Introduction

The introductory chapter sets the scene of the ‘age of disruption’ that unsettled national higher education systems between 2016 and 2021. Brexit and COVID-19 are presented as key challenges that greatly disrupted longstanding higher education internationalisation policies and practices, and in particular the taken-for-grantedness of physical student mobility in a borderless European Union. The increasing strategic relevance of the international dimension of HE is described in the context of Europeanisation and political, academic, economic, and cultural concerns of national governments. The chapter further introduces key properties of new institutionalism, a theoretical approach within the social sciences which explores how institutions enable and constrain behaviour through rules and norms. Higher education systems are characterised as one of societies’ key institutions given that they fulfil important social functions and guide individuals’ behaviour similar to other institutions such as national governments, industrial sectors, or the family. The chapter subsequently recounts competing appraisals of the transformative impact of Brexit and COVID-19 as voiced by contemporary witnesses on the one hand, and the literature on institutional change and stability on the other. Many contemporary witnesses speculated that Brexit and COVID-19 would ring in a new era of internationalisation and a departure from established policies and practices surrounding student mobility. Per historical institutionalism, however, institutions are generally marked by stability and a resistance to change due to a range of self-reinforcing mechanisms relating to aspects such as sunk costs or powerful actors’ interests in safeguarding the status quo. Based on the competing appraisals of the transformative impact of both Brexit and COVID-19 and the acute lack of systematic research on the two disruptions, the chapter establishes the overarching research question of the book: how have Brexit and COVID-19 impacted HE internationalisation in different country contexts? The chapter subsequently argues for a comparative case study involving the different HE systems of England, France, and Germany during the age of disruption from 2016 until 2021. It further advocates for combining historical and sociological strands of new institutionalism to better capture country-specific developments.