Resiliência mental ou fracasso mental? Covid-19 pandemic: reflexões etnográficas de estudantes internacionais de ensino superior da República Tcheca

Abstract

This paper makes a case for the existence of “Mental Resilience” in international students in the Czech Republic. This paper analyses international students and coping during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches. A quantitative survey was utilized, conducted by KlusáÄek, KudrnáÄová & Soukup (2020) in the Czech Republic ‘College students during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic’. This paper then goes beyond each quantitative graph that analyses social and mental factors, drawing on 7 full-time international students' stories of their voices, through ethnographic and auto ethnographic stories. The identity of international students is anonymous except for myself as the writer. The stories here span from the onset of high alert and borders closing in March 2020 to November 2020. From the stories of international students, it is clear that coping during these times is varied, complex, and situational depending on multiple individual and contextual factors, however, the stories point to an existence of ‘Mental Resilience’ as the paper narrates coping processes.