Integrating Ukrainian Students in Romanian Higher Education: Qualitative Insights from the EIUS Erasmus+ Project

Abstract

Russia’s 2022 invasion precipitated one of Europe’s largest episodes of forced academic mobility, compelling universities to shift from emergency access to durable inclusion. This article investigates how Ukrainian students are integrated into Romanian higher education through a qualitative case study at Ovidius University of Constanta, undertaken within the Erasmus+ EIUS project. We analysed a participatory focus-group workshop (“Building Bridges,” May 2024) involving 72 participants (15 Ukrainian students, 31 Romanian students, 26 academic staff). Transcripts were coded via reflexive thematic analysis and interpreted through a SWOT lens to connect lived experience with institutional strategy. Findings indicate that integration generates tangible pedagogical and social value—diversity enriches coursework, empathy strengthens peer collaboration, and exposure to multilingual classrooms catalyses instructional innovation. Yet systemic fragilities persist: language anxiety (“translation silence”), fragmented support pathways, and limited access to counselling shift emotional labour onto faculty and peers. Opportunities cluster around Erasmus+ infrastructures, bilingual materials, and co-created projects that transform access into participation; threats include latent prejudice, social isolation, compassion fatigue, and policy discontinuity as crisis attention wanes. We advance the concept of institutionalised solidarity—a multi-level inclusion model that couples emotional infrastructures (mentoring, trauma-informed pedagogy, counselling) with organizational infrastructures (integration offices, linguistic scaffolding, adaptive assessment). The study contributes an empirically grounded framework for moving from humanitarian reaction to sustainable academic inclusion and offers actionable guidance for European universities seeking resilience under protracted disruption.