Research report: Privileged yet precarious postdoctoral becoming: A new materialist duo-ethnography of Chinese PhD returnees

A duo-ethnographic study of two Chinese PhD returnees working as postdoctoral researchers at elite universities in China finds that postdoctoral appointments can provide an aspirational yet precarious route back into domestic academia. The appointments carry hopes of being recognized as scholars, but that recognition may not arrive in time. They also expose returnees to uneven institutional recognition and everyday material supports that make continued academic work possible.

The researchers examined how two overseas-trained PhD holders experienced postdoctoral appointments after returning to China. This case-study focus addresses a gap in research on academic return migration, which has largely concentrated on returnees who secure faculty positions. Because the study follows only two people, its findings offer an in-depth qualitative account rather than a population-wide estimate or a demonstration that all Chinese PhD returnees face the same pressures.

Drawing on a new materialist assemblage perspective, the authors describe “postdoctoral becoming” as a process assembled through three interrelated elements. First, the postdoctoral appointment functions as a re-entry device that is simultaneously hopeful and insecure. For the participants, it represented a possible step toward recognition as an established scholar while preserving uncertainty about whether that recognition would materialize in time.

The study reports these aspirations and fears, not measured career outcomes for either participant. Second, the analysis identifies infrastructures of partial legibility and uneven recognition. Under these conditions, the returnees’ academic presence becomes visible only in fragments, while their transnational academic capital remains subject to domestic re-certification.

The findings therefore do not support describing the return as a straightforward conversion of overseas credentials into domestic advantage. Instead, overseas training and experience must gain recognition through the institutions where the participants work, making academic re-entry contingent and uneven. Third, ordinary objects and daily routines provide affective-material support.

Mundane elements of the workplace help the postdoctoral researchers sustain academic work amid ongoing precarity. The study frames these ordinary supports as part of the process by which an academic future becomes possible, deferred and unevenly maintained. The analysis does not establish that a particular object or routine caused a particular professional result; it identifies them as practical and emotional resources embedded in the participants’ working lives.

Overall, the study portrays the postdoctoral trajectory of overseas-trained Chinese PhD returnees as neither a linear process of reintegration nor a simple transfer of international credentials into stable domestic status. Postdoctoral appointments may open scholarly possibilities while retaining insecurity, and recognition is negotiated through institutional structures that do not make overseas experience fully legible. The detailed account of two returnees at elite universities highlights how aspiration, institutional recognition and ordinary working practices interact, while its narrow qualitative scope limits broader generalization.

Subject of Research: Postdoctoral re-entry experiences of two Chinese PhD returnees at elite universities

Article Title: Privileged yet precarious postdoctoral becoming: A new materialist duo-ethnography of Chinese PhD returnees

Article References: Yuan, B., Lu, L., & Yan, D. (2026). Privileged yet precarious postdoctoral becoming: A new materialist duo-ethnography of Chinese PhD returnees. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-026-01762-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10734-026-01762-7

Keywords: academic migration, Chinese PhD returnees, postdoctoral appointments, higher education, academic precarity, scholarly recognition, duo-ethnography, new materialism, academic credentials, career uncertainty, Privileged, precarious