This study explores the different effects of gendered migration focusing on migration, return migration and reintegration challenges and opportunities facing female Ethiopian migrant returnees from Middle East countries. It looks into the different stages of migration to understand some of the cultural, economic and social transformations women domestic workers experience as immigrants and laborers in the Gulf region and upon their return to Ethiopia. In doing so, the study examines the different ways women try to renegotiate and reintegrate with their families and communities. In-depth interviews with eighteen women returnees reveal the uneven distribution of experiences and outcomes of gendered migration. However, there exists some consistency in the disruptive and disempowering effect of these experiences in the destination countries that usually extend after return. Post return experiences reveal that the renegotiations of women returnees on issues of reception, economic betterment, relationship rebuilding and exercising agency with families and communities are often stressful, isolating and disempowering.

Four weeks before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 an eleven-year-old flees the Soviet Union with her young father. As political refugee determined to eventually settle in the United States they hastily abandon the girl's estranged alcoholic mother, future stepmother, their friends and relatives, their collection of books and all but a handful of family photographs. She eventually attempts to seek out and recover the people, ideas and objects lost on that voyage to America by going back to a much changed Russia and stitching together the scattered and forgotten pieces in between her old and new homes through dream-like snapshots. Two decades after her emigration the author examines the concept of bad luck in one's travels, the significance of the number four, ambivalent attachments, learning to mother from a place of abandonment, the familial legacy of escape and the pursuit of wholeness within inconsolable loss. The un-tellability of the story is considered through the lens of Sappho, Bernadette Mayer, Yoko Ono, Roland Barthes, Doris Lessing, Nico and many other surrogate mothers and fathers brought together as a chorus in a multi-vocal, lyric approach.

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Magistro baigiamojo darbo tema yra aktuali tiriant Lietuvos gyventojų migracijos procesus. Lietuvos gyventojų migracijos srautai, mastai bei problemos turi įtakos ne tik sociodemografiniams gyventojų pokyčiams, tačiau ir valstybės vykdomai ekonominei, socialinei ir kitų sričių politikai. Grįžtamosios migracijos tema yra nauja, kadangi iki šiol nebuvo atlikti tyrimai, nustatantys grįžtamosios migracijos priežastis bei grįžusiųjų migrantų integracijos problemas. Grįžtamosios migracijos veiksnių ir problemų identifikavimas yra svarbus, siekiant sukurti ir įgyvendinti priemones, skatinančias Lietuvos gyventojų grįžtamąją migraciją. Tad baigiamojo darbo objektas yra pastarosios Lietuvos gyventojų migracijos tendencijos bei grįžtamoji migracija. Baigiamojo darbo objektas nagrinėjamas, siekiant įvertinti Lietuvos gyventojų migracijos srautus, apimtį, priežastis, nustatyti grįžtamąją migraciją skatinančius veiksnius, grįžusių migrantų integracijos problemas, o taip pat siekiant pateikti pasiūlymų grįžtamosios migracijos problemoms spręsti. Įgyvendinant baigiamojo darbo uždavinius buvo atlikta migracijos teorijų, Lietuvos migracijos istorijos bei grįžtamosios migracijos mokslinės literatūros bei grįžtamosios migracijos tyrimų analizė, teisinės ir statistinės literatūros analizė, nustatyti ir įvertinti grįžtamosios migracijos veiksniai, problemos bei numatytos priemonės, skatinančios grįžtamąją migraciją. Baigiamajame darbe buvo iškeltos hipotezės: intensyvūs migracijos srautai sudaro... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The subject of the master work is urgent reseach of the migration processes of Lithuania population. The streams, scales, and problems of Lithuania population migration have influence not only on sociodemographical changes of population but also on the economic, social and other policies of the government. Return migration is a new subject, as until recent the reseach on return migration reasons and the problems of migrants integration has not been done. The identification of its factors and problems is important. It is essencial in creating measures and putting them into practice, because it stimulates return migration of Lithuania population. The object of the study is the recent return migration of Lithuania population and its tendencies. The object is investigated trying to evaluate the streams, scales and reasons of Lithuania migration and the problems of return migrants integration. Moreover, the study presents some suggestions how to solve the problems of return migration. Fulfilling the assigments of the work some analysis on migration theories, Lithuania migration history, scientific as well as juridical and statistical literature, return migration reseach have been done. The factors and problems of return migration are determined and evaluated here. Also, the measures stimulating return migration are provided in the study. The hypotheses made in the work are that intensive migration streams allow the factor of return migration to form and social and family relations... [to full text]

This dissertation is about policies and attitudes toward emigration and return migration. It explores these topics in two parts. First, it asks what policies states employ to regulate emigration and what might explain the adoption of these policies and what form they take. It presents a variety of emigration-encouraging and -discouraging policies along with a rich set of examples of countries that have adopted them across the world. Using the UN World Population Policies database, it then shows how policies vary by region, with emigration-encouraging policies being more common in Asia and emigration-discouraging policies more present in Latin America. Moreover, it finds that having larger populations, receiving more remittances, being less democratic and having less state capacity are attributes of states that correlate positively with the adoption of emigration policies. Likewise, being more populous, receiving more remittances and having a lower share of the population that intends to migrate are characteristics of states that positively correlate with the adoption of policies that are more emigration-encouraging. The second part asks how social identity and economic concerns affect people’s attitudes toward emigration and return migration policies, respectively. By analyzing multiple survey experiments that were embedded in an original large-scale phone survey in The Gambia, it finds some support for the centrality of economic as well as ethnic concerns in the formation of attitudes toward emigration and return migration. These findings are in line with the main arguments developed in the dissertation. On the one hand, it argues that individuals hold other-regarding preferences, are concerned with the political demography of their country and receiving remittances when it comes to ethnicity. Which of these mechanisms is the strongest depends on the context of migration. On the other hand, people are concerned with the labor market effects of emigration in their country and therefore support policies encouraging the emigration of people with the same occupation as themselves and oppose policies encouraging their return. Regarding interaction effects, it finds some suggestive evidence that low-skilled people are more concerned with the economic dimension of migration policy than high-skilled people are. This dissertation makes essential contributions to the existing literature and policy debates as it advances our understanding of policies and attitudes toward less frequently studied areas of migration, including emigration, return migration and migration in the Global South.

Unlike many of their North African and West African compatriots who reunified with family and settled in France in the 1970s and 80s, the decision of migrant worker hostel residents not to return definitively to places of origin at retirement is puzzling. Firstly, it calls into question the assumptions of the ‘myth of return’ literature, which explains non-return on the basis of family localisation. In the case of ‘geographically-single’ hostel residents, however, the grounds for non-return cannot be family localisation, since the men’s families remain in places of origin. Secondly, older hostel residents also remain unmoved by the financial incentives of a return homewards, where their French state pensions would have far greater purchasing power. Instead of definitive return, the overwhelming preference of hostel residents is for back-and-forth migration, between the hostel in France and communities of origin. The aim of this dissertation is to resolve this puzzle, by asking: What explains the hostel residents’ preference for back-and-forth mobility over definitive return at retirement? In order to make sense of these mobility decisions, several theories of migration are presented and evaluated against qualitative data from a multi-sited research design incorporating ethnography, life story and semi-structured interviews, and archive material. This fieldwork was carried out across France, Morocco and Senegal. Although no one theory adequately accounts for all the phenomena observed, the added value of each theory becomes most apparent when levels of analysis are kept distinct: at the household level as regards remittances; at the kinship/village level as regards re-integration in the home context; at the meso-level of ethnic communities in terms of migrants’ transnational ties; and at the macro-level of social systems concerning inclusion in healthcare and administrative organisations. Widening the focus beyond the puzzle/dilemma of late-in-life mobility, the thesis concludes by questioning what ‘home’ can mean for the retired hostel residents. An innovative way of theorising home – building on conventional conceptions of home based on territory and community – is outlined, arguing that to be ‘at home’ can also mean to be ‘included’ in different ‘social systems’. With this argument the thesis aims to contribute to broader debates on what it means for immigrants to belong and achieve inclusion in society.

This paper is exploring return migration in Sweden by implementing logistic regression technics on the cohort born 1978. In order to evaluate how socio-economic and geographical characteristics influence individuals propensities to re-circulate to the municipality of origin. Previous studies have indicated that socio-economic status is a selective trait that can either push or pull return migrants, depending on the setting. The theory of urban hierarchies was also applied to investigate if people were more likely to move back to certain region types. The calculations showed that 22 % of the movers had returned to their place of origin, with regional variations ranging from 18-30 %. The regression result revealed that a high socio-economic status decreased the likelihood of returning, while growing up in metropolitan city and having strong social capital in the place of origin increased the propensity. The findings were further supporting that movers have higher incomes than stayers, while return migrants gained less on their re-location in relation to all movers. I argue that these varying likelihoods depend on structural socio-economic divisions, which are pulling human capital to the metropolitan regions and causing a brain drain in the periphery. These population trends are replicating themselves over time and it is assumed that these processes are to enforce the regional disparities in the future.

Scholarship on youth in Africa has mostly focused on unemployed young people, portraying them as a lost generation and exploring how states have failed them. Literature on young employed Africans has been conspicuously absent. This research portrays how a group of young professional Rwandans who define themselves as “diaspora” living in post-genocide Kigali, are redefining national belonging in economic terms. Many young professionals have moved from the diaspora to Rwanda because the state offers them a platform where they can find employment or start their own business: an entrepreneurial citizenship. The city of Kigali is experiencing physical and social transformation, and these young professionals are driving such change. The young people in this study see Rwanda as a place where they can belong by being cosmopolitan, and especially by becoming entrepreneurs. They feel that in Rwanda they are able to be global citizens more easily than in the Diaspora. This feeling of global citizenship is, ironically, what inspires in them a sense of national identity. This research explores the youth in the broader sense of economic activity and time and their sense of belonging in everyday life, in the capital city of Kigali.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities School of Social Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment for the degree of Masters in Migration & Displacement. Johannesburg 2016 / Repatriation like any other form of migration is highly gendered. The objective of this research study is to analyze the gendered determinants of repatriation. I will explore various motivations for return and the general literature surrounding repatriation. My interest in the research was inspired by my experience working with Rwandan returnees where I encountered more female returnees than men. The other reason was the invocation of the cessation of Rwandan refugees on the 30th June 2013.The implication of the cessation meant to bring to closure to a close the refugee status of Rwandans who fled the country before 31st December 1998 and to find alternative status for those refugees still in need of international protection. An interesting observation is that despite this invocation by the end of 2013, the number of Rwandan refugees coming back did not increase as was expected. At the time of the interviews, the invocation of the cessation status of Rwandan refugees was a not an issue in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, a meeting held on the 2nd of October 2015 came up with new deadlines for the implementation on the cessation clause. This research follows a mini-research for my Honours degree that I conducted in 2014 with Rwandan refugees residing in Johannesburg. This work however differs from my previous pilot study in Johannesburg in two ways; in contrast to this research paper, my interviews in Johannesburg involved Rwandan refugees who had not taken the decision to return to Rwanda. Additionally, the refugee profile in South Africa comprised mostly political asylum-seekers while Rwandan refugees hosted in the DRC (my current research location) are mostly those who fled during the 1994 genocide. Voluntary repatriation is a contested issue. In various instances, refugees feel obliged to return either through active promotion of repatriation, reduction of aid in refugee camps or appalling conditions in countries of asylum. What is also evident is the politics between the countries of asylum and origin and the uncomfortable position the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) finds itself as it seeks to ensure the voluntary character of repatriation as is stipulated by the 1969 OAU convention. The gendered approach taken in migration studies reveals renegotiation of gender relations and roles as a result of displacement. Although the role of women changes considerably; social expectations puts more pressure on men to provide and as the limited livelihood opportunities during displacement curtails their primary role as breadwinners. Gender mainstreaming is one of the approaches employed by the, UNHCR to ensure that women are not only involved in all aspects of planning and development but also in issues of peace and security. The literature on repatriation, suggests that women and men consider different factors in their decision to return; men’s main concern is security while women dwell more on working structures like hospitals and schools for their children. During fieldwork, the household emerged as an important unit for repatriation decision making. The research employed a qualitative design. The tools for data collection included semi-structured in-depth questions for Rwandan refugee participants in Goma and key informants from the UNHCR and their government counterpart in the repatriation exercise the Commission Nationale pour les Réfugiés (CNR). In addition, I engaged in an extensive secondary data search through journals, books, the internet, newspapers and policy documents. Thematic analysis was utilized to analyze the collected data. Based on the findings, it was evident that Rwandan refugee men and women put into consideration different aspects in their decision to return to Rwandan. Men focused mostly on security issues both in the DRC and Rwanda while women considered working structures like schools, hospitals and the hope of reclaiming their spouses’ land for the sake of the children. On the decision to return, single women took the decision on their own while in the case of married couples, the men came up with the idea and discussed it with their wives and children. A cross cutting theme between the interviewed Rwandan refugee men and women was the important function of social networks as a pull factor for return. Social networking was especially important in obtaining information about the specific areas in Rwanda and also acted as assurance for temporary accommodation upon return and therefore reducing the cost of return migration. Based on the findings, access to information for both men and women was not mentioned as a major challenge owing to advances in technology (radios, internet, and mobile phones) and the presence of social networks. Keywords (Returnee, Cessation Clause, Repatriation, Reintegration, Decision-making process, Gender, Identity, Social networking) / MT2017

This thesis explores the effects of return migration on development through the case of returnees from Sweden to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on thirteen in-depth interviews and observation, it examines returnees’ ‘social remittances’, which consist of ideas, practices, and social capital (or social connections) that migrants bring to their countries of origin. The thesis adopts a transnational perspective highlighting returnees’ simultaneous connections in their host and home countries. It identifies various types of social remittance transfers such as ideas and practices in the areas of health, the environment and work, as well as social connections with investors, business partners, and political and academic actors in Sweden. One major finding is that returnees’ knowledge of the Swedish language, the market, work and business culture contribute to building trust with actors in Sweden, which facilitates trade and investment between the countries. The thesis also highlights a number of economic, political and personal constraints faced by returnees in their return process which, in turn, affect their capacity to transfer social remittances. It concludes that returnees can potentially contribute to development, but their contributions are largely conditioned by the existing social, economic, legal and political environment.