Impact of Urban-rural Return Migration on Rural Economic Development in China----With Implications for Vietnam

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Migration is an essential element in the livelihoods of households in Least Developed Countries as a diversification strategy. However, the poorest families at origins are left out and failed to benefit from it as migration remains a selected process. Despite China's economic achievement over the past 30 years, poverty still persists, especially in remote rural China. Urban-rural return migrants who are equipped with accumulated human, financial, and social capital through their migration experiences are capable of acting as agents of change to reduce rural-urban disparities, facilitate rural economic development and help rural poor to exit poverty.This research will investigate impact of urban-rural return migration on rural economic development in China and how results are transferable to China's neighbouring country Vietnam. It will investigate ways that returnees contribute to local rural economy, their decision-making process, and key institutions and policies affecting their entrepreneurial activities. Variations between groups, across time and places will also be examined using a retrospective longitudinal multi-level approach. The proposed research addresses the first two overarching research questions. It aims to evaluate ways and effectiveness of returnees' agency role in reducing rural-urban disparity and helping rural poor, mainly the non-migrant households, exit poverty. Eighteen hundred returnee households are to be sampled from 120 villages, 40 counties in 8 provinces with different levels of economic development to ensure that key local conditions, including institutions and policies, conductive to returnees' economic success will be identified. This will help us understand actors that promote such conditions and investigate the possibility and the scales to create such conditions elsewhere. It will be carried out in five phases. First, thorough documentary and archival research will be conducted. Second, microdata of Chinese 2000 and 2010 census will be analysed to examine the changing patterns of return migration and its relationship with place characteristics. Third, a survey of 1800 returnee and 600 non-migrant households will be conducted. Fourth, in-depth interviews of 80 successful returnee entrepreneurs will be carried out to investigate further key institutions, policies and local conditions conductive to their economics success. Finally, collected data will be analysed and findings will be disseminated to both academic and non-academic audiences internationally. The empirical findings will enrich our understanding on conditions and institutional context that stimulate rural development and help the rural poor exit poverty. It provides great implications for policy makers in China on how to effectively incorporate return migration and foster returnees' entrepreneurial activities in its strategic guidance for rural development and reducing rural-urban disparities. In a global context, the results will have wider relevance for other developing nations such as Vietnam, which is replicating China's development model successfully and also facing similar issues in rural deprivation and rising rural-urban disparities. Various engagements and activities are proposed to ensure the transfer of the project results to Vietnam.Both quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to enhance the robustness and completeness of the research results. A primary data set will be created suitable for multilevel modelling through complex and innovative research design techniques and sampling methods. The datasets will be fully documented and deposited at the UK Data Archive for further exploration.The proposed research has both an international and a multidisciplinary scope. Six migration experts with extensive research experiences from different disciplines from UK, Hong Kong China and Vietnam form a strong and fully qualified team to successfully carry out this project.