Conference Agenda

Amid rising doctoral populations and limited growth in post-PhD employment opportunities outside academia, doctoral graduates face intense positional competition. The competitive pressures are amplified in high-participation higher education (HE) systems such as China, where institutional reputation plays a significant role in structuring the labor market queue. As such, doctoral candidates are placed within a hierarchy based on both individual and institutional competitiveness in comparison to others. While foreign credentials were once deemed to offer inherent advantages within this framework, the increasing influx of overseas graduates has rendered the assumed distinctions less clear-cut. Existing research on international student mobility in the Chinese context is predominantly focused on graduates returning from high-prestige institutions in English-speaking countries, wherein the domestic conversion of their foreign credentials usually occurs in a relatively straightforward manner based on clear reputational statuses embedded in global institutional hierarchies.

This paper presents a contrasting case of Finnish-educated Chinese doctoral returnees. Despite being widely recognized for their long-held traditions and high-quality education, Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs) often fall outside dominant mobility narratives such that their reputational status is not readily defined in the Chinese context. Based on interviews with Chinese Social Science and Humanities (SSH) doctoral students at Finnish universities who are nearing completion and preparing to enter the Chinese non-academic labor market, this paper taps into their experiences of navigating the domestic hierarchy competition. Specifically, the paper asks: How do these soon-to-be returnees position themselves within the domestic setting where the reputational status of their host universities lacks clear definition?

The theoretical foundation of this paper is grounded in Bourdieu’s conceptual triad of field, capital, and habitus, which together articulate how individuals interpret and traverse social spaces using recognized resources. Additionally, the paper draws insights from an earlier study indicating that institutional reputation functions both as an objective structure framing Chinese doctoral graduates’ perceptions of labor market opportunities and constraints and as an embodied emotional structure that engenders corresponding feelings through which graduates interpret their relative competitiveness. Hence, the role of habitus is foregrounded as an affectively-loaded mechanism that undergirds the rationale for how individuals perceive, evaluate, and respond to structural conditions.

The preliminary findings identify a shared perception of ambiguity regarding the domestic recognition of Finnish universities. In addressing this ambiguity, participants engage in narrative, affective, and moral work that constitute the strategic positioning practices aimed at translating their credentials into recognizable and meaningful terms within established logics of institutional hierarchy at home. Rather than a pre-given attribute that travels intact across borders, this paper suggests that institutional reputation emerges as an outcome of negotiation informed by emotional dispositions associated with both internalized understandings of domestic structuring orders and embodied experiences of Finnish institutional dynamics.

The focus of this paper on Finnish-educated Chinese doctoral returnees – whose credentials are acquired in a non-mainstream yet internationally distinctive HE system – addresses a persistent gap within existing literature, where the domestic employability prospects of overseas graduates returning from less prominent, non-English-speaking destinations remain poorly explored. In doing so, this paper also serves as an exemplifying case that sheds light on the afterlife of European credentials in a non-European labor market, offering insights into the conditions of positional ambiguity under which institutional reputation is defined and mobilized. By highlighting the context-dependent nature of credential valuation, the paper raises critical questions about the global politics of knowledge authority in terms of whose education remains visible in the context of transnational graduate mobility.

Parental involvement in higher education has become increasingly visible, with parents playing an active role in students’ academic choices, career planning, and everyday decision-making through frequent communication and sustained emotional and financial investment (Lowe & Dotterer, 2018; Boneva & Rauh, 2018). College-related matters such as course registration, academic progress, health concerns, and interpersonal relationships are often negotiated within the family rather than solely by students themselves (Mulcahy, 2019).

However, research on parental involvement among international students in higher education remains relatively limited. Where such studies do exist, they have largely focused on school-level education or contexts in which parents and students are geographically proximate. For example, Yuen and Cheung (2014) examined Malaysian cross-border students in Singapore and found that parental involvement played an authoritative role in shaping students’ achievement orientations, echoing findings from broader studies on educational engagement (Hamilton et al., 2011). These studies, however, do not fully capture the experiences of international higher education students whose parents remain physically distant, nor do they account for how parental involvement is negotiated across national borders under conditions of heightened uncertainty.

Recent scholarship has begun to highlight the distinctive challenges faced by international families navigating higher education systems from a distance. Studies have shown how international parents engage with unfamiliar institutional, cultural, and linguistic contexts, often relying on digital communication to remain involved in their children’s lives abroad (Gil et al., 2023). At the same time, reviews of recent literature suggest that parental involvement continues to shape students’ engagement and motivation in diverse and transnational learning contexts (Yang, 2023), while emerging work points to the role of parental support in sustaining students’ academic motivation and emotional commitment in digitally mediated environments (Shebani et al., 2025). These insights underline the need to examine parental involvement as a relational and transnational process rather than a purely individual or culturally bounded practice.

Against this backdrop, this study focuses on Chinese international students in the UK during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic intensified parental concerns around safety, mobility, and future prospects, while also amplifying reliance on digital communication and transnational family coordination. This study aims to explore how parental involvement influenced Chinese international students’ academic and everyday experiences during this period, and how such involvement was negotiated when parents remained in China while students pursued higher education in the UK. It is guided by the following research questions:

(1) How do Chinese international students in the UK experience and negotiate parental involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic?

(2) What social, cultural, and contextual factors shape parental involvement in the academic lives of Chinese international students?

The study adopts a poststructuralist framework that conceptualises identity as fluid, relational, and dynamically constructed through social interaction (Norton, 2013; Baxter, 2016). Within this framework, agency is understood as a socially and culturally mediated capacity to act (Ahearn, 2001), rather than an individual attribute exercised in isolation. As Pavlenko (2002) argues, agency is co-constructed and shaped by broader social constraints, making it particularly relevant for examining how international students respond to parental expectations within transnational contexts. Identity and agency are therefore examined together, acknowledging individuals’ capacity to make choices and pursue personal goals while remaining embedded in relational and structural conditions (Duff, 2012). Drawing on this perspective, the study explores how Chinese international students contest, accommodate, and negotiate parental involvement in their academic trajectories (Darvin & Norton, 2021), conceptualising identity as a “site of struggle” (Duff, 2012, p. 412) between familial influence, cultural values, and students’ own sense of agency.

Current socioeconomic challenges and societal trends have fundamentally reshaped the transition to adulthood. In the European context, the stable employment pathways that supported previous generations have been disrupted by macroeconomic volatility, technological advances, and shifting societal values. The discrepancy between academic investment and employment outcomes has had a considerable impact on the priorities of young people, with many now perceiving fundamental "social citizenship" rights, such as stable housing, financial autonomy, and starting a family, as distant aspirational goals rather than guaranteed expectations (Nada et al. 2022; Santos et al. 2025; OECD 2025).

In this context, the theoretical concepts of aspirations and expectations are particularly relevant. Aspirations are defined as idealistic hopes and dreams (Chavira et al. 2016) that originate in society’s cultural sphere (Khattab 2015). Conversely, expectations are predicated on a pragmatic evaluation of what young adults perceive to be feasibly achievable (Boxer et al. 2011), informed by personal circumstances and societal constraints (Behtoui 2017). These future-oriented cognitions significantly predict various academic and occupational outcomes (e.g., grades, educational attainment, motivational levels, occupational prestige), thereby influencing an individual's life trajectory and societal development (Agboola 2025; Valls 2022).

A substantial body of research has explored various factors influencing these aspirations and expectations. At the individual level, cognitive-person variables such as academic self-regulation and psychological traits such as self-efficacy are strong drivers of future goals (Carroll 2009; Zahara et al. 2025). The family background, including factors such as family income, parental education, and especially parental expectations, provides a fundamental contextual foundation for adolescent’s future plans. Secure parental attachment and supportive parent-child communication enhanceacademic motivation and perceived competence (O’Donnell et al. 2025; Santos et al. 2025). In the school dimension, positive experiences in the classroom and school yard in both curricular and extracurricular activities positively influence academic aspirations. Additionally, enriching social relationships and a sense of belonging significantly impact the desire to continue studying (Zava et al. 2022; Katsantonis 2024).

While individual, family and school factors have been extensively documented, a significant gap remains in the systematic integration of broader economic forces and societal shifts on aspirations and expectations. This understanding is crucial in the development of policies that foster and preserve the capacity to aspire, rather than forcing young people to lower their expectations in response to challenging times.

Therefore, this review aims to provide a systematic overview of the factors that shape educational and occupational aspirations and expectations of adolescents, as identified in the recent literature. To achieve this objective, Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner 1979) is adopted as a multi-level theoretical framework. It facilitates a comprehensive analysis of influences across the individual (e.g., self-efficacy), the microsystem (e.g., teachers), the mesosystem (e.g., interaction of parents and teachers), the exosystem (e.g., mass media, local governments), the macrosystem (e.g., social conditions), and the chronosystem (e.g., rise of AI, COVID-19-pandemic). By employing this multi-level lens, the research will provide a structured overview of relevant factors, explicitly accounting for changes in the macro- and chronosystem over the past decade. This systematic approach will contribute to scholarly discussions about youth transitions and enhance our understanding of how young adults’ horizons of possibility are structured. The overarching research questions guiding this review are: (1) What factors does the recent literature identify as shaping the educational and occupational aspirations and expectations of adolescents? (2) What role do current socioeconomic challenges and societal trends play in shaping the educational and occupational aspirations and expectations of adolescents?