Return Migration Around the World: An Integrated Agenda for Future Research

Abstract

Currently, two distinct bodies of scholarship address the increased volume and diversity of global return migration since the mid-1990s. The economic sociology of return, which assumes that return is voluntary, investigates how time living and working abroad affects returnees’ labor market opportunities and the resulting implications for economic development. A second scholarship, the political sociology of return, recognizing the increasing role of both emigration and immigration states in controlling and managing migration, examines how state and institutional actors in countries of origin shape the reintegration experiences of deportees, rejected asylum seekers, and nonadmitted migrants forced home. We review these literatures independently, examining their research questions, methodologies, and findings, while also noting limitations and areas where additional research is needed. We then engage these literatures to provide an integrated path forward for researching and theorizing return migration—a synergized resource mobilization framework.