1 Hollifield, James F., “The politics of international migration: how can we ‘bring the state back in’?” in Brettell, Caroline B. and Hollifield, James F. (eds.), Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 183–237Google Scholar.

2 Hollifield, James F., “The emerging migration state,” International Migration Review, Vol. 38, No. 3 (2004), pp. 885–912CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Weiner, Myron, “Ethics, national sovereignty and the control of immigration,” International Migration Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1996), pp. 171–97CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

3 Delgado-Wise, Raúl and Covarrubias, Humberto Márquez, “The reshaping of Mexican labour export under NAFTA,” International Migration Review, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2007), pp. 656–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Guarnizo, Luis Eduardo, “The emergence of a transnational social formation and the mirage of return migration among Dominican transmigrants,” Identities, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1997), pp. 281–322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Koslowski, Rey, Migration and Citizenship in World Politics: From Nation-states to European Polity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Money, Jeanette, Fences and Neighbors: The Geography of Immigration Control (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

6 Huang, Hui, “Overseas studies and the rise of foreign capital in China,” International Sociology, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2002), pp. 35–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and LaFargue, Thomas E., China's First Hundred: Educational Mission Students in the United States, 1872–1881 (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

7 Li, Cheng, “The status and characteristics of foreign-educated returnees in the Chinese leadership,” China Leadership Monitor (Hoover Institute, Stanford University), No.16 (2005)Google Scholar.

8 Watson, Jeanne and Lippitt, Ronald, “Cross-cultural experience as a source of attitude change,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution (March 1958), pp. 61–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Sears, David, “Political socialization,” in Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson W. (eds.), Handbook of Political Science (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975)Google Scholar, and Sigel, Roberta, Political Learning in Adulthood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

10 Fewsmith, Joseph and Rosen, Stanley, “The domestic context of Chinese foreign policy: does ‘public opinion’ matter,” in Lampton, David M. (ed.), The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), p.155Google Scholar.

11 Almond, Gabriel A., The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1957)Google Scholar.

12 Lampton, David M., “Introduction,” in Lampton, The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security PolicyGoogle Scholar.

13 “Classic” countries of immigration were founded, populated and built by immigrants in modern times, including the US, Canada and Australia. “Reluctant” countries of immigration have some experience with immigrants but deny officially that they are countries of immigration, such as France, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. “Latecomers” had no notable immigration after the Second World War, but now import many immigrants because of negative demographic trends. These countries include Japan, Spain, Italy and South Korea. Cornelius, Wayne A., Tsuda, Takeyuki, Martin, Philip L. and Hollifield, James F. (eds.), Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

14 The funding for the study of returnees from Japan came from the Hong Kong office of the Japan External Trade Office, while the Canadian research was supported by the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada in Vancouver.

15 http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/9000/90766/90882/6622888.html, 26 March 2009.

16 The UK has received a very large number of MA students in the past few years and most have returned. Thus the UK may now have trained more returnees than any other country.

17 Converse, Philip E., “The nature of belief systems in the mass publics,” in Apter, David (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

18 Feldman, Stanley, “Structure and consistency in public opinion: the role of core beliefs and values,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1988), pp. 416–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Feldman, Stanley and Steenbergen, Marco, “The humanitarian foundations of public support for social welfare,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2001), pp. 658–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Hurwitz, Jon and Peffley, Mark, “How are foreign policy attitudes structured? A hierarchical model,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 81, No. 4 (1987), pp. 1099–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurwitz, Jon, Peffley, Mark and Seligson, Mitchell A., “Foreign policy belief systems in comparative perspective: the United States and Costa Rica,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1993), pp. 245–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Chanley, Virginia A., “US public views of international involvement from 1964 to 1993,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 43, No. 1 (1999), pp. 23–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wittkopf, Eugene R., Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

21 Maggiotto, Michael A. and Wittkopf, Eugene R., “American public attitudes toward foreign policy,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1981), p. 610CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Chanley, “US public views of international involvement,” p. 25.

23 Scheve, Kenneth and Slaughter, Matthew, “What determines individual trade-policy preferences?” Journal of International Economics, Vol. 54, No. 2 (2001), pp. 267–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Fordham, Benjamin O., “Economic interests and public support for American global activism,” International Organization, Vol. 62, No. 1 (2008), pp. 163–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Zaller, John, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Watson and Lippitt, “Cross-cultural experience as a source of attitude change.”

27 Zweig, David, Fung, Chung Siu and Vanhonacker, Wilfried, “Rewards of technology: explaining China's reverse migration,” Journal of International Migration and Integration, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2006), pp. 449–71Google Scholar.

28 The original question is “Indicate your personal feelings towards some foreign countries, from −5 (most unfavourable) to 5 (most favourable).” To make our returnees' data consistent with the Global View 2006 scale, we made these changes: if the original value was x, the value after transformation was y, where y was equal to (x + 5) x 10.

29 Peffley, Mark and Hurwitz, Jon, “International events and foreign policy beliefs: public response to changing Soviet–US relations,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 36, No. 2 (1992), pp. 431–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 We defined middle class as total household income above 50,000 yuan in 2005 before taxes.

31 In China, the survey adopted a stratified multi-stage probability, proportional to size, random sample. As a result, the Chinese sample was representative of all adults nationwide aged 18 or older. All 31 provinces were divided into three strata, according to their geographic location and their Human Development Index. Illiterate individuals or those with no formal education were excluded. The survey was carried out between 10 and 26 July 2006 and yielded 2,000 responses. The data were retrieved from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Michigan, ICPSR04650-v1.

32 These findings were statistically significant at the .05 level.

33 We borrow the concept “assertive nationalism” from Whiting, Allen S., “Chinese nationalism and foreign policy after Deng,” The China Quarterly, No. 142 (1995), pp. 295–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Maggiotto and Wittkopf, “American public attitudes toward foreign policy,” p. 610.

35 Whiting, “Chinese nationalism and foreign policy.”

36 Michel Oksenberg, “China's confident nationalism,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 65, No. 3 (1986), pp. 501–23.

37 The p-values of the F-test, 0.3077 and 0.103 respectively, are not statistically significant.

38 The p-value of the F-test is 0.166 and 0.00 for these two questions, respectively.

39 For “co-operative internationalism,” we coded “strongly agree” as 5 and “strongly disagree” as 1 and then added the responses to the two questions which formed the concept. Ten reflected the strongest support, while 0 reflected the least support. We adopt the same method for assertive nationalism. However, as there are four questions measuring assertive nationalism, we add the four responses together and then divide the result in half. So 10 again reflects the most nationalistic, while 0 is the least nationalistic. We thank the Survey Research Center of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and Yanjie Bian, for providing the data. Funds were provided by a Central Allocation Grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (CA03/04.HSS01), HKUST and Renmin University of China.

40 This survey uses a multi-stage stratified sampling scheme with unequal probabilities.

41 The scale used in the GSS survey was 4 point, not 5. So we multiplied the sum of the responses to our measures of co-operative nationalism by 1.25. With four questions in our concept of assertive nationalism, we multiply the sum of assertive nationalism questions by 1.25 and then by 0.5. As a result, the scale of both concepts runs from 0 to 10. One question measuring assertive nationalism – “To protect our country's national interests, we could use military force if necessary” (use military) – does not appear in the GSS data, so instead we used the responses to another statement: “Some international power tries to contain China's development and rise.”

42 Combing GSS data and CSCSE data on returnees together, further regression analysis finds that country destination (Japan and Canada) is statistically significant (p < 0.05) in the model of assertive nationalism and co-operative internationalism, controlling the effects of age, gender, education, income, years living overseas, political interest and Party membership.

43 Johnston, Alastair Iain, “Chinese middle class attitudes towards international affairs: nascent liberalization?” The China Quarterly, No. 179 (2004), pp. 603–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Nye, Joseph S. Jr., “The decline of America's soft power,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 3 (2004), pp. 16–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy.

46 Lippmann, Walter, The Phantom Public (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993)Google Scholar, and Lippmann, Walter, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

47 Fewsmith and Rosen, “The domestic context of Chinese foreign policy.”