Amid rising doctoral populations and limited growth in post-PhD employment opportunities outside academia, doctoral graduates face intense positional competition. The competitive pressures are amplified in high-participation higher education (HE) systems such as China, where institutional reputation plays a significant role in structuring the labor market queue. As such, doctoral candidates are placed within a hierarchy based on both individual and institutional competitiveness in comparison to others. While foreign credentials were once deemed to offer inherent advantages within this framework, the increasing influx of overseas graduates has rendered the assumed distinctions less clear-cut. Existing research on international student mobility in the Chinese context is predominantly focused on graduates returning from high-prestige institutions in English-speaking countries, wherein the domestic conversion of their foreign credentials usually occurs in a relatively straightforward manner based on clear reputational statuses embedded in global institutional hierarchies.

This paper presents a contrasting case of Finnish-educated Chinese doctoral returnees. Despite being widely recognized for their long-held traditions and high-quality education, Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs) often fall outside dominant mobility narratives such that their reputational status is not readily defined in the Chinese context. Based on interviews with Chinese Social Science and Humanities (SSH) doctoral students at Finnish universities who are nearing completion and preparing to enter the Chinese non-academic labor market, this paper taps into their experiences of navigating the domestic hierarchy competition. Specifically, the paper asks: How do these soon-to-be returnees position themselves within the domestic setting where the reputational status of their host universities lacks clear definition?

The theoretical foundation of this paper is grounded in Bourdieu’s conceptual triad of field, capital, and habitus, which together articulate how individuals interpret and traverse social spaces using recognized resources. Additionally, the paper draws insights from an earlier study indicating that institutional reputation functions both as an objective structure framing Chinese doctoral graduates’ perceptions of labor market opportunities and constraints and as an embodied emotional structure that engenders corresponding feelings through which graduates interpret their relative competitiveness. Hence, the role of habitus is foregrounded as an affectively-loaded mechanism that undergirds the rationale for how individuals perceive, evaluate, and respond to structural conditions.

The preliminary findings identify a shared perception of ambiguity regarding the domestic recognition of Finnish universities. In addressing this ambiguity, participants engage in narrative, affective, and moral work that constitute the strategic positioning practices aimed at translating their credentials into recognizable and meaningful terms within established logics of institutional hierarchy at home. Rather than a pre-given attribute that travels intact across borders, this paper suggests that institutional reputation emerges as an outcome of negotiation informed by emotional dispositions associated with both internalized understandings of domestic structuring orders and embodied experiences of Finnish institutional dynamics.

The focus of this paper on Finnish-educated Chinese doctoral returnees – whose credentials are acquired in a non-mainstream yet internationally distinctive HE system – addresses a persistent gap within existing literature, where the domestic employability prospects of overseas graduates returning from less prominent, non-English-speaking destinations remain poorly explored. In doing so, this paper also serves as an exemplifying case that sheds light on the afterlife of European credentials in a non-European labor market, offering insights into the conditions of positional ambiguity under which institutional reputation is defined and mobilized. By highlighting the context-dependent nature of credential valuation, the paper raises critical questions about the global politics of knowledge authority in terms of whose education remains visible in the context of transnational graduate mobility.

This paper is part of a larger doctoral research project exploring Chinese Social Science and Humanities (SSH) doctoral graduates’ early career trajectories beyond academia. The data source comprises semi-structured interviews with Chinese students pursuing doctoral degrees in SSH fields at Finnish universities who are nearing completion (n=4). The selected participants are recipients of funding from the China Scholarship Council (CSC), through a flagship mobility programme launched by China’s Ministry of Education. Based on the funding regulations, recipients are required to return to China after completing their studies. Consequently, this shared obligation renders the domestic recognition of foreign institutions particularly salient for these individuals. All participants have explicitly expressed the intention to pursue non-academic professions aligned with their disciplinary expertise, thus shaping their career preparations in ways different from those oriented towards academic pathways. At the time of the interviews, these participants have already been involved in the job search process, aiming to secure an offer before returning to China. Participants were recruited primarily through open invitations circulated via social networking platforms, supplemented by continuous snowballing through institutional contacts, personal networks, and referrals from initial participants. The specific focus on CSC-funded candidates facilitated the targeted recruitment of individuals with comparable mobility experiences and return expectations. The current sample includes three female and one male participants aged between 29 and 33 years old, who are affiliated with different Finnish universities. All had completed their previous degrees in China, with the Finnish doctoral training constituting their only full-time overseas educational experience. Although seemingly small in number, the sample was carefully selected for its analytical relevance enabling in-depth examination of shared interpretive patterns shaped by similar structural conditions and career orientations. Guided by a pre-determined interview outline, the interviews sought to capture participants’ motivations for pursuing a doctoral degree in Finland, their educational experiences at Finnish universities, and how they have been preparing for the Chinese labor market competition. Each interview session lasted approximately 90 to 120 minutes, and they were audio-recorded with participants’ consent. This paper focuses specifically on the interview segments where participants discussed the implications of institutional reputation for their domestic labor market standings. While data analysis is still ongoing, an initial round of open coding has been conducted to identify emergent themes shared across individual cases. These preliminary patterns will be further analyzed in subsequent stages to unpack the intra-group differences.

The preliminary findings identify a shared perception of ambiguity arising from the absence of clearly defined reputational statuses for Finnish universities within established logics of institutional hierarchy at home. Such perceptions are loaded with two distinct yet interconnected emotional orientations of insecurity and entitlement. These are contextually induced: the former is associated with participants’ internalized understandings of already existing evaluative orders and the resulting anticipations of domestic unfamiliarity with Finnish institutions, whereas the latter is rooted in their embodied experiences of Finnish institutional dynamics that are characterized as substantively rigorous. Together, these emotions inform symbolic positioning practices, where participants engage in both equivalence-seeking to draw parallels with domestic universities and deliberate differentiation from leading English-speaking institutions. Such practices are meant to define the reputational status of Finnish institutions into terms that are recognizable and meaningful to avoid misrecognition, with individual labor market standings being envisioned accordingly. With that, institutional reputation emerges as a negotiated outcome – one that returnees actively produce as guided by the emotional underpinnings that function as a productive mechanism, linking the internalized understandings of positional ambiguity within domestic hierarchical configurations and embodied experiences of institutional distinctions with strategic responses of navigation. Although the analysis remains provisional, the findings suggest a shift from understanding mobility as an automatic gain towards recognizing it as negotiated worth. This illuminates the systematic disparities in credential valuation under conditions of transnational mobility, offering insights into the context-dependent process of knowing and acting that shapes how education is recognized within the increasingly stratified and uncertain global landscape. By demonstrating the narrative, affective, and moral work undertaken by Chinese doctoral candidates to make sense of their domestic labor market standings, this study presents greater significance for understanding the conditions of positional ambiguity faced by graduate returnees from similar higher education (HE) contexts.

Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Standford University Press. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. (1990). Reproduction in education, society, and culture (R. Nice, Trans.). Sage Publications. Brooks, R., Waters, J. L., & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2012). International education and the employability of UK students. British Educational Research Journal, 38(2), 281–298. Brown, P., Hesketh, A., & Williams, S. (2003). Employability in a knowledge-driven economy. Journal of Education and Work, 16(2), 107–126. Du, Z., Sun, Y., Zhao, G., & Zweig, D. (2021). Do overseas returnees excel in the Chinese labour market? The China Quarterly, 247, 875–897. Cambridge Core. Hao, J., Wen, W., & Welch, A. (2016). When sojourners return: Employment opportunities and challenges facing high skilled Chinese returnees. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 25(1), 22–40. Isopahkala-Bouret, U., & Tholen, G. (2023). Relative employability: Applying the insights of positional competition and conflict theories within the current higher education landscape. In P. Siivonen, U. Isopahkala-Bouret, M. Tomlinson, M. Korhonen, & N. Haltia, Rethinking Graduate Employability in Context: Discourse, Policy and Practice (pp. 51–72). Palgrave Macmillan Cham. Peng, Y. (2025). When the halo of my overseas credentials disappeared: Chinese student returnees and their domestic employability. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 46(6), 815–833. Pham, T. (2021). Reconceptualising employability of returnees: What really matters and strategic navigating approaches. Higher Education, 81(6), 1329–1345. Qi, S. (2024). The psycho-social implications of institutional hierarchy: An exploratory study into Chinese doctoral graduates’ engagement in career planning for non-academic employment. Cogent Education, 11(1). Qi, S., Isopahkala-Bouret, U., & Nori, H. (2025). The role of institutional reputation in mediating post-PhD careers. The case of Chinese elite universities. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 1–20. Reay, D. (2015). Habitus and the psychosocial: Bourdieu with feelings. Cambridge Journal of Education, 45(1), 9–23. Ren, R., & Qi, Y. (2024). Conflicting geographical imaginaries in globalised labour markets: The local valorisation of international education among employers and returned international students. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 49(4), e12681. Waters, J. L. (2009). In pursuit of scarcity: Transnational students, ‘employability’, and the MBA. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 41(8), 1865–1883. Waters, J. L., & Brooks, R. (2011). ‘Vive la différence?’: The ‘international’ experiences of UK students overseas. Population, Space and Place, 17(5), 567–578.