Transnational migration and the global circulation of talent

Permanent URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20316404
Title:
Transnational migration and the global circulation of talent
Creator:
Zhang, Yingchan (Author)
Contributor:
Weinstein, Liza (Advisor)
Zippel, Kathrin (Committee member)
Rabrenovic, Gordana (Committee member)
Shatkin, Gavin (Committee member)
Language:
English
Publisher:
Boston, Massachusetts : Northeastern University, 2018
Date Accepted:
November 2018
Date Awarded:
December 2018
Type of resource:
Text
Genre:
Dissertations
Format:
electronic
Digital origin:
born digital
Abstract/Description:
An increasing number of foreign-educated Chinese have recently returned to China, and Chinese state-run media emphasize their prosperous outlook and the state's recognition of their importance for the country's transition to a knowledge economy. As Chinese cities increasingly compete for these returnees, little is known about what strategies Chinese municipalities adopt and how these targeted returnees respond. This dissertation engages broadly with the relationship between transnational migration of well-educated and highly mobile migrants, urban development in China, and the transformation of state-citizen relationships as a result of increasingly neoliberal practices and subjectivities. With qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observation and secondary analysis through research trips in China and the U.S. between 2014 and 2017, I ask the following questions: how is the concept of talent, especially that of high-end talent, constructed and circulated throughout the process of recruiting, negotiating with and managing overseas returnees? How do Chinese cities, in the hope of becoming global, recruit U.S.-trained Chinese talent back for establishing startups and facilitating entrepreneurism? And how do these programs affect the migration decisions of U.S-educated Chinese talent in the U.S. and the reincorporation experiences of the returnees in China? And lastly, how do 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? I argue that a new state-returnee relation that transcends governing and being governed has emerged out of this place-based, initiative-supported development scheme - the Chinese state, on the one hand, manages labor and facilitates urban development in increasingly neoliberal ways despite its nationalistic rhetoric; the overseas returnees, on the other, do not subscribe to such development scheme but mobilize it in unexpected ways to ensure and even strengthen their economic gains and mobility across national borders. More specifically, the local state manages the process and outcomes of the development scheme by 1) constructing and circulating the notion of "high-end talent" to manage overseas returnees in a flexible and easily replaceable way; 2) utilizing urban branding through inter-referencing other cities and quantifying and technicalizing policy process and outcomes; and 3) legitimizing and reproducing the spatial and economic inequalities among districts. Returnees, on the other hand, appropriate the flexibility of how their labor is managed and how their startups are set up to ensure that their stay in Nanjing is only temporary and that they still maintain the control of their mobility inside and out of China once again. In addition, they consider these initiatives only as short-term economic opportunities and have no intention of permanently settling in China; so they utilize the economic, cultural and legal capital that they have acquired abroad and the Chinese state provides to take advantage of these opportunities and ensure their mobility between China and the U.S. Ultimately, the profile of a "gambler with restricted ambitions" is the ideal neoliberal subject for the recruitment programs and, more broadly, for this type of place-based urban development strategy that the Chinese state fiercely promotes. This is because it demonstrates traits essential for securing financial success, managing personal expectations and ambitions, and understanding and navigating the relationships with the government accordingly. This dissertation makes significant contributions to social science research on urban development, global cities, and transnational migration. Firstly, this project presents a critical case for understanding the complexities of urban development in the neoliberal era and reassessing the applicability of global city theory. As Chinese cities court overseas talent in the hope of moving up the hierarchy of global cities, this project analyzes the role of skilled labor in the political, economic, and social transformation in Chinese cities in the neoliberal era and reassess theories of global cities based on a non-Western experience. Moreover, my project links up the meso-level policies in China regarding recruiting overseas Chinese talent with the micro-level individual decision-making of their targets, demonstrating how specific state development policies affect the relocation and settlement patterns of highly skilled professionals. And lastly, my project moves forward existing literature on transnational migration by comparing and contrasting the professionals who are targeted by the policy but make different migration decisions, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how the flexible arrangements of time, space and labor facilitated by neoliberalism are articulated on the ground.
Subjects and keywords:
China
Talent
Transnational migration
Urban development
Sociology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17760/D20316404
Permanent URL:
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20316404
Use and reproduction:
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