*2.2. Social Integration*

Building on the conceptualization provided by Ware et al. [54] and Spencer-Oatey [24], social integration is defined as the process through which individuals develop their interpersonal networks and involvement in communities. Social integration is an ongoing process involving not only social interaction between individuals but also involvement in groups and communities. It can refer to students' social activities in academic settings, such as meeting formally or non-formally for academic work, or in non-academic settings, such as involvement in social activities, building friendships with each other.

Studies in higher education have also pointed out that social integration helps with better academic integration [28,55] and student well-being [56,57]. Three types of networks were identified by Bochner et al. [58]: Co-national networks with people from the same ethnicity or countries of origin; host-national networks with people from host society; and multinational networks with other international sojourners. Past research has repeatedly documented that stress, culture shock, loneliness, and homesickness can be a problem particularly for international students (e.g., [57]. A number of studies have reported that networks and friendships between international and domestic students contribute to lowering stress, alleviating loneliness, enhancing psychological well-being overall [59]. However, local and international students have difficulties integrating well with each other (e.g., [26,60]. A number of obstacles have been identified, including cultural differences, language and communication difficulties, different learning styles and/or lifestyles, lack of common social groups, or lack of common interests [24]. The co-national networks can be important for enhancing students' social integration, since having peers with similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds also helps alleviate the stress of integrating to new environment, and provides essential psychological and social support [61]. However, exclusive engagement with co-nationals can also inhibit students from forming

networks with the host-nationals, acquire the cross-cultural communication competency, acquiring or improving linguistic skills [61].

A review of existing literature reveals four gaps: First, existing research on students' integration mainly examines their integration in academic contexts, while their integration in the broader societal context as migrants is less studied. Meanwhile, research on economic integration of foreigners in the countries of immigration generally focus on types of migrants such as refugees, family migrants, or economic migrants; less attention is directed on international students' integration into the host society, who came to the host society first as a student and have different integration trajectories than other types of migrants. Second, the research on students' economic integration (or employability) often addresses the students' own characteristics and competency, as well as institutions' (such as higher education institutions) assistance with students' transition to the labor market; there is less discussion about the societal factors that can facilitate or hinder foreigners to compete in the labor market. Third, less research has addressed international students' economic integration and social integration collectively to explore how they influence, enhance, or inhibit each other. Finally, less research so far has addressed international students' integration in non-Anglophone EU countries, if they plan to stay after graduation. Thus, the current research aims to fill in these gaps through the empirical study of Chinese students' integration in Finland, and shed light on how non-Anglophone countries like Finland can address existing issues to retain more global talent to build sustainable innovation economy.

#### **3. Methods and Methodology**

A qualitative research design is used in this research, in which data were analyzed through thematic analysis, which allows the researcher to focus on research questions when analyzing the data. This research draws on data collected through semi-structured interviews with 30 mainland Chinese tertiary students who pursued degrees in Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs) from 2015 to 2016. An interview is where 'knowledge is constructed in the interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee' [62]. This study uses interview as a research method because it allows the researcher to guide the research participant into the topic and obtain more in-depth information through interactive conversation. As a qualitative study, the purpose of this research was to achieve a nuanced understanding of the Chinese students' economic and social integration experiences and the meanings they attached to those experiences. Choosing interview as a method enabled the participants to talk freely, consider the question deeply, and offer opportunities to follow up on issues deemed as important or emerging from the interactive conversation [63].

The current research used two methods to recruit interviewees: First, the researcher contacted international offices of HEIs across Finland to send out research invitations to existing mainland Chinese students. Second, the researcher sent out invitations through online social platforms such as Wechat, Facebook, Weibo. Later, snowball sampling was also used to encourage research participants to recruit potential research participants through their friends. Permission to collect data from the research participants was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Tampere Region, Finland. Both Finnish universities and universities of applied sciences are included in this research, and interviewees are located in most of the major cities in Finland, such as Tampere, Helsinki, Turku, Oulu, etc.

Research respondents in this study include 18 female and 12 male, with various backgrounds in terms of major of study, age, pre-migratory study and work experience, duration of residence in Finland. Such variety of study, pre-migratory experience, and duration of residence allows the researcher to explore the research respondents' integration aspiration, experience, and future goals in different phases of integration trajectory.

The interviews were conducted in Mandarin Chinese by the author, and generally lasted from one to three hours. The common cultural and linguistic background allows the interviewees and interviewer to create a relaxed atmosphere and engage in open conversations [64]. All interviews were audio recorded (with written consent from the participants), and later transcribed and anonymized for qualitative data analysis.

This research adopts a thematic analysis to identify patterns in the interview transcripts [65]. The thematic analysis followed four typical stages:

First, the transcript is read and familiarized, main themes and thematic codes are generated both deductively from the literature review and inductively from the data to capture the essence of the interviewees' experiences.

Second, for each theme unique to a group, a statement is written. This statement is condensed to a label, and the label becomes a code. Initial codes were generated and used for coding the data, while open coding is performed simultaneously. Either one sentence or one paragraph is the unit of analysis for coding, and multiple codes can be used for one sentence or paragraph. The coding process involved constant review and rewriting the codes for applicability to the data.

Third, a number of sub-themes and sub-codes were identified. The established sub-codes were grouped under the main thematic codes, re-defined during the coding process, and applied to the remaining data.

Fourth, the inductive and deductive analytical interpretation of the data is presented.

The line-by-line coding process used mainly manual coding strategy and NVivo 12. The data analysis process revealed four main themes for students' integration in the host society: (1) Individual factors affect economic integration; (2) societal factors affect economic integration; (3) social integration; and (4) measures for improvement. These main themes were divided into sub-themes, as shown in Table 1.


**Table 1.** Analysis categorization system and coding.

In presenting the findings, no personal data is disclosed that may cause the interviewees to be recognized. The anonymity of respondents was protected by using only gender and university subject major to characterize the respondents. Citations from the interviews conducted in Mandarin Chinese were translated into English by the author. In addition, an internal expert who was familiar with the research offered comments on data analysis and translation process.

#### **4. Findings**

#### *4.1. Economic Integration*

#### 4.1.1. Individual Factors

Chinese students who studied in the Finnish universities have varied aspirations to stay in the host society after graduation. Some of them would like to remain in the host society for family reasons, others would prefer to stay in the host society due to their preference for the socio-cultural environment of the host society. Despite their varied reasons for wishing to stay, they shared a common understanding that the utmost important aspect of integration was finding suitable job opportunities

and having networks with the local people, while finding employment was often mentioned as the top priority. However, the interviewees also shared the same feeling of frustration due to the difficulties of finding jobs in Finland. For instance, one of the interviewees said in her interview:

Interviewee: Of course, I want to become integrated into Finnish society, but it is not so easy! For people like me, finding a job is the first and uttermost problem. When you do not have a job, your social circle will be very small and limited. Basically, all you are interacting with are Chinese people. For instance, people like my neighbors who are neither studying nor working, then all their networks are Chinese. How do you integrate into Finnish society in such a case? Finnish people are not so open that they are easy to make friends to begin with [ ... ].

Interviewer: Why do you think it is so difficult to find jobs?

Lin: First, (it depends on) your field; second, language skills; third, I do not want to be so straightforward, for instance if you are as good as other Finnish candidates, who do you think they would recruit? Of course, they would recruit the Finnish candidate.

(Female, mathematics)

(1) Language issues

If Finland is to train and retain more global talent, it remains debatable whether international students aiming to stay on after graduation should invest more time to learn a skill that is highly valued in the labor market, or spend time to learn Finnish. Since Finland is a non-Anglophone country, the local language can pose a great challenge to Chinese students' integration both economically and socially. A number of studies have noted the importance of language skills for migrants' integration (e.g., [66,67]). According to earlier research, the conclusion always seems to be that international graduates who wish to stay in Finland cannot easily find suitable jobs due to their limited Finnish language skills (see for instance [47]). One of the interviewees said:

Finnish language is one of the main obstacles. Taking some Finnish language course can never qualify you to do what a Finnish native can do.

(Female, statistics)

Since most students came to study in Finland in English-taught programs, this research found that the majority of the students had not yet acquired fluent Finnish skills to enable them to work in Finnish before graduation. Among all the interviewees who participated in this research, only two people spoke relatively fluent Finnish and they were able to work in Finnish—both of them majored in Finnish studies during their bachelor's studies. However, contrary to the traditional view that Finnish is the major obstacle to their economic integration, some interviewees argued that being able to work in English was enough. For instance, one of the interviewees said:

If you ask 100 Chinese people who are working in highly skilled positions in Finland, I believe most of their working language would be in English. Maybe 60 to 70 percent of them use English at work. I can only say that if you know Finnish, it helps you to understand their ideas, local and corporate culture as well as society, which will be a plus, but it is not a decisive factor.

(Female, higher education)

Another interviewee also expressed similar ideas:

Interviewer: When you say they have good language skills; do you mean Finnish or English language skills?

Interviewee: When I say language, I mainly mean English. Because as a foreigner, when you are trying to find a job in Finland, I think most of the people will be mainly working in English. Whether your Finnish is good or not is not the decisive factor. Your English, even though not perfect, must be clear and lucid when you try to express yourself. You need to be able to use English to express in-depth thoughts. [ ... ] Because no matter how good your Finnish is, it will never be as good as Finns, right?

(Female, marketing)
