An autoethnographic narrative of the diasporic experience of a Chinese female Ph.D. returnee’s entry into the domestic academic job market during COVID-19: An ecological environment perspective

Abstract

In this study, Chinese female Ph.D. returnees’ diasporic experience when entering into the domestic academic job market (DAJM) was examined from an ecological environment perspective. This was realized through an autoethnographic narrative of the author’s lived experience of entering the DAJM during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a recollection of the narrative recorded through E-diaries, emails, and visual media, specifically WeChat, from April 2020 to May 2021, the findings revealed that such a diasporic experience comprised diasporic emotion because of expectational pressures in the microsystem, diasporic identity conflict that originated from gender stereotypes in the mesosystem, self-reflexive diasporic consciousness of both disadvantages and advantages related to Guanxi (social networks) in the exosystem, the diasporic feeling of being exiled in the DAJM given the academic culture in relation to degree origin bias and prioritizing publications in the macrosystem, and the self-constructed diasporic mindset that experienced uncertainties and anxieties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in the chronosystem. This study facilitated a sociological exposition and understanding of the complex situation of Ph.D. returnees’ experience of entering the DAJM. It calls for a shifting of blaming the victims risk in relation to hard indicators regarding Ph.D. returnees’ competitiveness and employability in the DAJM. This has implications for both academic and recruiting practices in China. Furthermore, this study offers future overseas doctoral students and Ph.D. returnees a more practical sense of the potential mobility frictions embedded in transnational education mobility in relation to their job-seeking experience in homelands.