**1. Introduction**

Highly skilled workers increasingly play a central and indispensable role in today's knowledge economy. Through scientific discoveries and breakthrough innovations, talented individuals not only push through new frontiers of knowledge, but also expedite economic development. Developed economies (such as Finland) around the world are increasingly competing for highly skilled migrants, who potentially have better labor market prospects and satisfy the need to achieve global sustainable development [1–3]. Highly skilled migrants boost innovation, which is the key path to sustainable long-term growth and breakthrough performance. To satisfy the needs of environmentally sustainable economic development and the knowledge economy, more and more countries realize the importance of attracting and integrating global talent through an environment supportive of research and innovation [4]. However, the number of potential immigrants with high economic potential who can also easily integrate into the host labor market is limited, and more and more global talent are becoming increasingly selective about career potential and social welfare in the host country [5]. Thus, immigrant receiving countries rely on retaining international students as a source of highly skilled workforce, since the students have earned their credentials in the host society and are expected to be better integrated due to their cultural and linguistic competences. However, many studies have shown that international students face serious challenges to their integration (e.g., [6–8]), which implies urgent need for integration policies to complement immigration policies.

Global talent (or international talent) is generally defined as people with professional knowledge and global skills with potential to generate great values [9]. Global talent can be an international student, a researcher, an accompanying spouse, a work migrant, an asylum seeker, or a returnee [1]. Global talent usually refers to those who hold higher tertiary education degrees, but it can also refer to highly skilled individuals who have high expertise in a certain field. For organizations, global talent management generally includes different organizational activities for attracting, selecting, developing, and retaining the best employees in the most strategic roles on a global scale [10]. In this research, global talent specifically refers to international students pursuing degrees or young researchers conducting research in countries other than their countries of origin, since they are potential innovators or entrepreneurs who are critical to contribute to breakthroughs in technology, knowledge, and modes of new production [11].

The integration of international students as global talent is important for a number of reasons for the knowledge-based society and sustainable economic development. First, global talent are key actors in building the transnational innovation ecosystem. The transnational innovation ecosystem is generally defined as the transnational integration process of two or more innovation ecosystems [12,13]. It builds on the concept of innovation ecosystem, which is characterized by co-evolution of different collaborative actors that develop interdependency over time for sustainable development [4,14,15]. Since international students have the socio-cultural and business-related knowledge and network with both home and host countries, they can be an important link in fostering trust between various actors in the transnational innovation ecosystem. In transnational contexts, more distance between the collaborators and more sophisticated institutional structure requires global talent with an understanding of two or more cultures to build trust for successful research and innovative cooperation.

Second, skilled persons including students and researchers have been incorporated into the "sustainable development" strategies of institutions, regions, and nation-states [16]. Due to the increasing link between the knowledge-based society and a growing public awareness of the need for environmentally sustainable development [4], global talent, including international students, become a valuable resource to be tapped. Promotion of the mobility of students and highly skilled professionals is outlined in the Europe 2020 strategy for a smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth in a global economy [17]. As Chinese students are one of the largest groups of international students around the world, many higher education institutions in Europe are relying on attracting them for their own fiscal sustainability. The report on EU-China student and academic staff mobility clearly states that many European universities face the challenge in "ensuring sustainable market growth in a mature market." Students especially are increasingly seeking globally, for education that ensures a good value of return for their investment, in terms of money, quality, and institutional reputation [18]. Meanwhile, the mobility of Chinese students presents both an opportunity for EU countries to retain as high skilled labor, and a sustainability challenge for China due to the problem of brain drain. To maintain and nurture the sustainable knowledge network, both EU and China have been designing competitive and sustainable knowledge network and international partnership for mobile academics, institutions, and broader societies [16].

Third, a substantial body of literature has shown that many countries have enjoyed net innovation and productivity gains as a result of talent inflows, with the United States being the most studied and prominent case [19]. Highly skilled immigrants boost innovation and productivity through the increased number of individuals pursuing innovative work, while transnational innovative collaboration boosts the revolution of the global innovation ecosystem. As more and more developed societies around the world are seeking high-potential global talent to boost their knowledge-based economies, international student mobility and international experience are promoted as key to knowledge transfer and sustainable development. [20]. Thus, international students who are equipped with international experience and an internationalized curriculum are ideal candidates for many countries to compete for to support their high skilled labor market demand.

Fourth, international graduates have better potential of economic and social integration than highly skilled workers recruited directly from abroad. Besides saving on the relocation costs, the benefits of recruiting international graduates also include: Proficiency in the local languages; capability to build

transnational professional networks, and understanding of the socio-cultural and business-related aspects of home and host countries [19]. Previous research suggests that students might have less incentive to return to their countries of origin, because they spend important life phases, for building friendships and relations or starting families, in the host country. Those relations will develop into personal attachments in the host country and can result in fewer incentives to return than highly skilled workers who built their social network before moving to the host country [7].

Finland only joined the global race for highly skilled professionals in recent decades. With its economic development spurred by technological development, Finland has changed from a country of emigration to one of immigration, and has sustained its focus on economic development based on technological advancement and sustainable development. Due to its increasing demand for highly skilled workers and the projected aging population leading to a diminution of the working age population, Finnish immigration has continued to open up its policy to recruit and encourage international students to stay to find work or start businesses after graduation. Initially, international students were only allowed to stay for six months to seek employment after finishing their tertiary education in Finland. However, ever since 2015, such students are allowed to stay to find work for up to one year following the completion of their studies [21]. A recent report by the Finnish government suggested good practices of government models to incorporate global talent into the Finnish innovation economy, and proposed a long-term vision that "Finland has attractive, inclusive and sustainable innovation ecosystems that thrive from diversity" [1]. To achieve this goal, it suggests having "both public and private stakeholders on board and financially committed," to develop sustainable funding and business models and incentives for demonstrating impact (ibid.).

Despite the explicit policy and agenda to attract and integrate international students as global talent in the labor market, studies on whether and how international students integrate into the host society, if planning to stay in the country remain scarce. Many of the studies have focused on the drivers of international students' mobility and the experience of studying abroad (e.g., [22]). In general, less attention has been paid to the integration outcomes of the international students beyond academic contexts, especially their study-to-work transition [23]. Nevertheless, a small number of studies can be found showing that economic and social integration of international graduates aiming to remain in the host society can be difficult to achieve (e.g., [24,25]). However, these studies mainly focus on international students' experiences in Anglophone countries, while non-Anglophone country contexts deserve more scholarly attention since the local language can pose additional challenges to international students' integration. Meanwhile, since countries like Finland are aiming to retain international students as highly skilled workers, it is also crucial to understand how the students integrate into the societal contexts if they plan to remain after graduation. This research aims to fill in the gap by exploring the following questions:

RQ1: How do Chinese students integrate economically and socially into the host society if planning to stay in the country?

RQ2: What are the individual and societal factors that affect the economic and social integration of Chinese students?

Given the large and growing percentage of overseas Chinese students and scholars who study abroad, their integration into the local society has become an increasingly pressing issue. A number of studies in the context of other countries have demonstrated that good integration can be difficult to achieve (e.g., [26–30]).

#### **2. Literature Review and Analytical Framework**

Although there is a lot of literature dealing with student integration, these studies mainly look at the issues from a narrow perspective. There is an urgent need to generate a comprehensive understanding of the term and phenomenon through synthesizing the literature. While the term 'integration' is frequently used in different fields of literature, its meaning can be quite different in different contexts. Building on the conceptualization of integration provided by International Organization for Migration

(IOM) [31], I define it as follows: A bidirectional process of mutual adaptation between the host society and migrants (in this case international students) themselves, both as individuals and as groups. As this definition suggests, students' integration cannot be achieved purely by individual or group effort, but rather requires a combined effort by multiple stakeholders, including students, educators, university administrators, employers, and policymakers. From the host society perspective, it also entails a more receptive and welcoming environment that incorporates newcomers to become part of the enlarged membership in the host community, while allowing newcomers to maintain their ethnic and cultural heritage [32].

As theory is central to enhance our understanding of the world, the current research finds the most appropriate theoretical perspective for analyzing the current research topic is the structure and agency approach. Structure is often referred to as objective social institutions that affect the way people act and live, while agency is usually referred to as human choice, action, and deliberation. This brings in the paper by Tholen [33], in which he discusses the interplay between agency and structure through empirical investigation of graduate employability. Tholen (2015) proposes that graduate employability is not solely individual phenomenon, but structured by inequalities and opportunities within the structural context, and influenced by the labor-market hierarchy. Meanwhile, individuals' identities also decide their competition strategy for jobs. Some studies point out that an individual's labor market decision is not solely economic calculations, but choices are also based on their ethnicity, class, gender, life history, and other backgrounds (e.g., e.g., [34,35]). Thus, understanding of international students' integration in the host country requires a contextual analysis of both, since individuals' agency is embedded in different contexts where social relations are constituted and negotiated. However, this does not exclude individuals who have the capability to rebel against existing social structures, especially in circumstances where certain groups dominate other groups by utilizing their position within society, or forms of capital or scarce resources [33].

Although the main aim of the current research is to analyze the students' integration into host society as global talent, which centralize the importance of economic integration, social integration also constitutes an integral part that influences and shapes the integration trajectory. Previous research [26] highlights the importance of understanding the interplay between different domains of integration, that economic and social integration are influential and endogenous for each other.

In sum, adopting the theoretical approach of agency and structure, the current research mainly examines students' economic integration through two domains, namely individual and societal factors. In addition, the relations individuals have also influence how they interpret, react, negotiate, or resist existing societal structures. Therefore, social integration is incorporated as another domain to examine its interplay with economic integration, and to offer a more comprehensive understanding of student integration.

#### *2.1. Economic Integration*

The term economic integration is defined in general as the migrants' process of joining in economic participation or finding and retaining job opportunities in the host country's labor market [36,37]. Within the field of higher education, it is often referred to as 'employability' in some literature, which Shumilova and Cai [19] define as a graduate's ability to find work, which is influenced by employers' beliefs and other contextual factors. It also involves a 'psycho-social construct' that combines with other individual characteristics to ensure individuals maintain work in uncertain economic environments [38].

#### 2.1.1. Individual Factors

Past research shows that although international students are prepared to function as global talent with intercultural savvy and job related skills [39], and who may potentially be more employable than local graduates [40,41], the reality is often not as expected. International graduates are often more vulnerable [42] and face more challenges in the labor market than do local graduates [43]. From an individual's perspective, when international students are seeking employment in the host country, especially where the local society is more homogenous, ethnicity can be an important factor that causes some foreign graduates to face discrimination when applying for a job [44,45]. Access to professional networks also plays an important role since foreign job seekers may well lack professional ties to help them find work and local employers may have reservations about hiring foreigners. Those who are recommended by a previous employer or people that they know may have a better chance of being hired [46]. Studies conducted on international graduates' employment [43,47,48] identified a number of challenges they face, including restrictive immigration policy, lack of professional networks, family reunion issues, language barriers, racial discrimination, etc.

#### 2.1.2. Societal Factors

International students' economic integration does not merely depend on individual competencies and agencies, but also on structural contexts, namely societal factors, such as the prevailing labor market situation, employers' perceptions and needs, relevant government policies in the country, etc. [49–51]. From a government and employer perspective, there seems to be a paradox in the recruitment of foreigners. On the one hand, the national agenda in many countries has emphasized the importance of retaining foreign talent. However, the legislation in the EU and at the local level still protects the rights of local and EU citizens in such a way that employers should prioritize hiring their own citizens, then EU citizens, and finally non-EU/EEA (European Economic Area) citizens [1,52]. Foreign applicants may face discrimination from potential employers. For instance, the Eurobarometer survey shows that 52% of Finnish employers mentioned that when choosing between two candidates with comparable qualifications, one's ethnic origin and skin color could put a job applicant in a disadvantaged position [53]. Although nation-states and organizations (including universities) are increasingly aware of the importance of retaining international graduates and supporting their economic integration, they still see the primary responsibility as resting with the individual [49].
