oai:eurokd.com:article/524 2025-12-15

International Students’ Social Integration Experiences During Their Higher Education in Europe <p style="text-align:justify;"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);">The increase in academic mobility in Europe has&nbsp;inspired many to contribute to the special literature regarding&nbsp;internationalization. This contribution is quite timely, as the need to&nbsp;understand the ties between higher education and internationalization is great.&nbsp;Considering that mobility has predominantly occurred in Western Europe, special&nbsp;attention must be focused on Eastern Europe’s Higher Educational endeavors.&nbsp;This study focuses on the Central European country of Hungary, and therein more&nbsp;specifically on its second largest city, Debrecen. The University of Debrecen&nbsp;currently hosts around 7000 international students, and every year this number&nbsp;increases. With such promising and ever-increasing numbers, it is a constant&nbsp;mission of the university to research and report on the life experiences of its international students, regarding their academic, social, and cultural aspects.&nbsp;In this present study the focus will be the social aspect of students whose&nbsp;nationality is represented by more than one hundred persons at the university.&nbsp;Content analysis was employed to analyze structured interviews to identify categories.&nbsp;The findings reveal four main categories to be relevant in their social&nbsp;adaptation: (1) the university, (2) networks students build, (3) language&nbsp;barriers, and (4) healthcare.</span></p> EuroKD Publishing 2022-02-16 Text https://api.eurokd.com/Uploads/Article/524/sem.2022.12.03.pdf https://doi.org/10.32038/sem.2022.12.03 en Pages 26–35