2020 marked a year of global crisis, a crisis which is continuing. The pandemic has precipitated a global economic downturn, has seen the widespread closing of schools, the restriction of educational activities in colleges and universities and the isolation of young people from their peers(Chen et al., 2020; Gallagher et al., 2020; Lovric et al., 2020; McGahey, 2021; Wu et al., 2020). It has also shined a harsh light on existing global inequalities. The present transnational project focuses on international students and aims to understand the impact of the pandemic on their sense of self in a global world as well as their vision of what the future holds for them as global citizens in a world where human capital is viewed as critical in shaping life chances.

Education as we used to know it with its structures, phases, and infrastructure has been interrupted by the recurring waves of the pandemic.  Researchers are already pointing to the need to understand how as a consequence of these waves of disruption learning and professional trajectories have been damaged. In a similar way, there is a growing concern about the emotional and mental wellbeing of current higher education students and those in school and colleges thinking of entering higher education in the autumn of 2021. Uncertainty can be a toxic force resulting in atomised social relations and a narrowing of aspirational horizons.  This state of affairs can potentially have severe repercussions for the entire global higher educational sector (Firang, 2020; Ling, 2020; Ross, 2020). Thus framed, this research project aims to look at how international students with a hope of becoming reflexive, relational, and critical global citizens can make sense of the present constantly changing higher educational environment and the future post-Covid time.

At a time when education is in flux and is being re-narrated from different national–transnational discursive positionings and locations it is insightful to look again at the interpretation and problematization of the future (Amsler & Facer, 2017; Bussey et al., 2008; Ogilvy et al., 2014). That urged us to focus specifically on the future expectations of international students and thereby provide insights into how emerging global citizens in different parts of Europe can address issues of power and uncertainty that constructs, orders and selectively resources educational and societal environments. Is it possible to foresee a reorganization of the terrain of education in line with the process in which institutional aspects increasingly cut across communicative and contextual ones? To answer to this question the paper proposed qualitative methodology: six online focus groups and 36 follow-up narrative interviews with international students from Moldavia, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraina, Letvia, Hungary. The four issue-based foci to be addressed during the focus group is: community (losing their sense of identity), environment (structure vs. uncertainty), individual capabilities (metacognitive skills of Global Citizenship) and technology (digital inequalities) (Andersen & Jæger, 1999) The underlying aim of using narrative interviews after focus groups is that it reveals both how Global Citizenship are embedded into the personal life stories and the techniques with which the individual ‘rewrites’ narratives from the perspective of Covid 19. As a next step, the qualitative layers of future expectations are identified. Respectively, cognitive contour dimensions of visions (clarity, breadth, contingency, reach), and action orientation dimensions (volition, connectivity, sociality) are differentiated (Mische, 2014) Finally, in line with (Janks, 2010)) the study has considered the question of domination, diversity, design and access to revisit the issue of social justice in professional development.

There is a dearth of theoretically embedded though empirically scarcely tested investigations that look at professional expectations of the future, which put at their focus not to prognose what will happen, but to study prognoses coupled with the impact they might have, and the work these visions do (Beckert, 2016; Borup et al., 2006; Van Lente & Rip, 1998). In line with these studies we argue that precisely these characteristics – the expectations’ referential capacity, the mere fact that collectively shared expectations, in some sense, „structures to be realized” – requires heightened scholarly attention (Van Lente & Rip, 1998). While our respondents were laddering up and down the field of future expectations rich typologies are gained about professionals’ problem centred reflectivity and their contextual engagement. Equally, surfacing struggles, unlearning curves, conflicts manifest in discussing opportunities and boundaries it has become clear that future trajectories, at least the way students used to think of them have been disappeared with implication for their orientation towards future.

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