Reconfiguring international student mobility amid geopolitical crisis: Institutional work in higher education during wartime

Amidst intensifying global geopolitical tensions that challenge international student mobility (ISM), this study contests the view of ISM as passively (re)shaped by external forces. Drawing on interviews with senior international education administrators in Israel during the Israel–Hamas war, it explores how ISM is actively maintained and reconfigured through purposive institutional work. Administrators perceived severe war-induced impacts across academic (research disruption), political (reputational damage, boycotts), economic (funding/resource strains), and socio-cultural (diversity) domains. These impacts spurred diverse institutional maintenance strategies, revealing significant administrator agency. Key practices included rapid resource mobilization (scholarships, housing), intensive relational work (communication, well-being support), flexible academic adaptations, and normative/symbolic work, such as reframing international students as informal ambassadors and agents of solidarity. While soft power roles are well-documented in the literature, this study indicates an affective turn: international students were framed and valued as emotional resources, whose presence and engagement were perceived to sustain resilience and morale during wartime. Beyond immediate maintenance, the findings demonstrate a significant strategic reconfiguration of ISM. Driven by the crisis, recruitment is pivoting towards diaspora communities, partnerships are being reassessed based on perceived resilience, and the overall character of ISM is shifting towards more selective, politically attuned, and ethno-nationally inflected patterns. This study illuminates the micro-practices maintaining ISM in conflict zones and offers broader insights into how internationalization adapts under conditions of acute geopolitical instability, underscoring the critical role of institutional actors.