Why they stay and why they return–understanding international graduates’ decision-making on workplace location

Abstract

The nexus between international higher education, employment, policy, and wider society have been recognised. Increased international students are likely to create the fluctuation in labour supply in their home and host country is not a new phenomenon. Internationally, there is a myriad of programs and strategies designed to retain talents. Conversely, international graduates are challenged in engaging with the labour market. This study explores the discourse of Chinese international graduate employment with reference to Australia and China's policies. It critically reviews the existing approach in studying the issue, highlighting the necessity to transmit beyond agency-structure dichotomy. Guided by Callon's four-stage translation from actor-network theory, it studies a decade of policy documents from Australia and China related to international graduates. Meanwhile, it conducts in-depth interviews with two groups of international graduates–migrant workers and returnees–to study how they obtain employment by interpreting the policy, negotiating with the context and activating their agency. It argues that the misalignment between the policies’ understanding of issues and international graduates’ needs hinders the effective integration of talents, requiring a systematical readjustment of the current mechanism.