“There are always two voices…”: International Students' Intentions to Stay in the United States or Return to their Home Countries

Abstract

The scale of movement of international students has increased dramatically in the post-war period, with the United States acting as a major destination owing partly to a good education system and generous funding of graduate studies. Officially, these migrations are expected to be temporary and visa restrictions are applied accordingly; in reality many international students never return to their home countries. Despite the large number of international students in the United States, little research has been done about this group of professional migrants. Using focus group interviews, we investigate the factors that motivate students to stay in the United States or return home on completion of their degrees. We identify three categories of motivating factors: professional, societal, and personal. Among our study participants, professional factors were generally cited as encouraging the students to stay in the United States, while societal and personal factors were more likely to draw them back to their home countries, although wide variations existed among individuals. Our results suggest that certain patterns exist among national groups. These operated in two main ways. First, specific characteristics of the home country (such as difficult political circumstances) provided state-specific influences on the decision-making process. Second, the relative weight assigned to each of the three groups of factors appeared to differ among national groups. 132Alberts and Hazen

Settlement Intentions of Recently Arrived Immigrants and Refugees in the Netherlands

“…The Netherlands is a country where cultural values such as gender equality and individual autonomy are widespread and form a dominant cultural norm. Therefore, the extent to which individuals do or do not agree with the dominant cultural values in the host society can make them feel either more out of place in the host society or more reluctant to leave the host society and go back to the origin country (Alberts & Hazen, 2005;Harvey, 2009). …”

“…Cultural dissimilarity between the origin and host country is generally considered to be a motivation for leaving the host country (Alberts & Hazen, 2005;Harvey, 2009). The Netherlands is a country where cultural values such as gender equality and individual autonomy are widespread and form a dominant cultural norm.…”

“…First, next to economic incentives we consider socio-cultural conditions that might promote or hinder settlement intentions. Recently, researchers have argued that social networks and cultural integration are of crucial importance to migrants' settlement decisions (Alberts & Hazen, 2005;De Haas & Fokkema, 2011;Güngör & Tansel, 2013;Harvey, 2009). Because these prior studies have mainly focused on specific sub-populations of foreign students and highly skilled migrants, more research is needed on how social-cultural integration affects immigrants' settlement intentions.…”

“…Because the longitudinal survey data needed for such analyses is difficult to obtain, information on the stayers and return migrants is often limited to basic demographic characteristics (Alberts & Hazen, 2005). Analyses of settlement intentions provide a valuable addition to research on actual settlement behavior, because it opens up the possibility to investigate the characteristics and motivations of potential stayers and returnees in more detail (Alberts & Hazen, 2005).…”

The role of corruption in reintegration: experiences of Iraqi Kurds upon return from Europe

“…For example, one study details how some Chinese migrants see life in the United States explicitly as a way of avoiding corruption in China (Alberts and Hazen 2005). Another study describes how Japanese-Brazilian migrants in Japan could not be incentivised to return by governmental reforms in Brazil during the late 1990s because of an almost fatalistic belief that corruption would persist in spite of reforms (Tsuda 1999).…”