Winner or loser: urban work experience and rural labour occupational change after return migration

Recent decades have witnessed return migration of rural labour. Whether urban work experience could help return migrant rural labour engaged in non-agricultural employment and archive career development? In this article, we employ 2014 China Labor Dynamic Survey (CLDS) data set to investigate the effect of outgoing working experience on return migrated labour's non-agricultural occupational change. This article indicates that, compared with agricultural employment, return migrated labour is more inclined to engage in waged employment than remaining village labour. What's more, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between outside working time and non-agricultural employment preference. Based on the above research, this article puts forward relevant policy recommendations.