Motivation and Migration

Why do some foreign-trained PhDs return to country of origin return to their country of origin while others do not? This questioned has been studied repeatedly from the perspective of those who have not returned but there is little data on those who have. This ground-breaking qualitative study seeks to fill that gap. The study is based on 36 in-depth coded interviews with returned scholars working within the higher education system in the People’s Republic of China. These 36 coded interviews render key insights into the reasons for return among these 36 scholars finding that professional factors were the primary motivation but nuanced by different values placed on personal factors institutional factors and sociological factors.