Chinese university graduates' reflexivity on social networking during first-job search

Abstract

With rapid massification of the Chinese higher education system, there has been increasing difficulties and uncertainties in graduate employment. Meanwhile, persistent usage of social networking has been found among Chinese graduates during first-job search. Previous research largely overlooked the graduates’ subjective factors behind such practices and failed to contextualize first-job seeking in their education-to-work transition or to address new trends of online networking. This study aims to examine graduates’ agency behind social networking during first-job search. It takes the morphogenesis duality view about structure and agency and uses “reflexivity” as the conceptual framework. Specifically, it investigates how the individual graduate constructs first-job seeking project, inclusive of social networking action, through internal conversation he/she takes with the self to consider the confronted contexts in relation to his/her personal concerns and vice versa. Forty-six final-year undergraduates in Shanghai were interviewed in-depth about their internal conversation throughout the first-job search. Using each participant’s detailed recalled inner deliberations as a case, an exploratory sequential multiple-case study was conducted, where each case was analyzed through the conceptual framework and then put in comparison with all its precedent cases. The findings form three propositions. The first and major one is: The participants exercised four different dominant reflexive modes, and the exercise of each mode generated distinct patterns of job seeking and social networking, involving a distinct approach toward context perception, concern deliberation, and project construction. The four modes are named the mobility-oriented, the stability-oriented, the consensus-oriented, and the value-oriented. The second proposition is: A participant could simultaneously exercise dominant and recessive reflexivity, while the former suppressed the latter and kept it incomplete. The efficacy of recessive reflexivity on project construction depended on how compatible it was with the dominant mode. The last proposition is: A participant could transit from one dominant mode to another when an exogenous or endogenous reason initiated the collapse of the previous mode and there followed continuous and consistent experiences agreeable to the new mode. This study enriches knowledge about Chinese graduates’ social networking for first-job search by bringing back the previously missing agents and their education-to-work transition contexts. The four dominant reflexive modes and mode dynamics emerged from the data can facilitate more holistic and diverse understandings of Chinese graduates’ practices when put in dialogue with previous research. This study also brings insights to revisit the theory of reflexivity. Different modes of reflexivity are argued to form the structures of agency that shape the directions and frameworks through which individuals perceive external contexts and personal concerns in relation to create projects. In addition, reflexivity is argued to emphasize the “direction” aspect of human agency rather than the conventionally taken “capacity” aspect attached to presumed purposes. In practice, this study can also shed light on how higher education institutions in China can better assist their students in job search by having better knowledge about their agency. The thesis concludes with recommendations for further research.