Interview Target and Recruitment

The target population for the interviews was Chinese student migrants in Paris and those who returned to Shanghai after their studies. Interviewees were selected from Chinese students registered in the business schools and universities in through the help of university/business schools’ international relations, admission, alumni offices in Paris as well as via personal networks and online forums of Chinese students (for example, Rêve France). The interviewees (returnees) in Shanghai were found via business schools’ representation offices in China and various alumni, clubs/associations (including virtual online community, like Tigtag.com, SinoFrance.org) in Shanghai.

Below is a list of academic institutions in Paris where the interviewees have studied or are currently studying at (Table 4 and 6) and their respective number (at Table 5):

15 _{King's College London (ICAR) and University of Oxford (COMPAS), Researching migrant}

Table 4: Interviewees’ Academic Institutions by Types

Grandes Écoles and Business Schools

ESCP Europe ESSEC HEC INSEAD

Other Grandes Écoles

École Polytechnique Sciences Po Universities

Paris 9 Paris 11 Paris 13

(Source: Author’s Field research work)

Table 5: Number of Interviewees in Shanghai and Paris by School of Origin

(Source: Author’s Field research work)

Table 6: Other interviews:

Shanghai (5): Edu France, DAAD, Shanghai East China Normal University, Fudan University, Louis Vuitton (China)

Paris (5): Edu France, INSEAD, Sciences Po Career Service, Sciences Po (Asia Centre), ESCP Europe Career and Alumni Office

(Source: Author’s Field research work)

Considering the different strategies available for participant recruitment, the author was able to approach potential interviewees mainly through the help of universities and companies. This is also because of practical reasons. Most French alumni

Interview Location / School

ESSEC HEC ESCP

Europe INSEAD Univ. Paris Sciences Po École Polytechnique Total Shanghai 9 10 5 9 3 3 1 40 Paris (Graduates) 1 1 7 - 2 2 - 13 Paris (Current Student) - 1 3 1 1 1 - 7 Total 10 12 15 10 6 6 1 60

organisations are informal and not institutionalised. It was found that there was only one publicised French business school alumni association in Shanghai, advertised on the AsiaExpat website. The French case is not alone in Europe, there were only three European countries represented in Shanghai: UK, France and Belgium with only a handful of schools. Compared to Europe, US Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are very well represented, Cornell University even has two alumni associations, one for the university in general and another one specially for its business school. It is also interesting to see that both alumni networks of Canada and the UK are organised in conjunction with the respective consulate generals (education section) while all US universities/colleges are individually initiated. From Table 7, one can argue that there are relatively stronger pools of US alumni in Shanghai that are much more organised than their European counterparts and there is a need for European governments and HEIs to act and utilize the alumni resources in China.

Table 7: Publicly Advertised Alumni Clubs in Shanghai on That's Shanghai and AsiaExpat.com

USA UK France China Belgium Australia Canada

Brown Rutgers Alumni UK HEC CEIBS

VUB Brussels Grad. Alumni Network Can. Alumni Network

Columbia St Olaf Hull

Cornell Stanford Cambridge & Oxford Cornell GSB UC Berkeley Harvard UCLA MIT Chicago Northwestern USC Oberlin Wellesley Source: http://shanghai.asiaxpat.com/atoz.asp?cat=110&id=274 last checked 10 July 2007

Reed Wharton

NB: Both Alumni UK and Canadian Alumni Network in China (CANC) are umbrella organisations attached to the Consulate Generals

The ideal situation of interviewees’ recruitment would have been to rely on the access to the membership database of alumni organisations. In this case, a random selection of participants is to be used to ensure the quality of sample group. However, in reality the recruitment of interviewees proved not to be that easy. In the case of search for returnees in Shanghai, due to the lack of alumni organisations in Shanghai, contacts were directly made with the business schools headquarters in Paris and their representative offices in China. In recent years, French grandes écoles such as ESSEC and Sciences Po started to set up representative offices in China, either in Beijing or Shanghai to recruit students and develop contacts with local government, institutions and companies.

Three business schools’ China offices (ESSEC, INSEAD and Sciences Po) were contacted and all responded positively. After some clarifications with data protection, the author was given privileged access to their Chinese alumni database. For the other schools, names of individual alumni were provided by alumni office in the Paris headquarters. And afterwards, the author was able to generate more potential interviewees through the help of these contact points recommended by the Paris HQ. This technique of using the role of kinship and friendship in migration research is often labelled as the ‘snowballing effect’ to use the role of kinship and friendship in migration research (Cornelius 1982, Heer 1990), which are considered an important contributing factor in getting access and obtain more interviewees. Thus, a total of 93 interview candidates were listed and contacted, fortunately, 40 of them replied positively to the request and were later individually interviewed in Shanghai between April and July 2006.

At the early stage of interviewees search, the researcher also considered other methods, such as ‘cold calling’. It refers to interviewers calling on people (usually strangers) to ask if they are willing to be interviewed (Clifford and Valentine (2004). In this regard, the details of HR departments of major French companies in Shanghai were found in the directory of the French Chamber of Commerce. Then these HR Departments were contacted to ask if there are any Chinese returnees working in these companies. Although almost all HR Departments answered yes, but due to privacy or other reasons, access to these returnees was not granted and method of ‘cold calling’ was therefore not successful in this case. Krueger and Cassey (2000) ‘on-site

recruitment’ strategy was also considered as another way to get potential interviewees in student migrant – specific places such as China Town, Students Union etc. However, as this research focuses on a particular group of student migrants, i.e. those in business schools, and the time restraints of doing interviews both in Paris and Shanghai, this ‘on-site recruitment’ was not used, but replaced by direct contact with business schools.

The recruitment of interviewees in Paris mostly relied on the student / graduate databases of grandes écoles and individual contacts. Thanks to database of two grandes écoles, around 60 emails were sent to those alumni/students with an address or contact details in Paris or surrounding regions. Approximately half of them replied positively and eventually 20 candidates qualified agreed and were interviewed in Paris in between January and April 2007.

As Kitchin and Tate (2000) pointed out that interviewing requires quite a large commitment from the interviewees in terms of not only the time consumed but also the quantity of information they are giving. Therefore it is important to access participants as well as attract participants by convincing them the worth-worthy that it is (sensible and worthwhile) of joining in. This was done by the means of proper induction to the research project and prior contacts. The recruitment of potential interviewees was a very rewarding experience and both replies to interview requests and feedbacks after the interviews confirmed the lack of research on the topic of return migration and the interest and need for this research.