Since the 1990s, the United States has been increasingly hosting large numbers of foreign students in its higher education sector and continues to accommodate these skilled college graduates in its job market. When international students graduate, they can transition from an international student to a skilled migrant. Yet their decision-making process to stay in the receiving country (the United States), to return to sending countries, or to move on to another country, at different stages of such transition period, is not presently understood. This dissertation examines the experiences of these “migrants in transition period” when they face the “to return or to stay” choices under structural and institutional forces from the sending and receiving countries. This research adopts the conceptual framework of human capital, social capital, and cultural capital, to investigate how social capital and cultural capital impact the economic outcomes of migrants’ human capital under different societal contexts, and how migrants in the transition period cope with such situations and develop their stay or return plans accordingly. It further analyzes their decision-making process for return during this transition period. The empirical study of this dissertation investigates contemporary Chinese student migrants and skilled migrants from People’s Republic of China to the United States, as well as Chinese returnees who returned to China after graduation with a US educational degree. Findings reveal the impact of social and cultural capitals in shaping career experiences of skilled Chinese migrants, and also explore their mobility and the decision-makings of such movement of talent.

There are many different approaches to the analysis of regional economic growth potential. One of the more recent is the theory of the creative class, and its impact on creative centers. Much of the criticism surrounding this theory is in how the creative class is defined and measured. The goal of this thesis is to explore alternate definitions to better understand how these variations impact the ranking of creative centers as well as their location through space and time. This is important given the proliferation of rankings as a benchmarking tool for economic development efforts. In order to test the sensitivity that the creative class has to definitional changes, a new set of rankings of creative centers are provided based on an alternate definition of creative employment, and compared to Richard Florida's original rankings. Findings show that most cities are not substantially affected by the alternate definitions derived in this study. However, it is found that particular cities do show sensitivity to comparisons made to Florida's definition, with the same cities experiencing greater variations in rank over time.