Who achieves superior rates of upward social mobility and better labor market outcomes in China: international student returnees or postgraduates who study domestically?

Keyu Zhai,Xing Gao

doi:10.1007/s12564-021-09669-x

Keyu Zhai, Xing Gao

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-021-09669-x

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Abstract

Given the growth in student mobility and transnational higher education, there is an abundance of research on international students’ studying and living experiences in a new environment. However, their poststudy transitions and social mobility have rarely been touched. This study addresses how student returnees perform in China’s labor market and social mobility, following their accomplishment of their master degree in the UK and return to China. In theoretical considerations of the graduates’ social mobility, Bourdieu’s capital theory helps identify the capital accumulation and conversion in the social mobility process. Based on a survey to collect data, 756 questionnaires are collected, including 347 questionnaires for returnees and 409 questionnaires for home graduates. Multi-regression model and visualization are employed to analyze the collected data. This study reports that home graduates have better performance in social mobility than their peers. Additionally, employment preference and spatial mobility between international and home graduates represent large diversity.

Highlights

According to Blau (1977), social mobility means the dynamic change of social status
Little work has investigated the differences in spatial patterns of social mobility between those who have received international education and Chinese domestic education, and studies use visualization to show the results of social mobility only rarely
We extend the argument that social mobility of internal and international graduates is interlinked in the context of regional and socio-economic change in China and indicate the ways in which this change is impacted by the divergent mobility of domestic and international graduates

Summary

Introduction

According to Blau (1977), social mobility means the dynamic change of social status. As a basic factor behind the majority of patterns of structural movement within social structures, social mobility affects the social positions and distribution patterns of social resources and power as well as influences people’s lifestyles, behavior, cognitive attitudes, and values. Recent work has explored international graduates’ occupational trajectories (Hao and Welch 2012; Kim 2016; Moskal 2017; Collins et al 2017; Roy et al 2019) and their social positioning after returning to their home countries (Blackmore and Rahimi 2019). These studies did not use comprehensive survey data to test the impact of international education and Chinese education on social mobility in an empirical way. In this study on social mobility and the labor market, we took spatial factors into account

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