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Reflection on Contrasts Between External Changes and Internal Transformations

This note captures a core contradiction in a homecoming experience: Ten years after undergraduate graduation, the author returns home for the first time after the pandemic and witnesses dramatic external changes—hometown infrastructure renovated multiple times, county town vastly expanded, commercial areas approaching first-tier city living standards—yet the surrounding people seem to remain frozen in states from years ago: similar living environments, dietary habits, ways of thinking, conversation topics, and depth of professional understanding. Simultaneously, the author feels both anxious and confused about their own degree of change: dietary preferences, interests, career and life understanding, even estrangement from their own past writings and previous activities—all pointing to profound identity reconstruction.

This contrast touches on an important but underexplored issue in migration and homecoming research: how do individuals reposition themselves when they experience geographic mobility and psychological transformation and then return to their point of origin? Research shows that migration is not merely geographic transition; it requires profound reconfiguration of the self, as individuals must readjust their identities based on new social, cultural, and economic realities. For returnees, there exists a rupture between who they now are and who people in their original community expect them to be, making it difficult for them to reintegrate into their origin community.

China’s rapid urbanization provides unique context for this phenomenon. In a relatively short period, it has profoundly transformed social structures, environmental conditions, and public health landscapes, generating complex psychological health challenges alongside economic growth. China is experiencing unprecedented urbanization. In 1978, China’s urban population constituted less than 18%; by 2015, it had surged to over 56%. This “compressed modernity” means that evolutionary changes occurring gradually in the Western world occur simultaneously across shorter timeframes in East Asian societies.

Key Insights

1. Homecoming Dilemma and Identity Rupture

Returnees frequently face the psychological reality of “home is no longer home.” According to International Organization for Migration research, when migrants return to their countries of origin, the reintegration process is determined by multiple factors: the length of time spent abroad, the originally planned duration of departure, the degree of maintaining family and social network connections in the country of origin, the degree of integration in the host country, and structural factors such as housing and employment. The author’s mention of feeling “estranged from writings composed years ago and activities once participated in” resonates with research findings on compromised identity continuity.

Research on Chinese rural migrants reveals they “also cannot return home because they lack agricultural skills and no longer adapt to rural life.” This “double dislocation”—unable to fully integrate into cities yet unable to return to hometowns—describes the situation of many internal migrants. During migration, people learn and adopt new skills, experiences, and norms that shape and enrich their lives. This also means their identities have changed, with many maintaining transnational identities combining elements of both past and present.

2. Asymmetry Between Individual Change Speed and Social Environmental Change Speed

The paradox the author observes—external infrastructure transforming dramatically while people’s internal changes remain minimal—reflects an important distinction in development studies: the desynchronization between material modernization and psychological modernization. Chinese internal migrants face social exclusion based on hukou (household registration) rather than race; they experience differences in language (particularly colloquial speech and dialect), values, and lifestyles, though potentially to a lesser degree than transnational migrants.

Social change theorists point out that individuals perceive, experience, and respond to the impacts of social change based on certain social-psychological processes. How social change is perceived, experienced, and acted upon by individuals, and how these responses affect human development. The anxiety the author experiences may stem from temporal dislocation: the individual has undergone accelerated self-transformation (through education, career, urban living), while the origin community evolves along a slower trajectory.

3. Philosophical and Psychological Dimensions of Personal Identity Continuity and Change

Identity research distinguishes between numerical identity and qualitative identity. Understanding how people think about change over time and their future selves involves a third way of thinking about identity, called personal continuity. Personal continuity is neither an all-or-nothing numerical identity judgment about persistence, nor a simple calculation of subjective similarity between persons at two time points. Rather, beliefs about personal continuity involve continuous judgments about the extent to which characteristics defining a person persist over time.

The author’s experience of feeling “estranged from writings composed years ago” corresponds to what research terms the “temporal identity integration” issue. Temporal identity integration, also called self-continuity or continuous identity, is a specific aspect of identity integration that captures the degree of connection between a person’s past, present, and future selves. Life-span research suggests that self-continuity may reflect not only objective age-related changes but also beliefs and expectations about developmental change. Research has identified an “end of history illusion,” where people report substantial past changes but expect the future to remain relatively stable.

4. Urbanization, Social Exclusion, and Mental Health in the Chinese Context

In the Chinese context, rapid urbanization creates unique mental health challenges. Research has found contradictory evidence regarding mental health comparisons between migrants and non-migrants, but there is strong evidence that social exclusion correlates negatively with migrant mental health: inability to access complete labor rights and experiences of social stigma, discrimination, and inequality are the most significant factors.

Using population density as a measure of urbanization, county-level population density appears to be a consistent, strong, and significant predictor of individual CES-D (depression) scores. However, urbanization supports mental health in the Chinese context, despite potentially undermining residents' mental health through reducing neighborhood social capital. The protective effects of neighborhood-level reciprocity and social group membership on mental health are strengthened with urbanization.

5. Identity Formation Theory: Continuity and Change Across the Lifespan

From a developmental psychology perspective, Marcia suggests cyclical periods of identity questioning and confusion as well as identity achievement in adulthood. At each adult developmental stage distinguished by Erikson, Marcia and colleagues found evidence of identity questioning and confusion. This means the confusion the author experiences is not abnormal but a normal part of identity reconstruction across the lifespan.

Research shows that core traits such as intellectual curiosity, empathy, loyalty, creativity, and moral commitment persist across decades, even as priorities shift toward family, health, community engagement, and mentorship. This research highlights the coexistence of personality continuity with adaptive transformation, demonstrating how early inclinations, ecological influences, and culturally rooted meaning-making jointly shape human development across the lifespan.

6. Reverse Culture Shock and Readaptation

While the concept of culture shock is widely known, reverse culture shock is less recognized. “Reverse culture shock” has not been as thoroughly recognized and understood as culture shock, partly because people are going home. So why does “going home” result in culture shock?

Returnees often expect their hometowns to be exactly as they were when they left. However, while you were abroad, various events and new developments altered the structure of your origin community. These natural changes may be shocking and disorienting upon return. The author’s observation of “the surrounding people seemingly not having changed much” may simultaneously reflect two realities: on one hand, the relative stability of the stationary community; on the other, the transformation of the returnee’s own perspective—they now measure “change” by different standards.

Existing research typically focuses on psychological and emotional challenges and identity reconstruction processes during migration, but rarely addresses readaptation stress and identity conflicts emerging after homecoming. This is precisely the core of the author’s experience: a tension between two versions of self—the past familiar self in the hometown and the current transformed self.

Open Questions

1. Underlying Mechanisms of Temporal Dislocation and Intergenerational Understanding: When individuals experience accelerated change while origin communities evolve along slower trajectories, how does this temporal dislocation affect intergenerational transmission, social cohesion, and collective memory formation? Does a “critical velocity” exist, beyond which the psychological gap between individuals and their origin communities becomes irreparable?

2. Dynamic Balance of Multiple Identities and Psychological Resilience: For those shuttling between multiple cultural or social environments, what form of “core self” maintenance most benefits psychological health and adaptive capacity? Is it possible to cultivate a “fluid identity” capability, enabling flexible switching between different environments without experiencing rupture or distortion? How might this capability be reconciled with the traditional sense of “rootedness”?