Doctoral Dissertation Research: Transnational Migration and the Global Circulation of Talent

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SES-1519268 Liza WeinsteinYingchan ZhangNortheastern UniversityAn increasing number of U.S.-educated Chinese have reportedly returned to China in recent years. Chinese state-run media emphasize the prosperous outlook for these returnees and the state's recognition of their importance for the country's transition to a knowledge economy. As Chinese cities compete to attract talented returnees, little is known about how the municipal strategies work and what roles returning skilled labor indeed play in Chinese cities' development. This dissertation research studies the ways in which Chinese cities recruit U.S.-educated Chinese talent to achieve their goal of stimulating urban development, and how these recruitment initiatives in turn affect the migration decisions and reincorporation experiences of the targeted returnees. This study addresses three questions: 1) how Chinese cities, in the hope of becoming global, recruit U.S.-trained Chinese talent back for development projects 2) how these recruitment programs affect the migration decisions of U.S-educated Chinese talent in the U.S. and the reincorporation experiences of the returnees in China 3) how the disjunctures between the ways the local Chinese state and the returnees conceptualize "value" and "contribution" influence the ways in which they interact with each other. To examine these themes, the researchers will conduct a case study of a major city in eastern China and utilize semi-structured interviews, participant observation and secondary analysis as the main methods of investigation. This study has the following potential impacts. Firstly, it will contribute to social science research on urban development, global cities, and transnational migration by presenting a critical case for understanding the complexities of urban development in the neoliberal era and demonstrating how specific state development policies affect the relocation and settlement patterns of highly skilled professionals. Secondly, this study will provide implications for policy makers and urban planners. The findings will help cities that fiercely compete with each other in a globalizing world to better understand how the strategies of attracting talent work in practice and if these strategies do foster development. Moreover, this project will inform how to retain a highly competitive workforce that is globally mobile in nature in the contemporary era. As highly-skilled immigrants from Asia consist of an increasing part of the overall immigration to the U.S., it is essential for U.S. policy makers to understand these processes in order to make informed decisions about immigration reform in general and about policies to attract and retain highly skilled immigrants in particular.