Negotiating Adjustment and Belonging: International Students’ Lived Experiences at City University Malaysia

Abstract

International students do not encounter university life as a single process of “adjustment”. Academic expectations, language, social relationships, cultural routines and access to support can develop at different speeds and may reinforce or complicate one another. This study explored how international students at City University Malaysia made sense of these interconnected experiences. A qualitative descriptive phenomenological design was used with 16 non-Malaysian participants who had studied at the university for at least one semester. Individual semi-structured interviews were analysed through an adapted six-stage Colaizzi-informed process, supported by descriptive phenomenological principles of openness and meaning-oriented analysis. Eight related themes were developed: motivations and expectations; academic experiences and the learning environment; academic challenges and coping; teaching and lecturer interaction; social integration and peer relationships; cultural adjustment; institutional support; and personal growth and future outlook. Across the themes, adjustment was uneven rather than linear. Communication shaped academic participation, peer contact, help-seeking and, in some settings, professional participation. Support was most meaningful when students could identify it, reach it and connect it to the problem they were facing. The findings suggest that international student adjustment is better understood as an ongoing negotiation of participation, belonging and competence than as a fixed outcome. Universities should therefore combine clear academic expectations with programme-sensitive language support, predictable routes to lecturer guidance, repeated orientation and more navigable support systems.