From precarious employment to self-employment: agency and adaptation among China’s internal return migrants

Migrant workers often experience job mobility and employment instability, making their work inherently vulnerable and insecure. For some, self-employment offers reprieve, providing greater control over working conditions and creating long-term stability. Drawing on qualitative research in Shu County, Anhui Province, an interior labor sending region, this study examines how the migration histories of return migrants shape their transition to becoming self-employed. This research reveals an interplay between individual agency and four structural constraints: household responsibilities, local political-economic structure, social embeddedness and institutional frameworks. Participants exhibited three forms of agency—reactive, proactive, and challenged—in navigating these constraints. These forms emerge dynamically through negotiation with accumulated migration capital, life circumstances and local conditions. However, self-employment in low-industrialized interior counties often perpetuates vulnerabilities such as instability, limited growth and market susceptibility, challenging romanticized narratives of entrepreneurship. While migrants exercise strategic agency, county-level constraints such as shrinking consumer bases and weak institutional support create structural limits on sustainability. This research demonstrates that self-employment is not simply a matter of empowerment or constraint, but rather a contested terrain where individual capacities and county-specific political economies dynamically interact. It offers a nuanced understanding of return migration in contemporary China.