Written by Haishan (Sam) Yang (University of Southern California) & Sanfeng Miao (Michigan State University)
Crisis and Fragility of Belonging
When COVID-19 hit, Jeffrey was barely halfway through his second semester at a private university in the northeastern United States. “I still remember it like yesterday,” he said. “The school emailed us saying we needed to vacate our dorms over the weekend. That was it. There was no clarity…it felt just like an eviction notice.” With little information about where to go, whether online classes from China would suffice, or if his immigration status would be jeopardized, “We kept waiting for the school to tell us something. Anything. But nothing came.” Jeffrey ultimately spent a semester back home before returning to college the following fall.
That experience still haunts him. Now, as a graduate student in 2025, Jeffrey is watching history rhyme. “They cut our lab’s funding. Companies are avoiding international candidates because of visa risks. It brought me right back to March 2020, waiting for the university to do something, anything, and again, no certainty in sight.”
“It feels like being abandoned twice.”
Jeffrey’s story is emblematic of a deeper, systemic issue in higher education: a crisis response infrastructure that too often treats international students as afterthoughts. In the 2023–2024 academic year, more than 1.1 million international students were enrolled in U.S. institutions, shaping campus communities and driving innovation. International higher education today operates within a volatile global landscape, where crises from pandemics to geopolitical unrest reach campus quads as fast as social media feeds or federal memos.
These conditions regularly test the infrastructure and values of U.S. institutions, especially in their support for international students. Though often celebrated as symbols of global engagement, these students’ presence remains uncertain and contingent. From shifting visa regulations to xenophobic violence and institutional silence during crises, the risks they face extend well beyond academics. These are not just legal or logistical challenges but deeply human ones that impact international student mobility.
Compliance or Care? What Crisis Reveals
What does it mean to belong in a university, not just statistically or socially, but structurally and culturally? For international students, belonging is not automatic; it is continuously negotiated through policies, institutional messaging, and everyday interactions. In moments of disruption—public health emergencies, geopolitical conflict, immigration policy changes—universities face a critical test. Do they protect themselves through legal compliance or prioritize care and communication? Even if institutions have the intention to care, do they know how to care, and are they equipped to do so? Crises do more than interrupt routines; they expose institutional values and commitments. For international students, these moments offer a quiet but powerful answer to the question: Am I truly part of this community?
Elina, an international graduate student from Central Asia, was blindsided by a chilling email from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in April 2025: “It is time for you to leave the United States… Do not attempt to remain in the United States – the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.” Panic set in. She had maintained a valid F-1 visa, never broken the law, and done everything “by the book.” Terrified and confused, she reached out to both her university’s international student office and her supervisors in the department where she worked as a graduate assistant, hoping for clarification and support.
But no meaningful help came. The international office never replied. A supervisor gave her unsolicited advice without asking about her situation or giving her the chance to share her side of the story, “as if she was the expert on my life,” Elina recalled. One offered surface-level concern, only to ask, “So, when do you plan to leave the country?” Elina stood through the conversations, listened to what she called “performative care,” and walked away feeling even more dehumanized. “They acted like they had to talk to me and felt pressured to do something, but it didn’t feel genuine and was worse than the silence from the international office.”
Two weeks later, a generic, university-wide email acknowledged the DHS error and mass termination notices. But by then, Elina had already navigated the crisis alone. “My (international) peers and ChatGPT were more helpful,” she said.
Elina’s story reflects a broader pattern. In times of crisis, international students are often left to navigate uncertainty alone, relying on peers, digital tools, and informal networks in the absence of timely, informed institutional support. Caught between legal compliance and the moral imperative to care, many universities fall short on both. While compliance is necessary to protect legal status and institutional standing, it often comes at the expense of genuine care. For international students, who already face legal unfamiliarity, cultural isolation, and systemic inequities, these hollow responses erode trust, intensify stress, and undermine their sense of belonging. In moments of vulnerability, meaningful care is not a bonus; it’s essential.
From Reflection to Action: Rethinking Institutional Crisis Responses
Balancing care and compliance isn’t rocket science; it’s practical, necessary, and a matter of institutional will. In our forthcoming book chapter, we draw from international students’ lived experiences to explore this balance, weaving together vignettes that show how institutional responses can either erode or strengthen belonging. Building on these pieces, we are developing a compliance-care matrix: a narrative-informed and evidence-based framework to guide institutions balancing regulatory obligations with relational, ethical responsibilities. At the same time, we recognize that international student offices cannot and should not carry this work alone. Often under-resourced and overstretched, these offices face real limits in addressing large-scale crises. Supporting international students must be a shared institutional commitment.
As we shape this framework, we invite readers to reflect with us:
- How can universities move beyond checkbox solutions and respond to crises in ways that uphold both compliance and care?
- How might institutions mobilize a broader network of stakeholders—faculty, staff, administrators—to step in and support international students collectively?
We hope this work offers new strategies and sparks sustained, collaborative conversations about how higher education can truly support the institutional belonging of international students.
Author Bio
Haishan (Sam) Yang is a bilingual educator, researcher, and student affairs professional. He holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Southern California, USA. His dissertation explores international students’ perceptions of misconduct systems and their sense of belonging in U.S. higher education. He focuses on international student mobility, compliance and care frameworks, and intercultural policy design. His work critically engages with questions of inclusion, institutional trust, and student development across global learning environments.
Sanfeng Miao holds a PhD in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education from Michigan State University, USA. Her dissertation explores the identity formation, belonging, and agency of foreign-born women academics in U.S. higher education. She is broadly interested in international student and scholar mobility, decolonial and feminist methodologies, and the geopolitics of knowledge production in global academic spaces. Her work critically engages with questions of equity, care, and structural inclusion in international higher education.