Beyond Recruitment: The University as Conversion Infrastructure for Migrant Students' Well-being in Poland and Slovakia

Abstract

Semi-peripheral higher education systems in Central and Eastern Europe increasingly compete for international students, and the displacement of Ukrainian students after 2022 has made the stakes both larger and more urgent. Yet success in this arena is still measured largely by enrolment, a metric that says nothing about whether students flourish once inside the institution. This paper develops a conceptual framework, built as a theory synthesis in Jaakkola's (2020) sense, that positions the university as a conversion infrastructure: a structure of conversion factors that turns institutional and destination resources into migrant students' achieved functionings. It argues that migrant well-being, understood as a profile of functionings rather than an aggregate satisfaction score, is the mechanism linking educational practice to the longer-term outcomes of internationalisation. Drawing together the literatures on migration infrastructure, aspirations and capabilities, opportunity structures, and capability pedagogy, the framework distinguishes two opportunity structures a university mediates and separates a well-being dimension of agency from one of belonging. Illustrated through Ukrainian students in Poland and Slovakia, the framework is used to read a recurring pattern in which agency-supporting provision converts more readily than belonging-supporting provision, and it reframes student support as strategic institutional design rather than peripheral welfare.