Nuhoḡlu Soysal, Yasemin and Cebolla-Boado, Héctor (2020) 'Observing the Unobservable: Migrant Selectivity and Agentic Individuality Among Higher Education Students in China and Europe.' Frontiers in Sociology, 5. ISSN 2297-7775

Preview

Text fsoc-05-00009.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (615kB) | Preview

Abstract

The research in migrant selectivity largely overlooks the broader institutional processes that shape the extent to which migrants from different backgrounds are indeed positively selected. This is particularly true in the case of highly skilled migrants, whose selection may not be conditioned by migration but by education. This paper deals with this limitation by studying individual characteristics, which are often treated as unobserved selectivity, among a specific flow of educational migrants in Europe, namely, Chinese higher education students. To do so, we use a unique representative multi-country dataset of about 8,000 Chinese international students and their native-born counterparts in China, the UK, and Germany. Our evidence rules out positive selection of migrants on individuality traits such as ambition, creativity, or being a risk-taker or independently minded. This supports our argument that the prevalence of agentic models of individuality is embedded in tertiary education on a global level.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	agentic individual, migrant selectivity, unobservable selectivity, higher education, educational migrants, China, Europe
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology, Department of
Depositing User:	Elements
Date Deposited:	04 May 2020 18:46
Last Modified:	05 May 2020 11:15
URI:	http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/27432

Actions (login required)

View Item