in networks and mainly aiming at the development of joint research involving students and teachers. The present work has as main focus the analysis of the Social Representations of students in international academic mobility. We sought to know the motivations of students to study abroad and to check if there are difficulties in adapting to a new culture, the conflicts of confrontation in this new culture, the expectations of travel preparation, arrival at the host university and the time of overcoming possible difficulties. This study is exploratory in nature, considering the lack of previous studies of social representation in the academic mobility of international students, focusing on the contents or meanings that these students construct about the object. A semi-directional interview and a lexicographic analysis were performed, considering a set of words expressed by the respondents that were the object of analysis and conclusion of the data, using the IRaMuTeQ software as support. The results were divided into four classes: "The suffering of being far away" "Study abroad and improve living conditions" " Adaptation as a process and time" "Cultural difficulties regarding teaching and finance". It was evident that the two biggest conflicts were homesickness and differences in teaching, considering the linguistic and cultural differences in the classroom. We conclude that if students are willing to leave their home country to study in a new country, with another culture, different values and different academic methodologies, it is necessary to understand this new social context, interpreting images, ideas and thoughts formed, within a theoretical approach of Social Representations, which reveals itself as a way to measure the thought and the symbolic records that govern the behavior and attitude of the respondents, based on common sense, through which a reality is constructed. which can help to better understand the permanence of these students in the new environment, always seeking their well-being