Beyond the leaving threshold: Care staying, disability and constrained transitions to adulthood in China

Research on transitions from care to adulthood has focused primarily on care leavers, with less attention to young people who remain in care beyond the formal leaving threshold. This article examines three care-experienced young adults in China who aged over 18, no longer in formal education, and still living in institutional care. Drawing on a narrative-informed, idiographic qualitative design nested within a wider dataset, it uses in-depth interviews conducted in Mandarin in 2021 and analyses them through reflexive thematic analysis informed by a disability-informed structural lens. The findings suggest that continued residence in care is better understood as an ambivalent and uneven transition position rather than as simple reluctance to leave. The analysis identifies three interrelated themes: staying in care as both security and constraint; impairment, health, and uneven possibilities for leaving; and stigma, low expectations, and constrained adult futures. Across the three cases, the institution provided forms of support that was difficult to replace elsewhere, including housing, routine, proximate care, and, in some cases, work, while also narrowing practical and imagined pathways out of care. The article offers empirical insight into an underexplored group and makes a conceptual contribution to understanding care staying in the Chinese context.