Amidst a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape, marked by heightened tensions and unprecedented challenges, this study delves into the transformative role of virtual mobility in sustaining and enriching the aspirations of Russian students for physical study abroad experiences, offering a beacon of hope and connectivity in an era of increasing isolation pertinent in many geographical locales.

The Russia-Ukraine military conflict, coupled with the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic and economic challenges, has led to a marked decline in Russian outbound student mobility. A significant 33% drop in the inclination of Russian citizens to pursue education abroad was reported by the VCIOM (2023) in comparison to year 1993, highlighting influences of economic status, urban or rural living, and media consumption. Caught in the entangled crises, students in Russia are further affected by the spread of negative attitudes towards westbound student mobility which is positioned as an unwelcomed phenomenon in Russian political and academic discourse. Being framed as the projection of the soft power leading to either brain drain or political indoctrination (e.g. Antyukhova, 2019; Savelchev, 2023), outgoing student mobility to western countries has been subjected to a suppressive top-down approach, with mass media as a third power willingly or unwillingly playing a subtle yet powerful role in this process.

International student mobility is a specific form of migration that is voluntary and highly selective. Referred to as a ‘migratory elite’ (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002), international students tend to come from a higher socio-economic background (e.g. Brooks & Waters, 2011; Netz & Finger, 2016). They mostly aim to benefit from education abroad rather than escape from adverse circumstances at home, and for them the pull factors at a destination country are likely to be particularly influential based on push-pull model of migration theorised by Lee (1966). These pull factors are largely subjective (Lee, 1966) and are based on imaginaries of other places (Riaño & Baghdadi, 2007; Beech, 2014) which are curated through the scope of knowledge, often attained indirectly via media and personal accounts of others.  Promotion of the imaginaries of the West as economically unstable and its educational systems being hostile towards Russian students diminishes the allure of the West as a potential study destination. Coupled with unfavourable currency exchange rates and structural difficulties in payments, visas and travel arrangements due to sanctions as well as fears for inability to succeed in Russian labour market upon return due to public ostracization, these negative portrayals shape the proximal level of international educational aspirations of Russian youth.

The present research draws upon the Aspirations-Capabilities Framework of Migration and states of (im)mobility (de Haas, 2021), intergenerational transmission of migration aspirations in post-Soviet countries (Brunarska & Ivlevs, 2022), and the notion of mobility capital (Murphy-Lejeune, 2002) to:

• shed light on how current states of (im)mobility of Russian students in relation to study abroad differ from those during the Soviet Union;
• conceptualise their potential long-term intergenerational effect; and
• unveil the affordance of virtual student mobility formats to help Russian youth escape the state of acquiescent immobility.

Amidst curtailed student exchange and international collaboration options with many initiatives either stopped or put under administrative pressure, virtual mobility, whether formal via bilateral institutional agreements or less formal through lower-level stakeholders’ collaboration, can be one of the ways to alter students’ perception of the existing scope of opportunities and support their aspirations for international student mobility and global inclusion.

Therefore, the present research seeks to answer the following research questions:

R1: Does participation in virtual student mobility increase Russian students’ aspirations for subsequent physical student mobility?

R2:  If so, what is the mechanism of this effect in the context of the entangled crises and under the current mobility suppressing climate in Russia?

The study analyses 16 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with Russian students (18-24 y.o.) who participated in various forms of virtual student mobility between 2020 and 2023. The researcher employed semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions (Merriam, 1998) informed by literature review. Participants were recruited through international offices at Russian universities (n=72), higher education practitioners involved in VSM (n=30) and open call on social media. As the participants were not asked on how they learned about the research project to safeguard their anonymity, it is difficult to tell with confidence which channel was most effective. The transcripts underwent interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as it allows for exploration of how individuals make sense of their lived experiences (Pietkiewicz & Smith, 2012). “Why?”-questions were avoided to prevent post-hoc rationalization. To mitigate the potential dual bias associated with IPA (Smith, 2009), the researcher employed pre-interview bracketing and ongoing self-bracketing. The original ethical approval application did not account for constraints on mobility induced by armed conflict; therefore, the questions about the geopolitical context were not included in the interview guide. Only when the topic was brought up by a respondent could the researcher follow up on it, should it be necessary. Hence, any references in the data to existing tensions emerged naturally in the interviews as part of students’ reflections on their virtual mobility experience and study abroad aspirations in the current climate created by objective constraints on mobility due to sanctions and aggravated messages of hostility towards Russian students. The potential limitations of this study are relatively small sample size and self-selection bias of respondents during recruitment. However, qualitative studies using empirical data tend to reach saturation within a narrow range of interviews (9–17) as shown by a systematic review conducted by Hennink and Kaiser (2022). Also, as this research focuses solely on the level of affordances, the observed changes in aspirations, perceptions, and attitudes provide a sufficient basis for drawing theoretical conclusions, thereby mitigating concerns about generalizability.

The findings reveal that virtual mobility offers a unique opportunity to bolster Russian students' capacity to aspire to international studies despite mobility suppressing climate through acting as a ‘rite of passage’ en route to international education, increasing language confidence, and challenging negative portrayals of hostility towards Russian students in the West. The richness of virtual mobility experience in terms of communication with teachers and students from abroad plays a key role in activating this affordance. Therefore, more of synchronous virtual mobility initiatives could be beneficial to help young adults in Russia stay open to the world and aspire for international education as well as to foster their sense of global belonging by penetrating holes in the again-falling ‘iron curtain’. At the same time, in the context of rising nationalism, protectionism and anti-migration sentiments in political discourse across multiple geographical locales (Bieber, 2018), the study makes an important contribution to understanding the ways of operationalisation of the emergent concept of ‘knowledge diplomacy’ as a way forward (Knight, 2018) through not only knowledge exchange as a means of qualification, but also through socialisation into wider global society, and subjectification through increased awareness of the opportunity structure, as per Biesta’s (2009) triad of educational purpose.

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