Reconceptualising employability of returnees: what really matters and strategic navigating approaches
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Reconceptualising employability of returnees: what really matters and strategic navigating approaches Thanh Pham1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Although increasing attention has been paid to post-study career trajectories of returnees in emerging economies, there are very few studies on how returnees navigate the home labour market. To fill this gap, the present study aimed to explore how returnees negotiated their employability trajectories in home labour markets. It employed a mixed-method approach, conducting a survey and individual interviews with 80 and 15 returnees, respectively. The findings revealed that to sustain employability, returnees had to develop and utilise various forms of capital including human, social, identity, cultural, psychological, and agentic capital. In particular, technical knowledge emerged as a neutral factor at all stages of their career development; social capital was crucially important during market entry and for promotion; and an understanding of local work culture and professional skills were significant at the workplace. Most importantly, to achieve successful employment outcomes, career progression, and personal goals, returnees had to exercise ‘agentic capital’ to combine and utilise various forms of capital strategically. The findings implied that various stakeholders should share responsibilities to enable students to build a package of resources for their employability negotiation. Graduate employability should also be assessed a few years after students’ graduation so that useful resources can be revealed and then applied in teaching and learning programmes and support services. Keyword Returnees · Employability · Capital · Higher education · Australia · Agency · Bourdieu
Introduction In 2017, the total number of international students enrolled in tertiary education worldwide was 5.3 million with two-thirds congregated in Australia, Canada, Japan, England, and the United States and the largest proportion of students coming from Asian countries (e.g. China, India, Korea) accounting for 56% (OECD 2019). An increasing number of graduates complete their educational degree(s) in Western countries such as the United States, Australia, England, and Canada and return to their home country (Pham and Saito * Thanh Pham [email protected] 1
Faculty of Education, Monash University, 19 Ancora Imparo Way, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
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2019). Between 1978 and 2001, only around 14% of Chinese students in the United States returned to work in China but by the end of 2017, the return rate was 79%, equivalent to 3.132 million (Zweig and Ge 2018). More than 50% of international students in Australia left the country after completing their studies and the majority have returned to their home countries (AUIDF 2017). This phenomenon occurs mainly due to the push from the host country and the pull from the home country. The push factor often includes: (1) the global financial crisis in many developed countries that has caused the s
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