Downward Geographical Mobility and Upward Social Mobility: Women’s Return Migration and Entrepreneurship in China’s Small Cities and Remote Counties

Migration studies often assume a hierarchy of places that drives a periphery-to-core movement and regard reverse migration as being related to downward social mobility. This study draws on in-depth interviews with 16 highly educated women migrants who returned to small cities and counties in less developed areas after years spent studying and working in China’s metropolises and/or abroad. Contrary to the stereotypes of unambitious and family-oriented women returnees, the study finds that women’s return migration can be motivated by complex goals and expectations, ranging from perceived economic opportunities to noneconomic needs of returning to a familiar place and to be near their families. These women were empowered by their skills accumulated in a “brain circulation” process, but their consequent social mobility also depended on their positionalities in local power structures and access to family resources. Based on their goals and positionalities, these highly educated women returnees illustrated different forms of agency: (1) the adventuring women returned to embrace market opportunities in small cities despite the lack of local resources; (2) the settling women returned mainly for family reasons and fell into self-employment serendipitously, without readily available local resources; (3) the integrating women connected their entrepreneurial goals with their access to local resources; and (4) the compensated women returned mainly for family reasons, but their access to local resources allowed them to try out working for themselves as a compensation for giving up metropolitan life. The study challenges the core-to-periphery stereotypical narrative and finds that women’s return migration may lead to upward social mobility and/or self-realization, although still constrained by women’s goals and positionalities underlying their return migration.