跨国主义视角下高校海归知识移民的回流与地方嵌入

Place embeddedness of Chinese academic returnees from the perspective of transnationalism

知识经济时代,地理学与世界移民研究越来越重视知识移民及其流动。本文以广州市高校海外留学回国的知识移民为例,采用深度访谈等质性研究方法,从多维视角探讨其回流和嵌入母国和回流地的动态过程及结果。研究发现:(1)高校海归知识移民的回流动力机制主要包括工作机会和跨国比较发展优势,以及家庭关系和文化归属等;(2)回流后高校知识移民面临着工作、生活、社会关系网络等方面的再嵌入;再嵌入的过程和结果受到工作及工作环境等结构因素和日常生活等非制度情感因素的共同作用;(3)由于拥有较高的跨境智力资本和较强的跨地方社会关系网络,其地方嵌入过程体现出较强的能动性。跨国流动背景下,他们的身份认同表现为混合文化身份的跨地方主体性,其“家”的意义建构也呈现出一种多元的特征。研究指出,多地方的社会嵌入通过跨地方的社会关系使得海归知识移民产生归属感,而并不完全依附于有边界的地理空间,这一定程度上打破了以往地理位置所定义的“地方”,而将关注点放置于基础的工作、社会关系网络与日常的生活实践。从微观和主体视角细致探究海归人才回流嵌入的过程与结果,可以进一步完善转型期知识移民的理论和研究框架,也可以为中国人才政策和发展战略提出指导建议。

In the current era of the knowledge economy,geography and international migration studies are paying close attention to intellectual migrants and their decisions.However,there is little geographical exploration of these returnees in the literature.Taking Chinese academic returnees in Guangzhou as a case study,we apply qualitative research methods,in-depth interviews and observations to explore the dynamic process of their return and local embeddedness in their home country from multidimensional perspectives.The findings indicate that:(1)The main streams of the inflow of Chinese academic returnees relate to job opportunities and the comparative advantages of the transnational capital,family relations and cultural belonging.(2)After their returns,they have to face the problem of how to re-embed into work,personal life and social networks,and so on.The process and result of reembeddedness is influenced by institutional structural factors such as work and work environments,and non-institutional factors such as daily practices.(3)Academic returnees have a relatively strong sense of subjective agency during the process of their local embeddedness due to their relatively high cross-border intellectual capital and social networks.Against the background of transnational mobility,the identification of academic returnees manifests as the character of trans-local subjectivity,and their construction of’home’changes over time and varies by scale.We assert that a multi-place social embeddedness through translocal social networks endows academic returnees with a sense of belonging that does not necessarily attach to geographical space with a fixed physical boundary.To some extent,this indicates the downplay of’place’as defined by geographical location.The implication is that we may focus more on social networks and everyday life practices of academic returnees in order to better understand the returnees’behaviors.A detailed exploration of the process and results of academic returnees’local embeddedness from the microscopic and subjective perspectives can further help us understand and enrich the migration theory and research framework during the period of transition,and also provide guidance and suggestions for China’s talent policy and development strategy.