Home Or Far Away:A Study On The Production Of Mobility And Job Selection Of The Post-90s Graduates From Small Cities

For a long time,class mobility in a society has been a hot topic in academic circles,and the mobility of college students based on job selection after graduation is actually an important part of class mobility.The motivation behind the mobility and choice of graduates is very important,and the non-economic reason is a topic to be explored.To explore the behavioral logic of graduates’ different choices,this paper takes as its research topic the non-economic reasons in the mobility and job selection of graduates who are from small cities: to return to their hometown or to move to big(ger)cities.The life course perspective goes beyond the long-term separation of macro and micro research.It not only pays attention to the macro social changes,but also pays more attention to the impact of individual life experience on individual life trajectory.It integrates the factors of individuals,society and history at the same time.Informed by the life course theory perspectives,this paper mainly does a qualitative research based on interview data obtained through semi-structured interviews and in-depth interviews,and based on a thorough analysis and discussion of the collected data,the paper constructs the production logic and job selection mechanism of the post-90 s graduates who are from small cities.This study holds that the different choices of “Hometown” and “bigger cities” made by post-90 s graduates are the result of combined multiple factors at the special graduation stage in the graduates’ life.The life track of any individual and group can not be separated from the influence of social and historical background.In their unique spacial and temporal situation,the post-90 s generation has displayed group characteristics different from those of other generations.The inter-generational characteristics in education,family structure and value orientation have become the preparatory conditions of their mobility choice;moreover,due to the continuity of life,the early life experience and family structure of an individual will have an important impact on their later life and personality shaping,thus affecting their degree of socialization and adult behavior choice,and indirectly affecting the post-90 s graduates’ mobilization;in addition,at the specific time node of the graduation period,some key events and turning points such as the correlation with the surrounding life,an crushing of ideals or the unexpected outbreak of the epidemic,may directly affect the mobility choice of graduates at this time.Due to the timing of life and the existence of social expectations,age and gender have also become important factors for graduates as human agency;finally,personal ability reveals the impact of internal forces on individual life trajectory.As a behavioral subject with independent initiative,the choice of graduates is also a highlight of subjective consciousness,which is the result of the individual’s active reflection on themselves on the basis of understanding the self.With an attempt to integrate different arguments in previous research,this paper focuses on the individual’s social structure and life course from the group background,and comprehensively analyze the mobility choices of the post-90 s graduates from a relatively micro and non-economic sense,so as to provide some references for graduates who are or will be making choices.