Asian Journal of Education and Social Studies

This article is part of the research conducted with exchange students who were engaged in International Academic Mobility (IAM) within the framework of Higher Education Internationalization (IHE) Programs during the COVID-19 pandemic (academic year 2020). The pandemic had diverse effects (health, economy, education, public policy, science) and at different levels: individuals, institutions, and contexts, constituting a challenge, mainly due to the lack of skills, the lack of resources, and difficulties in carrying out online activities. Here, we focus on the psychosocial aspect and the resilience competency and related coping factors. The objective is to observe which processes exchange students primarily used in the face of the emergency and what role resilience played, among other coping strategies. According to the literature, this variable is central to dealing with the uncertainty of the future. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies were used. The techniques employed were institutional listings and a semi-structured survey. Pedagogical-institutional factors were observed in the first; the semi-structured survey included basic, socio-cultural, pedagogical-institutional, and psychosocial factors. Qualitative techniques included semi-structured interviews on various topics, using hierarchical recall and short life stories. In this article, we focus on qualitative analysis. The sample consisted of exchange students who arrived at the National University of Cuyo (UNCuyo, Argentina) and left UNCuyo for other countries, primarily in Latin America, despite the existing difficulties. The analysis strategy was macro/meso/micro/macro because it involves the dynamic interplay of subjects, institutions and macro social-political-economic factors in their sustained interaction, according to the author’s sui generis systemic theory. Main findings: a) Resilience and coping strategies emerge as key factors that enabled people to cope with adversity during the pandemic; b) The implementation of behaviors that demonstrated the presence of these factors – analyzed through the perspectives of the exchange students – shows that these skills are developed through experiences outside of the university. Implications: The results encourage institutions and those responsible for international cooperation programs to revalue social competencies within the framework of international mobility programs and within the university itself; secondarily, they highlight the need to recover good practices and define protocols for action.