Between Aspiration and Reality: Career Trajectories and Cross-Cultural Challenges of Chinese Doctoral Candidates in Malaysian Universities

Abstract

This study focuses on Chinese doctoral students in Malaysian universities, exploring the formation and adjustment mechanisms of career aspirations and actual career trajectories. Using a qualitative case study approach, three-stage in-depth interviews were conducted with eight participants in the final stages of or recently graduated from their doctoral programs. The study found that 62.5% of participants ultimately chose to return to China for career development. Visa policy uncertainties, local hiring preferences, and degree recognition concerns constitute multidimensional structural constraints, while filial piety ethics, cultural belonging, and geographic embeddedness of social networks reinforce return migration trends from a cultural dimension. The study proposes the concept of "relational autonomy" to elucidate career agency within collectivist cultures and identifies the "similarity trap" mechanism to explain the misleading role of cultural proximity, providing empirical evidence for the design of career support systems for international doctoral students and the optimization of immigration policies.