There is increasing evidence that migrants who return in later life to their country or region of origin have not always thought through the personal, practical, and social implications of their decisions. This timely book explores this neglected subject in an era of ageing and more mobile societies and contains ground-breaking studies of migration flows of older people in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe South Asia, and Australia, to explain how and why people in later life return to their country of origin.
The 1965 Immigration Act released a stream of immigration from Asia and Latin America that continues to shape the U.S. population composition. While some of these migrants promptly returned to their countries of origin, many spent many years in the U.S. and face retirement with truncated work histories, legal impediments to old-age support programs, and social networks scattered in two countries. This dissertation examines one issue in the aging process for Latin American immigrants, namely the location of their retirement. I examine the extent to which older immigrants return to their home countries during later life and whether retirement income plays a role in this decision. A daunting challenge in studying this topic is data limitations. The migration literature notes numerous inconsistencies across data sources due to their different strengths and limitations. To address this issue, I do an in-depth examination of the magnitude and characteristics of return migration among older Mexican immigrants using multiple data sources to assess the consistency of the outcomes. In chapter 2, I discuss the rate of return migration among Mexican immigrants aged 50 years and their characteristics compared to their U.S.-residing counterparts using the Integrated Public-Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) for Mexico, the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID), and the Mexican Health and Aging Survey (MHAS). I find that the five-year incidence of return migration from the U.S. to Mexico ranges from two percent when generated using IPUMS Mexico to six percent when using the MHAS. However, while the rate of return migration among this population is inconsistent across data sources, certain characteristics are not. All data sources suggest that return migrants are predominantly male and have intermediary levels of education. Characteristics that are inconsistent across data sources are marital, employment, and citizenship status. Aside from the magnitude and characteristics of return migration, I also examine one possible reason for return migration during later life, namely higher levels of retirement income. Mexicans with greater retirement benefits may view this income stream as a means toward greater luxury in the home country. Conversely, these migrants may return migrate only upon concluding that they cannot make ends meet in the U.S. Each scenario has vastly different implications for the U.S. economy. I examine this question in two chapters in order to take advantage of two forms of data: survey and administrative data. Pooling IPUMS U.S.A. and IPUMS Mexico, I conduct logistic regressions to determine if higher levels of retirement income are associated with an increased probability of return migration. I also do a sensitivity analysis to assess possible biases associated with pooling two data sources. Results from this chapter suggest that Mexican immigrants with lower levels of retirement income are more likely to return to their home country during later life than those with higher levels of retirement income. This pattern holds assuming various rates of Hispanic undercount. However, in the absence of a natural experiment, one cannot attach a causal interpretation to the results of this chapter. The experimental nature of chapter 4 does enable a causal interpretation. In chapter 4, I use a natural experiment whereby the Social Security Administration substantially lowered the Social Security benefits of the 1917-1921 birth cohorts due to a mistake in their benefit calculation formula. These birth cohorts have since been referred to as the ``notch" generation as graphs depicting average benefit amounts by birth cohort show a visible notch for this group. In chapter 4, I use this natural source of exogeneity to observe whether the ``notch" generation was more likely to return migrate than those who did not receive these lower benefits. Results of this chapter indicate that Social Security benefits do not affect the probability of return migration for Latin American primary Social Security beneficiaries.
There is renewed interest in return migration among researchers of global movement patterns. Until recently, it was overlooked, regarded as the result of failure by emigrants, or related to the return of retired, elderly migrants. This important study looks at the one-and-a-half and second generation migrants, the youthful contract workers and the 'prolonged sojourners' and the consequences of their return to source communities.
This book examines the transformations in home lives arising in later life and resulting from global migrations. It provides insight into the ways in which contemporary demographic processes of aging and migration shape the meaning, experience and making of home for those in older age. Chapters explore how home is negotiated in relation to possibilities for return to the "homeland," family networks, aging and health, care cultures and belonging. The book deliberately crosses emerging sub-fields in transnationalism studies by offering case studies on aging labour migrants, retirement migrants, and return migrants, as well as older people affected by the movement of others including family members and migrant care workers. The diversity of people’s experiences of home in later life is fully explored and the impact of social class, gender, and nationality, as well as the corporeal dimensions of older age, are all in evidence.
This open access book offers new insights into the ageing-migration nexus and the nature of home. Documenting the hidden world of France’s migrant worker hostels, it explores why older North and West African men continue to live past retirement age in this sub-standard housing. Conventional wisdom holds that at retirement labour migrants ought to instead return to their families in home countries, where their French pensions would have far greater purchasing power. This paradox is the point of departure for a book which transports readers from the banlieues of Paris to the banks of the Senegal River and the villages of the Anti-Atlas. In intimate ethnographic detail, the author brings to life the experiences of these older labour migrants by sharing in the life of the hostels as a resident, by observing at close quarters the men's family life on the other side of the Mediterranean as a guest in their homes, and even by accompanying them in their travels by bus, sea, and air. The monograph evaluates several theories of migration against rich qualitative data gathered from multiple methods: biographical narrative and semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and archival research. In the process, it offers a thoughtful contribution to broader debates on what it means for migrants to belong and achieve inclusion in society. This book has been awarded an ‘honourable mention’ in the Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies, courtesy of the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University. For more information please see: https://lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu/awards/scholarly/2018.php. This book has been nominated for the 2019 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize
Return migration is a topic of growing interest among academics and policy makers. Nonetheless, issues of psychosocial wellbeing are rarely discussed in its context. Return Migration and Psychosocial Wellbeing problematises the widely-held assumption that return to the country of origin, especially in the context of voluntary migrations, is a psychologically safe process. By exploding the forced-voluntary dichotomy, it analyses the continuum of experiences of return and the effect of time, the factors that affect the return process and associated mobilities, and their multiple links with returned migrants' wellbeing or psychosocial issues. Drawing research encompassing four different continents – Europe, North America, Africa and Asia – to offer a blend of studies, this timely volume contrasts with previous research which is heavily informed by clinical approaches and concepts, as the contributions in this book come from various disciplinary approaches such as sociology, geography, psychology, politics and anthropology. Indeed, this title will appeal to academics, NGOs and policy-makers working on migration and psychosocial wellbeing; and undergraduate and postgraduate students who are interested in the fields of migration, social policy, ethnicity studies, health studies, human geography, sociology and anthropology.
Ruth Achenbach develops a model of individual return migration decision making, which examines both the process and the decisive factors in return migration decision making of Chinese highly skilled workers and students in Japan. She proposes to answer a question yet insufficiently explained by migration research: why do migrants deviate from their migration intentions and return sooner or later than planned, or not at all? Her study integrates factors from the spheres of career, family and lifestyle, and redefines stages in long-term decision-making processes, thereby contributing to decision and migration theory. She analyzes migrants’ shifting priorities over the course of migration, including a perspective on life course and on the impact of the triple catastrophe of March 11, 2011.
This open access volume examines experiences of contemporary Latvian migrants, thereby focusing on reasons for emigration, processes of integration in their host countries, and – in the case of return migration - re-integration in their home country. In the context of European migration, the book describes the case of Latvia, which is interesting due to the multiple waves of excessive emigration, continuously high migration potential among European Union member states, and diverse migrant characteristics. It provides a fascinating insight into the social and psychological aspects linked to migration in a comparative context. The data in this volume is rich in providing individual level perspectives of contemporary Latvian migrants by addressing issues such as emigrants’ economic, social and cultural inclusion in the host country, ties with the home country and culture, interaction with public authorities both in the host and home country, political views, and perspectives on the permanent settlement in migration or return. Through topics such as assimilation of children, relationships between emigrants representing different emigration waves, the complex identities and attachments of minority emigrants, and the role of culture and media in identity formation and presentation, this book addresses topics that any contemporary emigrant community is faced with.
This authoritative Handbook provides an interdisciplinary appraisal of the field of return migration, advancing concepts and theories and setting an agenda for new debates.
1. 1. Why this essay? It is customary for the author on return migration to complain about the lack of theoretical and empirical knowledge on his sub ject. Three recent general handbooks on the sociology of migra tion Jackson (1969), Jansen (1970) and Albrecht (1972), pro duce together no more than 10 sources on return migration. The by Mangalam (1968), although extensive migration bibliography giving no less than 2051 titles, still comes up with no more than 10 sources. I t is true that not so many books and articles are de voted exclusively to return migration: Appleyard (1962a, 1962b), Cerase (1967,1970), Committee ... (1967), Davison, B. (1968), Dietzel (1971), Elizur (1973), Feindt & Browning (1972), Form & Rivera (1958), Frohlich & Schade (1966), Hernandez-Alvarez (1967,1968), Kraak (1957a, 1957b, 1958), Kayser (1972), Myers & Masnick (1968), Migration News (1969), Mc Donald (1963), O.E. CD. (1967a, 1967b), Patterson. H.O. (1968), Richmond (1967a, 1967b, 1968), Richardson (1968), Saloutos (1956), Stark (1967b), Vanderkamp (1972), Vagts (1960) and Wilder-Okladek (1969). But this does not imply that no further research has been done and that therefore every new student of return migration had to begin from scratch. In numerous studies on emigration, migrant labour, immigration, integration and assimilation, room has been made for a chapter or a paragraph on "those who re turned" or "the migrant's return". I've found the demographical periodicalPopulation Index relatively useful in tracing the subject. 1. 2
