International student mobility (ISM) plays an important role in developing global and regional knowledge economies by facilitating knowledge exchange, fostering innovation, and contributing to the talent pool. Amid rising geopolitical tensions, restrictive migration policies, and increased experiences of xenophobia and discrimination among international graduates, ISM is shifting from a predominantly south-north pattern to something more complex and nonlinear. For example, there is a noticeable trend of Chinese international graduates choosing to return to China rather than seeking employment or further study overseas. This may pose challenges for European countries trying to retain global talent to address local skill shortages and drive innovation.

China, the world’s largest and fastest-growing source of internationally mobile students (UNESCO, 2024), witnessed over 8 million overseas returnees (known in Chinese as ‘Haigui’) between 1987 and 2022, with annual figures rising from 186,200 in 2011 to approximately 1.04 million in 2021 (Ministry of Education, 2022). The surging number of Haigui increasingly face a multifaceted “reintegration crisis,” encountering complex dilemmas in economic, social, and psychological re-embedding upon return (Liao & et al., 2021; Zweig & Du, 2021). Empirical research identifies multiple re-integration challenges for these returnees: difficulties in finding jobs, reverse culture shock, cultural and professional misfit, and systemic barriers such as ageism and gendered exclusion (Chen & Du, 2023; Zhang et al., 2025). This crisis is vividly reflected on social media, where the self-mocking label, “overseas waste” (‘Haifei’) and discussion of “Guihai” (returning overseas) have emerged among the online overseas returnee community.

This trend of re-migration—where overseas-educated graduates return home and subsequently consider further migration—has become increasingly salient in global higher education and skilled migration contexts. Analysis in prior ISM research was mostly dominated by “push-pull” models focused on the initial outward migration and cross-cultural adjustment in host countries (Findlay, 2011; Cairns & Sargsyan, 2019). Although recent scholarship has expanded to include “return migration” and “brain circulation”, homecoming is often treated as a static outcome, primarily judged by returnees’ degree of success in integrating into local labour markets. However, for international students, returning home after overseas studies is often a transitional phase in a continuous, multi-staged life-journey. Migration decisions are not one-off, single-dimensional impluses; rather, they are processual and relational, evolving over time (Ahrens & King, 2023). To better understand re-migration decisions, research must explore how individuals actively negotiate their identities and career aspirations during their complex 'post-return' period.

This study examines Chinese overseas-educated returnees’ (Haigui) re-migration decision-making processes, asking:

1. Why are they increasingly contemplating re-migration, and how are these decisions linked to their career and life aspirations?
2. In what ways do experiences of international education influence international students’ mobility and long-term life trajectories?

The study integrates Margaret Archer’s (2007) Morphogenetic Approach with the “new mobilities paradigm” (Sheller & Urry, 2006) to examine re-migration intentions of Chinese returnees. Using Archer’s conceptualization of the “internal conversation,” we analyse how returnees reflexively evaluate life projects in relation to the constraints and enablements of social structures. Rather than seeing return as static or permanent, the new mobilities paradigm recognizes that “all the world seems to be on the move” (Sheller & Urry, 2006). Here, re-migration is viewed as an active exercise of “motility”—the potential for movement as a powerful social resource. The domestic labour market is conceptualized as a “mooring”—a fixed infrastructure that can support or restrict individual flows. Through reflexivity, returnees identify systemic frictions or barriers within these regimes of flow and strategically choose further mobilization to achieve their goals. This perspective views re-migration not as a failure to integrate, but as an intentional and agent-driven effort to navigate global opportunity networks.

This study is grounded in a critical realism paradigm (Archer, 2007; Sayer, 2004) and employs online ethnography (Kozinets, 2020; Hine, 2015) to capture the lived experiences of Chinese overseas-educated returnees. The research is strategically situated within the “Haigui Waste Recycling Mutually-Aid Association” (HWRMAA), an online community on Douban (a Chinese social media platform with over 54,000 members). Founded in May 2020, this community has become the largest digital space for overseas-returned Chinese students to gather and interact with each other, sharing their personal stories related to education, life and work in both host and home countries; thus making it an ideal “ethnographic site” for exploring Haigui’s authentic experiences and perceptions. Online ethnography is particularly suited for this study as it allows the researcher to observe returnees’ “naturally occurring” reflexive practices within digital spaces, providing a richer context than traditional retrospective interviews (Hine, 2015). This approach is selected for its unique capacity to facilitate immersive, longitudinal engagement with the community (Kozinets, 2020), allowing for the capture of not only professional behaviours but also underlying cultural meanings and emotional expressions. Data collection comprises two methods: first, a 12-month period of participatory observation (January to December 2025), conducted within HWRMAA. Following ethnographic principles, the researcher documents the collective sense-making processes of returnees. To preserve the authenticity of these challenging experiences while minimizing the observer effect, a covert identity is assumed during this phase. This strategy was ethically chosen to protect the vulnerability of narratives shared within this private digital space. To explore individual life-projects, semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with returnees recruited from HWRMAA. To date, 15 interviews have been completed. These interviews focus on participants’ “internal conversations” (Archer, 2007), exploring how they perceive the challenges and opportunities of integrating with local labour market and general living conditions, and how they negotiate their decisions to re-migrate. Data analysis is performed using Critical Narrative Analysis (CNA) (Souto-Manning, 2014), managed via NVivo software. CNA is uniquely powerful for this study because it does not treat stories in isolation; instead, it bridges individual narratives with broader social power dynamics (Langellier, 2001). By applying CNA, the research can deconstruct how returnees’ stories of job hunting and considerations of remigration are embedded in the structural conditioning of the Chinese labour market. This provides the critical evidence needed to show that re-migration is a reflexive project of resistance against identity alienation, rather than just a reaction to professional ‘failure’.

The study is expected to reveal that re-migration is not a passive escape from domestic labour market failures, but a deliberate agentic project conducted by returnees as globally mobile citizens. International higher education is found to have significantly enhanced returnee’s “motility”—the potential for socio-spatial mobility (Sheller & Urry, 2006)—allowing them to conceptualize “home” as a temporary node within a dynamic global trajectory rather than a final destination (Ahrens & King, 2023; Amanzadeh et al., 2024). Drawing on Archer’s (2007) Morphogenetic Approach, the findings anticipate that the clash between overseas-acquired values and domestic “structural walls”—such as hierarchical workplace cultures and rigid recruitment filters (Schewel, 2020)—triggers an intense “internal conversation”. In this reflexive process, returnees perceive the domestic labour market not as a permanent residence, but as a “mooring” characterized by systemic “frictions” that impede their professional flow. Consequently, the decision to re-migrate is reframed as a reflexive project aimed at aligning their life trajectories with a global field that provides the social validation (Holmes, 2013) that the domestic environment fails to offer. In addition, international education fosters an internationalized subjectivity that prioritizes professional autonomy and subjective well-being over traditional domestic success markers. Returnees perceive themselves not as “failures” within a local field, but as global talents whose global identity and critical competences are more effectively affirmed in alternative geographical spaces. Through meta-reflexivity, individual frustration transforms into a collective critique of systemic rigidity. The intent to move again is validated as an act of agency reclamation. Driven by the aspirations-capabilities framework (De Haas, 2021), returnees proactively leverage their motility to seek a field that aligns with their global identity and preserves their professional self-concept. This transition from “anxious returnee” to “reflexive global citizen” highlights the transformative and liberating power of international student mobility on the individual life course.

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