How Does Rural Resilience Affect Return Migration: Evidence from Frontier Regions in China

An important way to realize urban–rural integration and regional coordinated development is to attract labor forces back to rural areas. Most of the existing studies consider the impact of individual factors on population migration, they lack a systematic framework to analyze the combined impact of different factors on rural return migration. Furthermore, in practice, the interaction within the rural social ecosystem as an important driver of return migration is always ignored. Using data from 131 villages in 14 cities in Guangxi, China, combined with the Coupled Infrastructure System framework and the sustainable livelihoods framework, this paper analyzes the comprehensive impact of internal components of the rural social ecosystem on return migration. Qualitative comparative analysis is used to identify four condition combinations that can effectively promote return migration and five condition combinations that make return migration vulnerable. The main conclusions are as follows. First, high-level public infrastructure providers are an important driving factor for labor return to rural areas, and a substitution effect exists between them and livelihood capitals. Second, sufficient human capital and social capital are crucial for return migration, highlighting the importance of the structure of rural members and the collective atmosphere. Third, natural capital and economic capital emphasized by previous research are not key conditions for forming a high level of return migration. Fourth, the vulnerability of return migration is mainly caused by the decline of social capital, the loss of public infrastructure providers, and excessive dependence on economic or physical capital input. To attract return migration, rural areas need to pay attention to the integration and synergy of multi-dimensional capital and public infrastructure providers, and special emphasis should be placed on the cultivation of public leadership to promote the enhancement of human capital and social capital. This paper provides a more comprehensive and instrumental analytical perspective for understanding and promoting rural return migration. While deepening the understanding of the dynamic relationship between rural social ecosystem and labor mobility, it also offers policy insights for developing countries to achieve integrated urban–rural development.