Return from the Metropolis to the County Region: Motives of Returned Migrants in China

Yueyue Gao , University of Groningen

Abstract: The purpose of the study is to explore the motives of migrants who returned or decided to return to their home region Qianshan in central China, after having left for the metropolitan cities in the East of China. This article addresses two questions: How to define the returned migrants both in terms of who returned and where they returned to? What are their motives to return? A mixed method approach including quantitative and qualitative methods was adopted to collect the data. An online survey was deployed via WeChat and received 83 responses. Additional semi-structured interviews were conducted with 80 respondents. The region Qianshan to which migrants return includes a county level city where they have registered their ‘hukou’ or the villages administered by it after they were born. The findings of this study suggest that the ages of the returned migrants spanned between 20 and 50 years. Returning to the home region is a family strategy so that the return migrants can take care of both their elderly parents and their child(ren). Husbands as the main labour force in a family usually return later than wives. Strong place attachment is another important reason that influences the decision to return. Keywords: Motives, Return Migrants, Family factors, Place attachment, Urbanization

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe