Cross-border im/mobility of skilled migrants from the U.S. to China: a capital-mobility framework

Abstract

The number of skilled migrants moving from the Global North to the Global South has been increasing in recent decades. This paper develops and employs a capital-mobility framework to analyze empirical evidence about the new international migration of skilled U.S. migrants to the Pearl River Delta Region of China. Guided by the literature on im/mobility and capital, this paper asks the following questions: What affects skilled U.S. migrants’ mobility to and from China? How do they experience the dynamics of voluntary and involuntary immobility in China? Drawing on 58 semi-structured interviews, we found that the level of capital accumulation and its transferability and convertibility influenced migrants’ mobility and immobility. In addition, the global outbreak of Covid-19 facilitated mobility for some while hindered mobility for others. This study discusses the differences between North-to-South and South-to-North skilled migration and conceptualizes im/mobility as a continuum experienced by skilled migrants during their migratory trajectories.

KEYWORDS:

• Skilled migration
• mobility
• immobility
• capital
• COVID-19

Acknowledgment

We thank American Association of Geographer’s Dissertation Grant and Arizona State University’s Melvin G. Marcus Memorial Fellowship and Matthew G. Bailey Scholarship for supporting the fieldwork. We are thankful for the insightful comments from the anonymous reviewers. We also thank Drs. Trisalyn Nelson of University of Santa Barbara and Daoqin Tong of Arizona State University for their feedback to the early draft of this manuscript. We appreciate all the participants for sharing their migration and life experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

A National Science Foundation grant (BCS-1660526) partially funded the research project that this article is based upon. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agency.