Past Research on Why Ex-Immigrants Give Up on Immigrating

Given the large numbers of Chinese migrants in many migrant-receiving countries worldwide, mainland Chinese ex-immigrants are a contextually special and quantitatively consequential case of the general ex-immigrant. China’s rapid economic growth has motivated many migrants to return to China in the 21st century. However, China’s periodic tightening of political restrictions has also provoked anxiety among citizens about returning. Therefore, my findings from this study are probably most generalizable to ex-immigrants who originate in other autocratic societies that have also seen a rise in material living standards.

Becoming an ex-immigrant is a case of the more general phenomenon of transformations in an individual’s subjective social identity. Like marriage, taking a new job, buying a house, or becoming a member of an important affiliative group or community, a project to immigrate is a major investment. Like giving up on these other projects, giving up on immigrating also entails associated changes in identity and social relations that can often be fraught with ambivalent emotions varying across contexts and discourses about immigration. For example, a popular and academic discourse respectively characterizes ex-immigrants from migrant-sending societies as “failures” and “negatively selective” [Borjas Reference Borjas1989: 476] in narrow terms of merely their income-generating potential in migrant-receiving economies. However, diverse social forces lead prospective immigrants to give up immigrating even if immigrating is in their economic interest, making immigration a far less determined process than suggested by rational choice theory.

Past quantitative research about such “return migrants” has focused on measuring how strongly the probability of return migration is associated with discrete migrant traits and aspects of a migrant-origin and migrant-destination society. Generally, migrants are more likely to return if the context of migrant reception is more rural [Treacy Reference Treacy2010], xenophobic, and racist; keeps migrants more spread out and unable to form networks [Basok Reference Basok2000]; and features professional associations that reject immigrants’ educational credentials [Coniglio, Arcangelis and Serlenga Reference Coniglio, De Arcangelis and Serlenga2009; Thomas-Hope Reference Thomas-Hope1999; Venturini and Villosio Reference Venturini and Villosio2008]. Migrants are also less likely to return if they can obtain a secure legal status in the destination society [Constant and Massey Reference Constant and Massey2002; Dustmann, Bentolila and Faini Reference Dustmann, Bentolila and Faini1996]. Human capital-rich (“high-skilled”) migrants often return due to a limited social network in the migrant destination society [Khoo, Hugo and McDonald Reference Khoo, Hugo and McDonald2008]. Scholars find that, compared to immigrants, return migrants also tend to be married [Zweig and Wang, Reference Zweig and Wang2013], older, remit more [Treacy Reference Treacy2010], have better information about the law and debt bondage [Liu-Farrer Reference Liu-Farrer2020], lack friends or romantic partners in the host society [Bloch et al. Reference Bloch, Sigona, Zetter, Sigona and Zetter2013], and have not culturally adapted to their host society [Carling Reference Carling2004]. Scholars disagree about whether return migration is associated with age, sex, state/province of residence in the destination country, proficiency in their host society’s language, or their earnings or occupational prestige [Constant and Massey Reference Constant and Massey2002; Hagan, Hernandez-Leon and Demonsant Reference Hagan, Hernández-León and Demonsant2015; Khoo, Hugo and McDonald Reference Khoo, Hugo and McDonald2008; Thomas Reference Thomas2008; Treacy Reference Treacy2010].

Migrants are more likely to return if their country of origin is closer, has a diverse range of economic sectors, and not much poorer than their destination [Basok Reference Basok2000]. Many migrant-origin country governments incentivize emigrants to return. Although China has specific programs to attract migrant “talents” back to the country, like the Thousand and One Talent (Youth) Program or its “green card” policy [Hao, Guo and Wang Reference Hao, Yan, Guo and Wang2017], scholars have found that these are not representative of returnees in general. Researchers have noted that such programs only target a very selective group, with around 91% consisting of male scholars and STEM scholars [Zweig, Fung and Han Reference Zweig, Fung and Han2008; Xiang Reference Xiang2011]. Most found these programs disappointing [Hao, Guo and Wang Reference Hao, Yan, Guo and Wang2017]. Male student return migrants deciding whether to return tend to be more concerned about factors affecting their future career development, like their family socio-economic status, human capital, and social networks. Female students are more concerned about social/family concerns like parental influence toward migration, belonging, and support [Lu, Zhong and Schisel Reference Lu, Zong and Schissel2009], suggesting that gender may mediate decisions to give up immigrating.

The longer migrants stay in a migrant-destination country, the less likely they are to return [King Reference King2015]. Length of stay is especially important if there is a large time zone difference with the origin country (as is often the case for migrants from China) and their jobs reduce the free time available to communicate with their origin country [Waldinger Reference Waldinger2015]. Immigrants also sometimes experience anxiety and uncertainty about making plans due to restrictive policies [Jasso Reference Jasso2011]. In sum, anti-immigrant policies and various social forces can become so frustrating that immigrants decide it is better to cut their losses and return.

Conceptualizing the Specific Social Forces Behind the Formation of Ex-Immigrant Subjectivity

Migrants’ choice to return can be as fraught with ambivalence as the initial decision to migrate. The fact that they have already incurred “sunk costs” [Arkes and Blumer Reference Arkes and Blumer1985] means that many expect them to immigrate, and they confront the powerful discursive normative power of the immigrant dream. Due to such expectations and discourse, when many ex-immigrants describe the process of giving up on immigrating in their narratives on social media platforms, they often adopt a confessional tone of discourse as they feel like they must explain their decision to audiences who expect them to continue to immigrate. Many emphasize that individuals give up immigrating due to a single social force—typically racial-ethnic discrimination [Waters Reference Waters2008; Jin Reference Jin2021] based on retrospective interviews. This does not account for other factors at play that interact with racial discrimination. Aspiring immigrants must sacrifice much emotionally, mentally, and physically in their journey, investing energy, time, and money. The decision to give up on immigrating is frequently gradual rather than sudden, and results from multiple interrelated social forces that compound each other. What types of social forces form the subjectivity of an ex-immigrant?

I hypothesize that multiple forces contribute to an ex-immigrant’s decision not to immigrate. I diagram these and the way they contribute to each other in Figure A1 of the Appendix. These forces can be divided into two different general types: adaptational challenges and macro-structural forces. In the early years of an immigrant’s arrival in the host society, immigrants’ frustration is due to adaptational challenges such as their disappointment that the society is not as they had imagined, language barriers, and cultural alienation. As immigrants become more fluent in the local language and culture, and adjust to the reality of the migrant host society, they confront an “integration paradox” [Schaeffer and Kas Reference Schaeffer and Kas2023]—they become more acutely sensitive to macro-structural forces such as racial discrimination, the intersectional difficulties of navigating unfamiliar gender norms, the durable obstacles they confront in achieving upward socio-economic mobility, and the government’s visa restrictions.

In order to derive from the narratives of ex-immigrants a broader range of social forces that interact and reinforce each other, I collected oral life history interview and social media post data from 121 middle-income to high-income ex-immigrants from 16 different countriesFootnote ³. The method of analysis was similar to the way in which previous researchers studied the narratives of low-income migrants [El Miri Reference El Miri2011; Sarkar Reference Sarkar2017]. Their narratives document how their identity as an aspiring immigrant gradually first formed from the perceptions of foreign countries during the pre-migration period of their youth and later evolved into the identity of an ex-immigrant from their migratory experiences.

During their earlier phase of migration, ex-immigrants confront social forces that represented challenges for adapting to the new society. Since I hypothesized that ex-immigrants might find their migrant-receiving society disappointing due to how it differs from their country of origin, I collected data about the ex-immigrants’ pre-migration knowledge of foreign countries to better understand their expectations and why they were disappointed with their life in the migrant-destination society.

Although visa policies of the migrant-destination government require many foreigners to typically invest much energy, money, and time within China learning the language of their host society, I hypothesize that many aspiring migrants still confront a language barrier. This makes communicating and understanding social interactions a challenge, often amplifying their boredom and frustration. It also contributes to cultural alienation.

In contrast to the strict requirements for prospective migrants’ language ability, migrant-destination governments do not have systematic methods to assess potential immigrants’ cultural adaptability. Although governments might assume that if a migrant becomes sufficiently fluent in a language they will automatically pick up the culture, I hypothesized that the difficulties in cultural adaptation are still consequential even for those who can communicate in the local language. Even in culturally similar societies like Japan, Chinese immigrants often interact more with Chinese people than with people from other ethnic backgrounds. Such homophily [McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Cook Reference McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Cook2001] contributes to their cultural alienation, loneliness, and homesickness, feeling a “lack of belonging” [Liu-Farrer Reference Liu-Farrer2020: 50], even if they have the cognitive ability to master the language in order to pass the necessary standardized language exams. This prior research reveals how such a “lack of belonging” often leads many Chinese people to return since they can immediately re-acquire a sense of belonging upon returning to China.

Even after Chinese ex-immigrants adjust to their new society’s reality, acculturate, and become more conversant in the language, a distinct set of four structural-level factors are likely to compel them to give up immigrating. While they may have initially believed that the barrier to feeling a part of their host society was related to their lack of culture, language, and adaptation to the local lifestyle, even after they overcome such adaptational challenges, they still suffer a sense of exclusion. First, I hypothesized that they are likely to more frequently attribute their exclusion to racial discrimination due to experiences of double-consciousness [Du Bois Reference Du Bois2008]. They will come to interpret this as a sign that they will always remain a cultural and ethnic outsider, no matter how hard they strive to become accepted by acquiring Western cultural and economic capital. They realize that in their country of origin they would have less reason to wonder if the way people interact with them is related to their race.

I hypothesized that this sense of exclusion will be particularly acute for those who face challenges navigating the system of gender relations in their host society and do not have a steady romantic partner [Liu-Farrer Reference Liu-Farrer2020]. However, the Chinese immigrant experience of singledom is quite gendered: for Chinese men, this can lead to particularly acute intersectional difficulties in dating and developing partnerships with and marrying native-born people [Kao, Balistreri, and Joyner Reference Kao, Balistreri and Joyner2018]. Young Chinese adults, especially women, face stronger pressures from their parents to marry and bear children at earlier ages than women in most Western societieties or Chinese men. Therefore, I hypothesized that especially for those who reach an age where they feel biologically ready to find a partner, start a family, and bear children and face social pressures to do so, many ex-immigrants see much better prospects for this in their country of origin. This will also incentivize them to return.

Many immigrants may try to cope with a sense of exclusion by working harder and increasing their socio-economic status. However, I hypothesized that this generally will not lead them to achieve a sense of belongingness. Instead, ex-immigrants will continue to confront limited upward socio-economic and cross-career mobility due to how labor markets in Western societies in the past 200 years have commodified East Asian immigrants as “alien capital” [Day Reference Day2016]. This merely serves to expand and increase the efficiency of the migrant-receiving economy’s physical and cyber infrastructure while simultaneously limiting immigrants’ capacity to contribute to the content and design of products. Immigrants’ cultural alienation and their higher propensity to interact with those in their ethnic in-group due to homophily will result in difficulties in bridging structural holes [Burt Reference Burt2018] to individuals and groups with traits different from theirs, limiting their ability to acquire satisfying jobs and other opportunities via “weak ties” [Granovetter Reference Granovetter1977: 1360]. Even if they can “culturally match” the preferences of employers [Rivera Reference Rivera2012: 1000], culturally embrace more “assertive” leadership styles that are more highly rewarded in many migrant-receiving societies than in China [Lu, Nisbett and Morris Reference Lu, Nisbett and Morris2020: 4591], and evade employers’ unconscious tendencies to typecast them via stereotype threat [Steele and Aronson Reference Steele and Aronson1995] and stereotype promise [Lee and Zhou Reference Lee and Zhou2015], employers in the labor market prefer to hire immigrants in technical careers rather than the creative and human-based careers immigrants may prefer like advertising, product design, counseling, and the arts.

In contrast, ex-immigrants learn and hear that if they return to their countries of origin with foreign degrees and work experiences, they will find far more opportunities in China to have a more fulfilling career in these latter types of industries. Due to the above factors, barriers to social-economic mobility are far more complex than simply a gap in potential career opportunities and earnings between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries. Other scholars with a more rational-choice orientation have assumed that return migration is driven by the same economistic mechanisms as emigration decisions [Wiesbrock Reference Wiesbrock2008]. Yet the type of “bamboo ceiling” [Lee and Zhou Reference Lee and Zhou2015] described above calls into question this framework if immigrants derive more psychic or social utility from being in a particular profession than pure monetary compensation.

Exacerbating all the factors mentioned above is the way in which the migrant-receiving society places legal constraints on employers’ ability to employ immigrants, and limits the immigrants’ choice of occupation. I hypothesized that this results in an “unfree,” constrained, or indentured labor, and forces ex-immigrants to continually spend energy, time, and money in filing immigration paperwork to maintain a certain legal status––a form of “surplus value appropriation” by government and visa brokers [Sarkar Reference Sarkar2017: 173]. This increases their uncertainty about the future, and increases the risk of making long-term investments that tie them to the migrant-host society, like purchasing a car, a mortgage on a home, or starting a business and creating jobs for the migrant-host economy.Footnote ⁴ In contrast, aspiring immigrants know that if they return to their society of origin, at least they will not have to regularly file paperwork and pay fees to remain legally in the country and work legally in the economy. The absence of such a constraints in their country of origin makes it appear relatively more relaxing and more economically free. For many ex-immigrants, the probability of withstanding all the above-mentioned social forces results in immigration becoming a far less likely outcome for these prospective immigrants than most migration scholars have conceptualized in the past.

Analytical Strategy

I draw upon narratives from oral histories and social media posts of 121 ex-immigrants between 2018 and 2022. Unlike many studies of human capital-rich Chinese migrants in migrant-receiving societies [Lu, Zong and Schissel Reference Lu, Zong and Schissel2009; Tu and Nehring Reference Tu and Nehring2020], I decided to sample ex-immigrants in mainland China (hereafter China) because of recurring empirical evidence of the Attitude-Behavior Consistency problem [Jerolmack and Khan Reference Jerolmack and Khan2014] in empirical research about international migration that results from the widespread over-reliance of interviewing methods: many immigrants in migrant-receiving societies claim they plan to return to their own country but never do [Al-Rasheed Reference Al-Rasheed1994], and migration scholars have also found that many of those who claim they want to emigrate never do so [Siu-Lun Reference Siu-Lun2001]. I sampled interviewees in the economically prosperous cities of Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai because I ascertained from prior research [Hao et al. Reference Hao, Yan, Guo and Wang2017] and pilot fieldwork that most return Chinese migrants settled in such cities rather than their hometowns in order to have a lifestyle that is relatively “freer”, less traditional, and more amenity-rich. Return migrants also frequently prefer to work in service occupations (e.g. finance, tutoring, translation services, information technology, education). Such jobs are more plentiful in these cities than in less urban areas.

I recruited citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC, hereafter China) into the study if they had gone abroad to a foreign country and had hoped to immigrate to that country. I excluded anyone from the sample who naturalized or acquired foreign citizenship, as China does not permit its citizens to hold dual nationality. I recruited seed participants from WeChat groups and Western social media applications, websites, and social media communities made up of many ex-immigrants. For example, people that have lived abroad tend to be overrepresented in specific cyber-communities such as those for US university alumni and entrepreneurs. I would often attend their social events which usually function as sources of elite status and social distinction for participants. I found it relatively easy to enter these spaces and interact with participants given my past attendance at selective educational institutions and identity as a White American. Communicating in both English and Mandarin, I was able to recruit and network with people who had been abroad, meeting many people through websites such as Couchsurfing and MeetMe which are more popular in the West and are accessible from behind China’s strong internet firewall via a Virtual Proxy Network (VPN). These Western sites were only visited by a minority of the population who know about them in part because they had migrated outside of mainland China.

I concluded that biographically contextualized oral-history interviews were the most practical and appropriate primary method for tracking these shifts from the identity of an immigrant to that of an ex-immigrant. I supplemented this with additional narrative data from social media posts by some of the ex-immigrants on websites such as Xiaohongshu, Zhihu, WeChat, and Bilibili, which contained demographic data and accounts of their experiences shortly after they occurred. They were therefore not as prone to recall bias and reconstructive memory as the retrospective interviews [Loftus and Palmer Reference Loftus and Palmer1974]. I interviewed both in Mandarin and English according to the interviewee’s preference. I translated oral history interview transcripts and social media posts in Mandarin to English.

Despite my efforts to field-test, compose and ask questions in culturally and linguistically appropriate ways, my positionality as a White US-citizen male researcher inevitably introduced both advantages and disadvantages for data collection. I reflexively learned that many Chinese ex-immigrants were favorably prejudiced toward someone of my race, which may have aided me at the recruitment stage. However, I was concerned as an American that participants might be reserved or reluctant about revealing negative opinions of the United States and immigration countries. Some may have developed certain nationalistic and antagonistic feelings toward the US and other Western societies due to their negative experiences abroad. Fortunately, I had previously traveled widely throughout all the migrant-destination countries they mentioned and every province of China. Mentioning my familiarity with these places may have helped me effectively establish stronger rapport, and encouraged participants to be more open about their experiences.

Table 1 includes relevant summary statistics of my sample for their sex, their age at the time of the interview, age at the time they migrated abroad, the number of years they spent abroad, the distribution of educational attainment of all participants, and their parents’ joint income in Chinese renminbi (RMB). Participants were roughly divided between men and women. All participants migrated legally. US immigration policy is highly selective in admitting those with superior educational attainment and socio-economic resources than the median citizen within mainland China. They were therefore mostly middle- to upper-class by the standards of China’s society. Most participants at the time of the interview had attained either an undergraduate or graduate degree. Although the income of parents may be a relevant factor, most people in China are reluctant to disclose or even calculate their income: income in China comes from many grey sources, and children do not even learn of their parent’s income. Therefore, if I could not obtain income data, I computed income figures by linking data I collected about parents’ occupation, data on pay by economic sector from the PRC’s National Bureau of Statistics, Pew Research Center, Statista, and the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. That data confirmed that most ex-immigrants had parents who earned above the median monthly income in Mainland China. In the Appendix, Figure A2 shows the percentage of individuals who went to the 9 most frequently visited countries and all the others

Table 1 Means, Medians Standard Deviations, Maxima and Minima of Key Variables, N=121

The mean age of when an individual went abroad was 22.8 years old. Most cases were within 6 years of this mean, with only a few outliers in the distribution. The mean number of years they spent abroad before giving up immigrating was 6 years, with most being abroad for 2 to 10 years. This would explain why by the time I interviewed many ex-immigrants they were, on average, 28 years old and most were between the ages of 20 and 36. Over 50% of ex-immigrants had acquired overseas full-time work experience ranging from one year to more than 6 years before returning, a result similar to that of previous large-scale surveys of high-skilled return migrants like the Center for China and Globalization’s Report on Employment & Entrepreneurship of Chinese Returnees 2017 [Tu and Nehring Reference Tu and Nehring2020]. However, in most previous extensive studies of Chinese returnees, the bulk of individuals had academic backgrounds in STEM subjects and worked in next-generation information technology, biological engineering, and the pharmaceutical industry [Wang and Bao Reference Wang and Bao2015]. In contrast, participants in my study had a higher diversity in academic backgrounds and occupations, including many who work in cultural industries, government, and finance. A few participants came to the US before they were 13, and some had lived most of their lives in the country of immigration (1.5 generation immigrants) before they gave up immigrating. A few older participants were fortunate to be among the few that went abroad in the 1980s or in the 1990s soon after Deng Xiaoping allowed more of China’s citizens to acquire passports and go abroad. They therefore spent many years abroad. However, most went abroad to study for either an undergraduate or graduate degree after China’s government liberalized its passport laws and joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, with sudden economic growth providing people with more financial resources to go abroad. At the least, the median interviewee both attended a higher education institution for a 4-year degree and worked for one to two years—typically in their 20s—before they gave up immigrating. Their parents at the time they went abroad had an average income of 84,404 RMB though this varied greatly depending on the year they migrated: a few who migrated in the 1980s or 1990s had parents with substantially lower incomes than most participants who migrated more recently.

I designed my interview schedule—included in the Supplementary Material file—in such a way that did not probe or solicit the factors I had hypothesized. Rather, I only asked participants to share their life history with me in order to see which social forces they mentioned, particularly with respect to how they perceived a society other than their own and their experiences as a migrant. I then inductively coded their raw narratives to search for the most frequently mentioned factors forming ex-immigrant subjectivity. Figure 2 shows the frequency of each factor that emerged in the ex-immigrants’ narratives. None of my questions prompted them to mention any specific factor. As we can observe, cultural alienation was the most common theme to emerge, followed by similar percentages referring to a disappointment with the lifestyle of the host-country and barriers to socio-economic mobility. Somewhat fewer participants mentioned language barriers, visa barriers, and racial-ethnic discrimination.

Figure 2 Frequency of Hypothesized Factors Mentioned by Ex-Immigrants as Formative of their Ex-Immigrant Subjectivity

Since much of a participant’s experience abroad as an ex-immigrant is related to their pre-immigration life, I began my interviews in the context of their childhood and upbringing, asking how and what they first learned about and perceived with respect to other countries, and how those ideas changed as they grew older. This had the methodological benefit of encouraging participants to gain more distance in how they viewed the current state of their lives, share experiences, and be more thoughtful, reflective, and aware of how they changed over time as they aged. That was preferable to them merely explaining and rationalizing retrospectively to me why they gave up immigrating as is the habit among interviewees who do not receive any interviewer guidance. This approach also helped guard against problems that qualitative methodologists report encountering with Chinese interviewees—which are arguably applicable to all interviewees—such as 1) the tendency to search for the “correct answer” to open-ended questions; 2) the wish to move on to the next question rather than elaborate and reflect upon their answer; and 3) a tendency to talk about abstract examples or offer general explanations rather than describing specific experiences from their own lives [Gustafsson, Blanchin and Li Reference Gustafsson, Hes, Blanchin and Li2016]. Where possible, I followed up with many interviewees and allowed them to amend what they had previously told me.

No ex-immigrant regretted going abroad—even though some wished they had returned earlier and not wasted so much time outside of China. Participants often reflected on how their migratory experience transformed them into a citizen of China who—compared to their non-migrant compatriots––was more happy, independent, self-aware, open-minded, and appreciative of different lifestyles and choices available to them. They were also more objective in their view of the differences between China and other societies, particularly in recognizing that China was not as bad a place as they had earlier thought. Although migrant-receiving countries also gave many positive impressions to ex-immigrants, due to space constraints I focused on the social forces that led ex-immigrants to gradually become ambivalent and ultimately abandon immigration, since that was at the focus of this study. Many interviewees often seemed relieved to honestly express why they changed their mind about immigrating, especially as some noted that they were uncomfortable expressing such views while in migrant-receiving societies. They also sometimes expressed how they were reluctant to express such views to most people in China whom they felt could not understand or relate to their experiences abroad.

Social Factors Constituting Ex-Immigrant Subjectivity

Limited Opportunities for Socio-Economic and Career Mobility Relative to China

Racial discrimination, language barriers, and cultural alienation contributed to the difficulties ex-immigrants experienced in obtaining vertical socio-economic and career mobility. One male ex-immigrant, Yu, who worked for 7 years in Canada as an engineer, reflected on how:

This was not unique to Western countries. Another ex-immigrant of Japan, Hu, explained that Japanese managers would always treat their Chinese employees as “little brothers.” Eventually, even if they sometimes noted that there was less pressure and a slower pace of work than in China, most of the ex-immigrants became frustrated with the barriers to upward mobility the longer they worked, especially if they were ambitious. The geneticist Huizhong came to the US in the 1980s to obtain a Ph.D. He then worked hard with the dream of earning a Nobel Prize. Huizhong said he found it difficult to accomplish anything given how developed and established most industries were in the US. In contrast, his industry was booming when he returned to China in 1997. This attracted him back, even if it required him to live far away from his wife and children who remained in the US.

Others who returned in more recent decades also spoke of how they preferred to pursue higher-risk and higher-return ventures and self-employed careers that were increasing in China even if they had a stable job in their host society. The latter most viewed as limiting in terms of upward socioeconomic mobility or not aligned with their career goals. Ai, a businessman and ex-immigrant of New Zealand, noted:

Ai, like many entrepreneurs, saw far more opportunity in China to run his own business than he could have in New Zealand, since he found it far easier to attract investors than abroad.

Ex-immigrants stated that they felt they had more “freedom” in China than they did abroad due to a relatively greater range of career opportunities in China. Fen explained how in Germany:

For her and many other ex-immigrants, “freedom” did not mean civil liberties and political rights as it does for many Westerners. Instead, it meant not having to face the constraints of either socio-economic ceilings or the limited range of career options they confronted. Therefore, for Fen and other ex-immigrants, China was much freer than any liberal-democratic society, even if that derived more from economic freedom than from political freedom. This was true even for ex-immigrants in cultural industries that greatly valued political freedom, like the arts. Wu, a director and dancer of a cultural institute in Beijing who was an ex-immigrant in Germany, noted how he even had more opportunities to engage in new artistic activities in China than he did during his 11 years in Europe. But for many, freedom was also the ability to engage in a broader array of occupations, which was particularly the case for those in cultural industries. One expressed the opinion of many noting how if you wanted to be both an international student and work abroad, “you can only bite the bullet and learn computer science.” Or, in the words of another, “I can only do a technical job and give up my favorite investment/entrepreneurial projects/small businesses. For me, I feel that life is less fun. I didn’t want to limit my youth to this one position, so I chose to go back.” Returning to China therefore expanded the career possibilities of many ex-immigrants.

Wei, who cared deeply about social justice, helped his immigrant mother campaign for Hillary Clinton in her race to become governor of New York. He was brought to tears when Obama won the presidential election. He once aspired to become a political leader in the United States. Yet he began to become disenchanted with the idea of immigrating to New York City while completing his J.D. in immigration law. Although he had completed two additional bachelor’s degrees (a double major in US History and American Political Science on top of his bachelor degree in English from China), other law students of color told him that he was not qualified to speak about racial issues as a Chinese immigrant.

Despite his best efforts to contribute to US society through progressive politics, Wei did not feel an adequate sense of belonging and inclusion as an immigrant, even within progressive political movements. That reduced his sense of belonging even among those segments of US society he genuinely aspired to belong.

But Wei confronted an even more visible ceiling when he moved with his two-year old daughter and wife to Arizona so she could get a Ph.D in Accounting and he could obtain a Ph.D. in Sociology.

Concerned he would continue to confront barriers to upward socio-economic mobility if he pursued an academic position in the US even after earning a bachelors from China and two bachelors, a J.D., and a Ph.D from the US, he reasoned that after 15 years of immigrating that he would be able to contribute more to society as a professor in China. As he reflected upon why everyone in his family gave up immigrating, he spoke of how “all of my family members ran into things that made our American dreams delusional.” Since research cited earlier suggests that having a high level of education, being married, and having children in the migrant-host society are all strongly associated with the probability of immigrating, Wei represents a strikingly “least likely case” of an immigrant confronting socio-economic obstacles to upward mobility and becoming an ex-immigrant.

Others began to recognize that their cultural capital remained a liability and a handicap in how productive they could be abroad compared to China. Bo, the photojournalist, migrated to Canada when he was 29 and at first believed that his ability to earn income with his camera skills was a definite strength. It allowed him to evade the cultural and language barriers that limited how much other immigrants could contribute to their host society. However over time, he realized that:

Bo evoked how, by migrating abroad, much of the education that immigrants had acquired as children, in fact, became a liability and was wasted in a social context in which it had little value. By returning, Bo could suddenly capitalize on both his Chinese and foreign education in a society where both were more highly valued than in Canada. In sum, if racial-ethnic discrimination limits upward socio-economic mobility to such an extent that migrant-origin society offers more economic freedom and opportunity than “countries of immigrants,” many will give up immigrating, despite any sunk costs they had incurred. Visa policy and bureaucratic procedures further magnify such occupational immobility intersectionally, making legal immigration even less desirable for those who wanted a fulfilling and meaningful caree.

Conclusion: Ex-Immigrant Subjectivity Formation as a Case of Other Identity Changes

This research offers a biographical and processual perspective of how formerly aspiring immigrants become ex-immigrants. Information about why aspiring immigrants give up on immigrating also contributes to the broader social science literature about subjectivity formation in other domains of social life like marriage, jobs, education, and group membership. In these domains, the individuals have also devoted themselves to a certain life project, and have become attached to its success and the identity they have developed in association with the project. Yet if immigrants cumulatively confront the above social forces over time, many will eventually cut their losses and abandon those projects along with the social ties associated with them.

Exiting from life projects in other domains is both different from and similar to abandoning immigration, however. For example, “uncoupling” [Vaughan Reference Vaughan1986: 7-9] or the dissolution of a romantic relationship, is a similarly formative experience redefining an individual’s identity. This type of loss also leads to a transformed identity with respect to emotional affect, attachment, and support provided by others. As in the formation of ex-immigrant subjectivity, relationship dissolution transforms the social relationships of the subject. As with the decision not to immigrate, the process is typically initially only known to the closest friends of those separating. Those who are less close only realize what is happening much later. The phenomenon is also asymmetrical insofar as the “initiator” of the dissolution, like the ex-immigrant, makes the first move to exit the relationship.

However, abandoning immigration is different from uncoupling in that the ex-immigrant is not breaking off ties with another person but with a whole society. This may make the process easier since separated individuals often do not leave their physical communities and therefore maintain more of their prior ties. Yet this can make it more costly because whatever benefits are associated with inhabiting the society may not be recoverable. Compared to ex-immigrants, those exiting relationships more frequently face the challenge of redefining and self-validating their new uncoupled identities more outside of the partnership to others that see them as changed.

Another related yet distinct analog to ex-immigrant subjectivity is what happens when an individual converts from one religion or leaves a changing political party. This is also related to a group identity, even though it is subnational. For example, like ex-immigrants, those who lose religious faith often experience intense loss [Zuckerman Reference Zuckerman2015: 155] and lack the affective bonds and intensive interactions with those in the religious group that facilitate conversion and retention [Stark and Finke Reference Stark and Finke2000]. A person about to give up a religion (or a political party or any group that involves conformity in personal belief) can also suffer a loss of friends and experience cognitive dissonance in saying things they do not actually believe, particularly if the group suddenly changes over time. They often also witness behavior by religious leaders they deem immoral but did not notice before [Zuckerman Reference Zuckerman2015: 89]. Similarly, many formerly aspiring immigrants begin to recognize negative aspects of their host society that causes them to question immigrating. As the narratives above demonstrate, those who give up immigrating also experience a similar type of cognitive dissonance as those frustrated with changes in their religion, their political party, or another group––either between what they believed about migrant-receiving countries and what they discover after arriving there or due to the way the society’s character changes while they are there.

However, the subjectivity of leaving a macro-social group is also different from the formation of ex-immigrant subjectivity in that the subject in the former case often continues to live in the same physical area. Those who leave social groups still occasionally confront the former group members as an ex-member. They frequently become alienated by family and friends [ibid.: 71]. This can be socially and cognitively toxic or draining for them, particularly if former group members ostracize them or designate them as a traitor. Yet ex-immigrants are not only giving up their social ties to the migrant-receiving society. They also typically move away from others in the group they formerly belonged to. They often have family in the country of migrant origin. Therefore, they do not have to so frequently confront group members or relive any trauma or cognitive dissonance associated with the experience as a former group member. Furthermore, becoming an ex-immigrant does not necessarily involve changing one’s ideological beliefs or behavioral practices as much as religious conversion or changing one’s political party does.

Ultimately, ex-immigrant subjectivity then constitutes a case of how individuals give up a social identity. Yet, although many social scientists have extensively documented the sacrifices that migrants make to become part of immigrant-receiving societies and have studied return migrants as a general population, far fewer have theorized what it subjectively means for someone to give up immigrating. Further research into how ex-immigrant subjectivity forms could potentially contribute additional sociological insights into how identity forms in distinct different social domains and vice versa.

One limitation of this study is that some of my participants may have been unwilling to discuss certain negative and deeply personal experiences from the recent past. This sometimes appeared to be the case with issues like navigating gender norms, relationship break-ups, acknowledging an individual’s failure to achieve their goals, or traumatic changes in familial relations. In terms of the scope conditions for the study, the experiences of the ex-immigrants quoted here are also not necessarily generalizable to migrants from other nation-states, especially those whose societies of origin have tragically become embroiled in civil war or that suffer from so much rampant life-threatening crime that they arrive in migrant-receiving societies with a desperate state of mind or seeking refuge. Yet, since historically most scholars of migration have focused on how migrants endure all the obstacles to their immigration or return migrants who never intended to immigrate, we have until now relatively less knowledge of those that change their minds about immigrating into migrant-receiving societies. The above accounts of ex-immigrants reveal how social forces and factors in “countries of immigration” result in many deciding not to immigrate. Although ex-immigrants’ experiences have previously received less attention from scholars than those of immigrants, greater knowledge about them is just as important if we are to empirically understand how immigrants are different from ex-immigrants, and more deeply appreciate the sociological complexity and importance of immigration as a phenomenon.