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International student mobility, taking place within the framework of globalisation, internationalisation and transnationalism, has attained much attention. This paper adopts the Intellectual Migration framework to further our understanding of mobility regarding international higher education. It simultaneously studies China-born students in both China and North America to empirically examine the propensity for student mobility across national borders and the determining factors behind the realisation of such mobility under the same set of geopolitical and international circumstances. The analysis is based on a set of cross-sectional surveys conducted in the 2017–2019 period that yields over 1600 data points. We compare the 'who', 'why' and 'where' aspects of migration between domestic students in China and Chinese international students in North America to delineate the factors underlying international student mobility. By highlighting aspirations and capabilities on mobility outcomes, this paper contributes to differentiating mobility between undergraduate and graduate students and the implications for social inequality. Our analysis also reveals the unequal spatial distributions of educational resources between intellectual gateways and peripheries, and by extension between the Global North and the Global South. The findings of this paper have policy implications on improving the quality, accessibility, and equity of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'global race for talent' has drawn immense attention from academics, policy-makers and the media. China is on both sides of the race. On the one hand, rapid economic growth has created the opportunity for many affluent and middle-class families to send their children abroad for higher education while stimulating intense internal migration for education and/or career opportunities. On the other hand, to affirm its (re-)emergence as an economic giant, China has begun recruiting talent from abroad, gradually forsaking its traditional role as a brain-drain country to become an exemplar of brain circulation. This paper elaborates an 'intellectual migration' conceptual framework that asserts both higher-education and highly skilled migration is a dynamic process that occurs along a spectrum where migration stages intersect with life transitions. Arguing that intellectual migration should be analysed as a continuum, we provide evidence from our own empirical work and the literature to ascertain its relevancy and applicability to China at this juncture and suggest a more integrative approach to analysing the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]