International student mobility within Europe: responding to contemporary challenges

In this article, we provide an introduction to the special issue on ‘Challenges to International Student Mobility within Europe’. We first discuss the current context of such mobility and justify our focus on Europe, in particular, by outlining some distinctive features of this geographical region. We then outline the contributions of the articles that make up the special issue—in terms of the challenges they identify, the ways in which they theorise international student mobility, and the responses they proffer. Throughout, we acknowledge the rich extant literature on international student mobility and weave this into our discussion as appropriate.