A critical account of employability construction through the eyes of Chinese postgraduate students in the UK

Abstract

This paper presents a multiple (n = 23), longitudinal case study of the construction of personal employability by Chinese students at a UK university. It draws on the work of Brown and Hesketh to frame notions of employability in order to understand how these students engage with the international and Chinese labour markets from their own perspectives. The findings suggest that although overseas education is still seen by these students as contributing to their employability in general, there is a decline in the labour market value of the ‘hard currencies’ that overseas qualification carries whilst the ‘soft currencies’ gained from the overseas experiences are of more significant merit. The study also reveals that some concepts developed by Brown and Hesketh, such as ‘purists’ vs. ‘players’ and ‘personal capital’, need to be interpreted and contextualised differently when applied in an international context and outlines how this might be achieved in relation to Chinese students by introducing a Chinese concept – ‘SuZhi’(素质). It is found that the discourse of ‘SuZhi’ has stronger explanatory power for the phenomenon being studied given its broader social applicability rather than being as directly and narrowly instrumental to employability as is the notion of personal capital.

Keywords:

• employability
• overseas education
• Chinese students
• global labour market

Acknowledgements

This research project is funded by University of Southampton ‘Annual Adventure Research Grant’.