The school-to-work transition (STWT) is an important milestone in young people’s lives that typically has long-lasting effects on their career success and other life domains. Referred to as the quintessential knowledge migrants, internationally mobile students constitute a substantial mobile population in European countries that enhancing social-economic forces. As the largest source of international students, China sent 6.95 million students abroad between 2003 and 2021(MoE, 2024), with more than 5,904,600 Haigui (overseas-educated returnees) returned to China in an average annual growth rate of 25.70% (CCG et al., 2024; MoE, 2024). The trend is exacerbated by the massification of domestic higher education, the global COVID-19 pandemic, tightening migration and rising national protectionism in major hosting countries, such as Germany and UK. No longer enjoying their competitive advantages with overseas degrees, it is reported that Haigui now encounters significant problems securing employment. Haigui face a 24.49% unemployment rate (2023), far exceeding China’s urban youth unemployment rate of 14.9% (CSCSE, 2024).

Gender emerged as a powerful institutional feature that both helped and hindered young people in their transitions from school to employment. Globally, ILO surveys across 32 developing countries (2012-2015) reveal men aged 25-29 are 1.9 times more likely to achieve successful STWT than women (Elder & Kring, 2016). The broader context of gender discrimination in hiring practices intensifies these challenges. Female Haigui, who constitute 56.16% of returnees (CECSE, 2024), confront systemic barriers in STWT, for instance, explicit marriage and childbearing restrictions. In China, employers often manipulate criteria to favor male candidates (Ren, 2023), despite women’s efforts to enhance employability through advanced overseas education.

This Study

As noticed by Lehmann in 2014, STWT is a gender-stratified process in which traditional gender roles and societal expectations are internalized. In China, female Haigui experience prolonged and unstable STWT, struggling to integrate into Chinas dynamic labor market (Li, 2024). Instead of reacting passively, Chinese international students become reflexive agents that navigate distinctive strategies to interact with social structures within the global labour markets (Xu & Zhan, 2022). In this study, Margaret Archer’s critical realist perspective of reflexivity (Archer, 2007) is integrated with the transnational feminism (Mohanty, 2003) as the analytical framework to unravel the complex interplay of structural and agency in the STWT of female Haigui in China. Archer’s model rejects a deterministic view of structure-agency dynamics, and positions reflexivity as central to agency, enabling individuals to deliberate on structural conditions and enact transformative practices. Transnational feminism critiques Western-centric paradigms, highlighting intersections of gender, culture, and power while advocating for global solidarity amid diverse women’s experiences. Combining these frameworks provides a dynamic, non-liner framework for analyzing the gendered STWT of female Haigui, and how reflexivity mediates between structural constraints and agency within the context of the overlapping global-local power hierarchies and cultural contradictions.

Pertinent competitive research on STWT has long been focused on the different transition patterns of young people majorly in western countries (Giannoni et al, 2024), in examining how diverse national labour market structure and government policies influence the STWT. There is a little empirical exploration of the gender-specific transition (Monteiro et al., 2016) as well as internationally mobile students (Lee, 2021). To address the knowledge gap of the gendered STWT of internationally mobile students in the context of China, this research seeks to provide a qualitative inquiry into the gendered experience of the STWT transition of female Haigui in China. Research questions to be answered are:

1. What are the job-seeking and labour market transition experiences like for the female Haigui in China?

2. What difficulties and challenges they encountered during the process and amongst those, what are gender-specific difficulties and challenges?

To deep dive into the gendered perspective of graduate labour market transition by capturing the authentic experiences of female Haigui in China, this study employs ethnography as a primary research method that targets an online community named the Haigui Waste Recycling Mutually-Aid Association (HWRMAA) in Douban platform. Founded in May 2020, it is the largest online community of Haigui which owns approximately 54,000 members. Many female Haigui have been sharing their stories in job-seeking and STWT experiences and actively engage with others through virtual identities on that community, providing a unique ethnographic site for exploring their experiences. Ethnography, as a research method, enables the researcher to document not only the overt behaviors and interactions of community members but also the underlying meanings and emotional expressions that reflect their reflexive engagement with structural constraints. It is particularly suited to this inquiry as it enables immersive, longitudinal engagement with the community, capturing the reflexive practices of female Haigui. To ensure a comprehensive and valid exploration of the research questions, this study employs three data collection methods: 1) From January 2025, the researcher begins the12-months participatory observation in HWRMAA. This method allows for to capture real-time interactions, behaviors, and cultural phenomena. By actively participating in daily activities—such as resume workshops and group chats—the researcher can observe how female Haigui engage in narratives about STWT. This approach is particularly valuable for uncovering the reflexive practices of female members, as it captures not only what is explicitly stated but also the underlying meanings and emotional expressions that may not be articulated directly. 2) the HWRMAA community has generated a vast amount of data since its inception in 2020, including text, images, videos, and multimedia. Content analysis will be employed to systematically analyze this digital data, focusing on themes related to gendered experiences of STWT. This method allows for the identification of patterns and trends in the narratives shared by female Haigui, providing insights into how they perceive and navigate structural constraints. 3) In-depth interviews will be conducted with about 15 to 18 female Haigui from the HWRMAA community. The interviews will be guided by the theoretical frameworks, with a focus on understanding how participants exercise reflexivity and navigate gendered expectations during STWT. This method allows for a deeper exploration of individual agency and the ways in which structural constraints are internalized, negotiated, or resisted.

Based on the preliminary analysis of the ethnographic observations in the HWRMAA group, this study anticipates the following key findings: First, female Haigui critically reassess their cosmopolitan identities upon re-entry. For example, some leverage their language skills to access transnational corporations in China, which are perceived as more gender-neutral, while others downplay their foreign credentials to avoid being labeled “too Westernized” for domestic roles. This reflects female Haigui experience significant structural constraints between their transnational cultural experiences and local hiring practices. Many express frustration over being perceived as “overqualified yet culturally deviant” in the Chinese job market, exacerbated by familial pressure to monetize educational investments. Second, female Haigui confront systemic gender inequalities entrenched in patriarchal norms in the precarious school-to-work transitions in China, including stigmatization as “leftover women” and hiring penalties tied to potential motherhood (Li, 2016). Employers further marginalize candidates through preferences for stereotypically masculine traits and invasive scrutiny of marital status or appearance. Third, online communities like the HWRMAA serve as spaces for reflexivity and foster solidarity: members collectively critique systemic inequalities in workplaces and strategize ways to repurpose their transnational identities (e.g. leveraging bilingual skills for freelance opportunities). Simultaneously, they negotiate identities that balance global feminist aspirations with gendered expectations in China, redefining autonomy within patriarchal structures. Ultimately, the study reveals how structural forces and individual reflexivity co-construct female Haigui’s precarious transitions. While transnational mobility offers privileged access to global opportunities, it simultaneously amplifies their subordination to localized patriarchal norms, underscoring the paradox of intersectional precarity in China’s evolving socio-economic landscape.

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