Institutional Gap and Mobility–Immobility Transition: International Students’ Study-to-Work Experience in China

Introduction

Individuals increasingly forge their biographies across nation-states (Levitt and Schiller, 2006; Nehring and Hu, 2022). The capacity to remain ‘on the move’ today is central to individuals’ biographical trajectories in a globalised world. This capacity is intertwined with migration infrastructure: the systematically interlinked technologies, institutions, and actors that facilitate and condition mobility (Xiang and Lindquist, 2014). The migration infrastructure for international student mobility (hereafter ISM) is constituted through the complex interplays between the institutional (e.g. states), the regulatory (e.g. immigration policies), the commercial (e.g. education agents), the social (e.g. migrant network), and the technological (e.g. communication and transport) (Hu et al., 2022; Xiang and Lindquist, 2014).

Institutional and regulatory frameworks are crucial in the operation of migration infrastructure. They are the foundation for state intervention, whose top-down, multi-level operational logic shapes individuals’ spatial and social mobility. However, these nationally rooted apparatuses (visa policies, welfare provision, education/employment systems) also risk disrupting mobility when transnational aspiration and national-level politics clash with each other (Nehring and Hu, 2022). At the micro level, an individual’s need for movement changes at different stages of his or her migration trajectory. This is particularly the case for international students wishing to remain in their host country for greater career opportunities and/or settlement (Baas, 2019; Tu and Nehring, 2020). Therefore, this article incorporates spatial immobility into migration research (Schewel, 2020), arguing that the capacity to ‘stay put’ is also shaped by migration infrastructure and matters in individuals’ transnational pursuit of socio-economic mobility.

International students’ mobility path to China is largely state-initiated and state-monitored (Mulvey, 2021; Wu, 2018). China issued its ‘Study China Plan’ in 2010, stating that its main objective was to recruit 500,000 international students by 2020 and to produce ‘a large group of highly educated foreign graduates who are knowledgeable about China and are friendly to China’. China has quickly risen to be the third largest receiver (after the US and the UK) of internationally mobile students (Yang, 2020). In 2018, nearly 500,000 students from 196 countries were studying in China, and half of these students were enrolled in degree programmes (85,000 postgraduates and 173,000 undergraduates). The other half were exchange or language students (Ministry of Education China, 2019).

However, China’s migrant-receiving and supporting system remains underdeveloped. In 2018, China established its first national-level immigration agency, the National Immigration Administration (NIA). It contributes to centralised command and the legal encoding of national interests, but has remained slow in bridging fragmented government services (Speelman, 2020). Therefore, international students’ post-study pathways to remaining in China may be intransparent and difficult to access. In this article, I explore the gaps in such institutional and regulatory frameworks (such as visa policy, university administration, and employment regulation) that emerge during individuals’ transition between periods of mobility and immobility. I ask: What are the institutional gaps during the process of study-to-work transition in China? How do graduates navigate through institutional gaps and what are the consequences of these transitions for migrants’ mobility trajectories?

This study contributes to the literature on mobilities and migration. First, by observing the process of graduates’ study-to-work transitions in their host country, I show how individuals continue their transnational biography-making by becoming geographically immobile at certain stages of their life course. This processual focus is important to identify gaps in migration infrastructures that destabilise mobility–immobility transitions and to examine the personal consequences of such disruptions. Thus, I respond to recent calls for a focus on immobilities in migration research (Schewel, 2020). Second, using study/migration to China as an exemplary case, I address a severely understudied empirical field. Although a small body of research has considered international students to China in terms of their motivation and student experience (e.g. Mulvey, 2021, 2022; Yang, 2020), few have looked at their post-study insertion into China’s labour market. This is important because it may expose institutional gaps in China’s ‘young status as an immigrant destination’ (Speelman, 2020: 7). Finally, by unpacking individual–institutional entanglement among these highly educated graduates in the Global South, I contribute to the debate about the extent to which China’s ‘rise’ may change the global order of student mobility, characterised by asymmetries and inequalities between countries and regions (Yang, 2020).

Education-migration nexus and its implications on global mobility

Students’ cross-border mobility usually is positively associated with the pursuit of greater socio-economic mobility: a process whereby the privileged individuals from the Global South achieve capital conversion and expansion by studying in the developed Global North (Tu and Nehring, 2020; Xu and Montgomery, 2019). Concerns have been raised regarding the related intensification of global inequality: the socio-economical gap may widen between the privileged, transnationally mobile youth and the underprivileged whose access to education is limited (Xu and Montgomery, 2019). Nevertheless, investigations into international students’ migration experiences after their study indicate a more complicated mobility trajectory. At the micro level, individuals’ transitions from student to migrant have been fraught with uncertainty, constant re-strategising, and human cost (Robertson and Runganaikaloo, 2013; Tu and Nehring, 2020). The meso-level analysis brings out the rise of an education-migration industry where institutions, brokers, and migration regulators significantly mediate and shape student-to-migrant processes (Baas, 2019; Robertson and Rogers, 2017). Therefore, to better understand the impact of ISM on global mobility, research should situate study abroad within students’ wider life-course aspirations.

China’s rise as an education hub (Wen and Die, 2019) entails new directions for academic conversations about ISM and transnational migration. Far from becoming a commercial education industry, China’s higher education internationalisation has been described as a strategic expansion of ‘soft power’ and ‘public diplomacy’ (Wu, 2018). Despite being an economic superpower, China’s position in global higher education remains semi-peripheral (Yang, 2020). With 60% of its international students from Asia (Ministry of Education China, 2019), ISM to China is more associated with regional than with global mobility (Xu and Montgomery, 2019). However, China’s ‘rise’ in the global education landscape has tentatively decentred the Euro-American-dominated education market hierarchy (Mulvey, 2021). Its ‘semi-peripheral’ position brings new dynamics to the global order of ISM. For example, African students use China as a ‘springboard’ for their onward migration to the Global North (Mulvey, 2022); Indian medical students see inexpensive Chinese universities as their only hope to obtain medical degrees (Yang, 2020).

Departing from debates on ISM and post-study migration, I unpack how transnationally mobile students may ‘stay put’ in their host country’s labour market, and I consider the human cost of such efforts to remain ‘immobile’ because of fragmented migration infrastructure. I present a brief analysis of policy documents and two exemplary cases that record recent international graduates’ efforts to navigate gaps and complexities of visa policy/employment regulations to remain in China. My preliminary empirical findings have resulted from an ongoing multi-methods qualitative research project on international students in China and their post-study transition into employment. The research currently comprises 6 interviews, conducted in Mandarin or English, with recent graduates who have found jobs in China and 32 interviews with final-year postgraduate students, to observe their post-study mobility and employment strategies. Postgraduate students were selected because of China’s work visa selection criteria (see below). Chain referral sampling resulted in a sample with a majority of participants from Pakistan and Laos, with the rest from 12 countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America. During the fieldwork between 2019 and 2020, most participants were located in Shanghai (11) and its two neighbouring provinces (25), while two participants were in Guangzhou.

The sample is made up of 12 females and 26 males, with the majority studying natural science and engineering degrees (22) and fewer studying social science degrees (10) and Chinese language degrees (6). Following the British Sociological Association Statement of Ethical Practice, appropriate steps were taken to safeguard participants’ anonymity, informed consent, and the confidentiality of the interviews. The 32 face-to-face interviews and 6 online interviews have an average length of 1.5 hours, which were recorded, transcribed in full, and analysed using NVivo 12. Finally, I use a large set of policy documents on academic internationalisation to document the institutional context of ISM in China.

Study in China and work in China: gaps in institutional support

China’s migration infrastructure, in the context of study-to-work transitions, exhibits significant regulatory and institutional gaps. These gaps result from the Chinese state’s variegated, fragmented regulatory logic for international students and migrant workers. The central government’s differential attitudes regarding study and work in China entail gaps between the institutional support migrants receive as students, respectively, as skilled workers. International students are guaranteed an ‘increasing budget for scholarships’, and the central government encourages ‘local governments, institutions and individuals to mobilise multiple forms of resource and establish a government-led scholarship system for international students’ (Ministry of Education China, 2010). Multiple types of scholarships are offered (China Scholarship Council, 2021). The majority do not have Chinese language requirements, and application procedures are clearly explained in English on official websites. Participants largely experienced straightforward steps from applying for scholarships to obtaining a student visa and arriving in China.

In contrast, state policy towards foreign workers is more ambivalent (Farrer, 2014; Speelman, 2020). Unlike other top student-receiving countries, ¹ a clear policy infrastructure that facilitates foreign graduates’ study-to-work transition is almost non-existent in China. In addition, international students are not automatically granted permission to take up part-time work or internships, and their student visas expire soon after graduation. This reduces the possibilities for foreign graduates to insert themselves into China’s employment market in time, resulting in significant barriers in their student-to-work transition and marking a major disjunction in the country’s migration infrastructure.

China’s work visa system is highly selective and involves the Foreign Experts’ Bureau as the work-permit-issuing body and the Exit-Entry Administration as the resident-permit-issuing body. Work permits are issued in three categories: ‘high-level talents’, ‘high-skill professionals’, and ‘others’ (lower skilled). Apart from some PhD graduates who may be qualified to apply for work permits under the category of ‘high-level talents’, most graduates, if they find a job in China, shall apply as ‘high-skill professionals’. However, ‘high-skill professionals’ work permits require that the applicant also has ‘2-year work experience in a related field’ prior to their application. For international students who have never worked in full-time employment, the ‘2-year work experience’ requirement poses an obstacle that makes the study-to-work transition in China almost impossible. Since 2017, China has made an exception for foreign graduates who obtained a Chinese Master’s degree (and above): this cohort can apply for a work permit in China without prior work experience. However, applicants must also fulfil requirements such as high exam scores and high salary offers for post-study employment (Ministry of Human Resource Social Security China, 2017).

Furthermore, a gap exists in information accessibility among graduates during the study-to-work transition. Most final-year students (20 out of 32) interviewed for this study expressed their aspiration to find a job in China after graduation, but few knew the attendant work permit requirements or had been able to investigate the matter extensively. One reason for this knowledge gap is the language barrier. Announcements regarding visa and work permit regulations appear on various Chinese official websites in Chinese, and only a small proportion of them are translated into English. Second, the time required to navigate between different institutions for visa information also poses a barrier for students who are under pressure to complete their studies before the end of their scholarship. A final reason is that students rely heavily on their university for visa-related information, while universities hardly cater for students’ post-study needs. Therefore, international graduates experienced a sudden drop in institutional support as they pursued their study-to-work transition.

Nevertheless, a small number of the participants (6) successfully completed their study-to-work transition. Here, I focus on two graduates whose profiles differ in terms of nationality, gender, age, and degree level: Lavia (Romanian, female, 25, master’s degree) and Fareed (Pakistani, male, 35, PhD). They were both quick in securing a job offer in line with their education level. Lavia applied for a work permit as a ‘high-skill professional’, and Fareed as a ‘high-level talent’. The following section shows how Lavia and Fareed navigate administrative and temporal constraints incurred by the aforementioned institutional gaps, and it explores the human cost behind their ‘success’.

Lavia: ‘you need to ask different people, confirm with them, and re-confirm’

Lavia speaks fluent Chinese and studied at a top-tier Chinese university. She began her job-hunting in summer 2019, a year before the end of her master’s degree course. In September 2019, she secured an internship at a China-based US company and was promised full-time employment upon her graduation. As student visa holders are not automatically granted permission to do internships, Lavia’s first obstacle emerged: she did not know how to gain legal access to her internship as an international student in China:

I found an article on social media that said foreign students can apply to work part-time in China. I have a Chinese friend who is a policeman, I asked him, he told me that I could apply with supporting documents from my university.

The second obstacle for Lavia was the lack of support from her university and China’s Exit-Entry Administration. ‘They (the university’s administration office) said they didn’t have this kind of document because no student had asked for it before. Eventually they generated a letter which indicated that the university allows me to begin an internship at the company’. However, this letter was rejected by the Exit-Entry Administration because it did not have the required, previously unexplained, format. Without a publicly available sample letter, Lavia became uncertain about the paperwork and turned to her policeman friend again for help. He managed to obtain a sample letter through his personal contact in the Administration, which then led to Lavia’s successful application.

The final and greatest obstacle emerged when Lavia intended to apply for a work permit upon graduation. She did not have the mentioned 2 years of prior work experience. Nevertheless, Lavia’s employer responded quickly and involved a private visa consultant to negotiate with the Foreign Experts’ Bureau and different institutions in the local district. As a result, Lavia obtained a recommendation letter issued by the local district’s Science and Technology Bureau to justify the urgency of her appointment at the company, which was accepted by the Foreign Experts’ Bureau. Her work permit was issued in August 2020, just in time before Lavia’s student visa was due to expire.

Reflecting on her study-to-work transition, Lavia highlighted the level of intransparency and uncertainty she experienced with China’s bureaucracy: ‘You need to ask different people, confirm with them, and re-confirm. In solving my own problems, I communicated with as many people as I can, only in this way I may discover a solution’. In ‘discovering’ the ‘solutions’ which should have been public information, Lavia invested lengthy personal time and great emotional resources: ‘I was very frustrated and felt I have wasted a lot of time for a “no” answer. There is no clear policy, even different regions have different requirements. I had to search online and put all the pieces together myself’.

Fareed: double time constraints for an ‘outstanding young talent’

Fareed had worked as a lecturer at a university in Pakistan for 6 years before starting his PhD course in China. He was a final-year PhD student when our first interview took place in 2019. As a STEM-subject PhD graduate with a good publication record, Fareed intended to continue his career in China and was optimistic about job-hunting. When I interviewed him again in 2021, he was in his second year as a post-doctoral researcher at a northern Chinses university. Fareed had obtained a ‘high-level talent’ work permit for being an ‘outstanding young talent’, namely a ‘post-doctoral researcher working at a Chinese university under the age of 40’ (Service System for Foreigners Working in China, 2017). Individuals who qualify for a ‘high-level talent’ work permit are given a ‘green path’ in their visa application. Therefore, Fareed’s study-to-work visa transfer was relatively smooth.

In recent years, the Chinese government has encouraged the expansion of international post-doctoral researcher recruitment ² but has tightened its recruitment for permanent academic positions. Consequently, foreign PhD graduates in China have relatively wider access to short-term employment, while lacking long-term job security. Furthermore and crucially, both post-doctoral researcher positions and lectureships in China commonly require applicants to be younger than 35. ³ As Fareed turned 35 in 2021, he would soon be disqualified for most junior academic positions in China. Fareed expressed great concern, as he was reaching the end of his two-year postdoc contract: ‘There are people who do a second post-doc just to stay here, but I can’t, when I finish this post-doc I will be over 35. Nowadays I saw so many advertisements for post-docs, but so few for anything permanent’.

Simultaneously Fareed struggled with time constraints in finding an academic job in Pakistan. The Pakistani government operates a programme called Interim Placement for Fresh PhDs (IPFP), which facilitates PhD graduates’ transition into academic careers. However, the programme is designed for individuals who obtained their degree within 2 years prior to their application. ⁴ Accepting a 2-year postdoc in China, therefore, reduces Fareed’s chances for IPFP in Pakistan. Another career route for Pakistani PhD graduates, as indicated by several other participants, was for those students who had university work experience to return to their former employer in Pakistan. However, this option also has a time limit; graduates normally must return to Pakistan immediately to resume their former posts. Although Fareed worked as a lecturer in Pakistan before going abroad, his decision to remain in China for the post-doctoral researcher position meant that this option was no longer available. Potentially, Fareed was being processed out of both China’s and Pakistan’s academic systems.

Discussion and conclusion

Lavia and Fareed’s cases demonstrate multiple institutional and regulatory gaps in China’s migration infrastructure, as it organises international students’ study-to-work transition. Cooperation and information-sharing between different public bodies are so limited that Lavia needed to bridge information gaps at the cost of her personal time and emotional well-being. Fareed’s dual time constraints reveal a more nuanced institutional gap: the age discrimination in China’s visa system and academic employment market lead to contradictions regarding the positioning of highly skilled individuals. In addition, institutions’ timeframe clash between China and Pakistan narrows the career choices for PhD graduates like Fareed, likely leading to unexpected socio-economic immobility for highly educated ‘young talents’.

Furthermore, these ‘gaps’ appear and reappear at different stages during graduates’ attempts to remain in China. This pattern points to the temporal dimension of individual–institutional entanglement. Lavia’s barriers in accessing her internship show that institutional gaps can start influencing an individual’s study-to-work transition long before the completion of her study. Such barriers are also mentioned in student participants’ interviews. Unlike Lavia, most students were concerned about the potential ‘human cost’ in navigating the bureaucratic process and did not investigate further. On the other hand, Fareed’s age pressure and the mention of ‘other people’s’ strategy ‘to do a second post-doc’ show that institutional gaps continue to have (a greater) impact even some time after the student has graduated. The ways Lavia and Fareed encounter, perceive, and respond to administrative barriers and institutional clashes reveal the human cost, including personal time, emotional commitment, and biographical disruption, in individuals’ attempts to ‘fill the gaps’ in migration infrastructure.

This article focuses on institutional and regulatory frameworks as part of migration infrastructure, highlighting how meso-level policies engender institutional contradictions that impinge on micro-level life-stage transitions and attendant mobility trajectory, from transnational mobility (as students) to immobility (as highly skilled workers). This brief snapshot of international students’ fraught efforts to bridge the institutional gaps and remain in China thus introduces an original perspective for research on transnational education mobilities. In doing so, it suggests future pathways for more extensive research on international students in new study destinations and their regulatory infrastructure for transnational migration.