Finding a place to call home: a cultural-cognitive analysis of youth settlement decisions in China

Against the backdrop of China’s promotion of Youth-Friendly Cities, this research addresses the core puzzle of how young people’s willingness to settle in a city is generated. It argues that prevailing studies, with their focus on objective socio-economic factors, have largely overlooked the subjective cultural mechanisms shaping these life-altering choices. Through in-depth interviews with 45 digitally articulated young adults who have experienced cross-regional mobility, this research has developed a process-oriented model that explains the dynamic construction of settlement decisions. The findings indicate that young people’s choices are guided not by a rational scan of all urban options, but by a personalized cultural toolkit forged from their life experience, group interactions, and local cultural logics. This decision-making process unfolds as a strategic negotiation between their toolkit and real-world structural constraints, a dynamic in which individuals pragmatically adjust strategies using mechanisms this research terms “tool reorganization” and “tool downgrading”. The final choices, often marked by contingency and compromise, are ultimately integrated into a coherent personal narrative that allows individuals to actively construct meaning and a sense of belonging. In elucidating the origins and application of this cultural toolkit, this research reveals how mobility and uncertainties trigger the chronic activation of discursive consciousness, compelling young people to agentively navigate their settlement trajectories. In this way, this study offers a new perspective on youth mobility and urban settlement.