Higher Education As an Immigration Path for Chinese Students and Scholars
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The Qualitative Report Volume 9 Number 3 Article 8 9-1-2004 Higher Education as an Immigration Path for Chinese Students and Scholars Bangchen Pang Arizona State University, [email protected] Nicholas Appleton Arizona State University Follow this and additional works at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr Part of the Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, and the Social Statistics Commons Recommended APA Citation Pang, B., & Appleton, N. (2004). Higher Education as an Immigration Path for Chinese Students and Scholars. The Qualitative Report, 9(3), 500-527. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2004.1921 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Qualitative Report at NSUWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Qualitative Report by an authorized administrator of NSUWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Higher Education as an Immigration Path for Chinese Students and Scholars Abstract The purposes of this study were to identify and describe the factors that influenced the choices made yb mainland Chinese students and scholars to come to the United States, to identify and describe the factors that influenced their settlement in the United States, and ot identify and describe the role that higher education played in this process. An explanatory multiple case study design was used as the basic strategy for the study. In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted to describe, from the participants perspective, the factors that influenced their successful immigration to the United States. The participants were a convenience sample of 10 Chinese immigrants from mainland China selected from several Chinese professional and social organizations in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. The participants were of different genders, professions, and ages. Keywords Higher Education, Chinese Immigration, Chinese Students and Scholars Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. This article is available in The Qualitative Report: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol9/iss3/8 The Qualitative Report Volume 9 Number 3 September 2004 500-527 http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR9-3/pang.pdf Higher Education as an Immigration Path for Chinese Students and Scholars Bangchen Pang and Nicholas Appleton Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA The purposes of this study were to identify and describe the factors that influenced the choices made by mainland Chinese students and scholars to come to the United States, to identify and describe the factors that influenced their settlement in the United States, and to identify and describe the role that higher education played in this process. An explanatory multiple case study design was used as the basic strategy for the study. In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted to describe, from the participant’s perspective, the factors that influenced their successful immigration to the United States. The participants were a convenience sample of 10 Chinese immigrants from mainland China selected from several Chinese professional and social organizations in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. The participants were of different genders, professions, and ages. Key words: Higher Education, Chinese Immigration, Chinese Students and Scholars Consistent with earlier findings, the participants in this study were highly qualified students and scholars from the top educational institutions in China. Factors influencing their decisions to immigrate to the United States included lack of professional opportunities, recurrent intrusion of the state into individuals’ lives, the residual mistrust of intellectuals, and related political instability. For most of the participants the immigration process was long, difficult, and stressful. The participants faced many difficulties and hardships, including financial, emotional, social, and academic. Many changed their majors or took multiple degrees to enhance their prospects of finding a job that would enable them to stay in the United States. Immigration has been a vital element in the development of the history of the United States. The fact that the United States continues to receive substantial inflows of immigrants remains a feature that distinguishes this nation from all other countries of the world. In the 1970's and early 1980's, the United States legally admitted twice as many immigrants in absolute numbers as did all of the remaining nations of the world combined (Briggs, 1984). During the last decade, the Chinese-American community increased by almost 800,000 nationwide due to a continuous stream of immigration. Many of these immigrants were professionals, students, and scholars. Since the late 1970’s, sending students and scholars abroad to earn degrees and conduct research has been an integral part of China’s policy of upgrading its educational systems and obtaining the professional manpower necessary to meet the goals of modernization. More than ever before, large numbers of students and scholars were sent to Western Europe, Japan, and the United States for advanced studies and training (Guangming 501 The Qualitative Report September 2004 Daily, Sept. 22, 1989). In the early years, candidates tended to be middle-aged or older, and were drawn mainly from national-echelon higher education institutions, the best quality institutions in China. Later, more and younger graduates, as well as undergraduate students were sent. The United States has consistently been the country of choice in China's practice of studying abroad, and three quarters of the total Chinese students overseas were believed to be in the United States (Reed, 1985). Many tens of thousands of students and scholars poured into the United States in a period of less than a decade. Many students sought to stay in the United States, and many of these were the top of the line scholars, selected for foreign study by China's most prestigious scientific, academic, and government institutions (Orleans, 1988). For those, who studied or were still studying in the United States and other foreign countries, various means were sought to extend their stays or to seek permanent residency in the host countries. Factors that influenced Chinese students to remain in the United States included low incomes, poor living standards, and lack of professional opportunities in China. Other factors included the recurrent intrusion of the state into individuals' lives, the residual mistrust of intellectuals, and related political instability (Orleans, 1988). The new path of immigration for mainland Chinese (beginning with the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1978) has been higher education. Of about 80,000 Chinese students and scholars, who came to the United States and other Western countries between 1979 and 1989, only 26,000 returned to China (Orleans, 1989a). In 1994 alone, 49,000 mainland Chinese were given permanent resident status by the United States government under the Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992 (Zweig & Chen, 1995). Most of the students and scholars found jobs and settled in the United States. While some of the reasons for immigration are known, the story of the modern day Chinese immigrants is largely untold. The literature does not reveal the circumstances that lead to a decision for these students and scholars to choose to come to the United States for higher education. Nor does it describe what influenced them to decide to stay in the United States. Since the United States allowed these students and scholars to come to this country to pursue higher education, it would be interesting to know what role higher education played in the immigration process. There is a complex mesh of causal factors responsible for human behavior. The causes for any human behavior are multiple and interrelated. The purposes of this study were to identify and describe the factors that influenced the choice made by mainland Chinese students and scholars to come to the United States, to identify and describe the factors that influenced their settlement in the United States, and to identify and describe the role that higher education played in this process. By identifying and assessing the forces acting upon a particular group of Chinese individuals, this study sought to analyze the causes of immigration of Chinese students and scholars and find out what factors influenced their immigration process. Research Design One reason to employ a qualitative research design is to obtain greater clarity behind an existing data set or phenomenon. That is, to obtain in-depth information, to promote discussion, and to bring a level of understanding, previously missing from the literature or quantitative data gathering process, what Eisner calls the “enlightened eye” (Eisner, 1991). Bangchen Pang and Nicholas Appleton 502 An explanatory collective case study design was used as the basic strategy for advancing understanding of the factors that influenced the lives of the mainland Chinese students and scholars. In general, explanatory case studies are the preferred strategy when "how" or "why" questions are being posed, when the investigator has little control over events, and when the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within some real-life context (Yin, 1994). The case studies offered the advantage of a detailed investigation of the thoughts and circumstances of particular individuals in a particular setting. Case studies are of value because they can highlight