The Dark Side of International Student Mobility: Which Students Suffer from Loneliness?

Abstract

For students, study abroad has its advantages but might also have unwanted adverse effects, such as social isolation and loneliness. We analyze the role of emotional support in understanding loneliness among Chinese international students in Germany, in comparison to local students, from a gender perspective. Based on a representative sample, our findings suggest that Chinese international students feel lonelier than local ones. Female Chinese international students are less lonely compared to male ones, whereas the opposite is true for local students. Contrary to our expectations, a higher number of emotionally supportive ties is associated with higher levels of loneliness for all the students. Our further analysis of the correlation between emotional support and loneliness separately for the four subgroups indicates that while for female local students having more emotionally supportive ties is associated with lower levels of loneliness, for female Chinese international students we find the opposite trend. For all male students, we find no significant effect of emotional support on loneliness. We recommend conducting a longitudinal study for examining the causality of the relationship between networks and loneliness in the future. Results have important implications for universities and higher education research in understanding the role of networks on loneliness.