The Impact of Place Attractiveness and Social Supports on Internal Return Migration

The paper explores the return migration choice of graduates, which takes place during the transition from higher education to the labor market. Graduate students, after a short time in temporary migration to cities for studying, have to make a decision of returning back home or staying in migration in urban areas for working. Drawing on the mechanism identified in the literature on internal migration, this empirical research tests the effects of two factors: place attractiveness and social supports factors on graduates' decision to return migration to hometown. A binary logit regression analysis was conducted with data from 502 surveyed graduates in Hanoi, Vietnam. The analysis of the motives reported by graduates indicates that return migration decisions cannot be reduced to a single dimension. Perceived attractiveness of a region such as quality of living environment, job opportunities, and social context of individuals positively impact on student' decision to return migration after graduation. The research results imply that, in a collectivistic country like Vietnam, students' choice of future career is strongly influenced by their social context, and choosing a place to work is not simply a matter of earning a higher salary or enjoying better working conditions, but is also related to family issues.