Sociology (Migration)

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RETURN MIGRATION
PUBLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH GROUP

FOR EUROPEAN MIGRATION PROBLEMS
xx
Editor:
Dr. G. Beyer, 17 Pauwenlaan

The Hague, Netherlands
THE SOCIOLOGY OF RETURN
MIGRATION:
A BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
by
FRANK BOVENKERK
•
MARTlNUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1974
to my father
© 1974 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1708-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-011-8009-2

DOl: 10.1007/978-94-011-8009-2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VII
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II, DEFINING RETURN MIGRATION 4
III. THE "LAWS" OF RETURN MIGRATION 7
IV. TYPES OF RETURN MIGRATION 9
V. SUCCESS OR FAILURE: THE MOTIVES FOR RETURN MIGRATION 20
VI. READJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF RETURNED MIGRANTS 26
VII. SOME INFLUENCES OF RETURNEES ON THEIR HOME COUNTRY 31
VIII. TECHNIQUES IN RETURN MIGRATION RESEARCH 39
IX THE DIRECTION OF FUTURE RESEARCH IN RETURN MIGRATION 43
BIBLIOGRAPHY 50
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In 1971 a research project was initiated by the University of Am-

sterdam, Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum, about the causes
and consequences of migration from Surinam and the Nether-
lands Antilles to Holland. The facet of this research that I took
upon me was on the return migration of Surinamese from Hol-
land. A final report is soon to appear.
During the preparation of my fieldwork I found a considerable
amount of literature on return migration. It seemed to me how-
ever that communication between the various authors had been
minimal as I noticed that they were poorly informed about one
another's work. Therefore I thought it wise to endeavour to
bring together all the literature on return migration that I could
find. I realize that to a certain extent the studies I have presented
here are an arbitrary collection on the subject, but I think this
essay is justified on the grounds that it mentions at least 20 times
as many resources on return migration than any other study that
I found. *
I wish to convey my gratitude to professor Andre J.F. Kobben,
head of the migration research project, for his many useful sug-
gestions and thoughtful criticism. I also thank professor Sandra
Wallman for her valuable comments on an earlier draft of this
paper. Dr. Kwesi Prah corrected my English. Mrs. L. de Nie-
Cramer and Mrs. M. Stellinga-Paape were kind enough to type
out the manuscript.
The migration research project has been financed by WOTRO
(Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Re-
search). I wish to thank them for making this study possible.
* With this essay already at the printer's, I came upon an LL.O.-conference paper
in which also quite a number of sources are mentioned: W.R. Bohning (1974): Out-
line of projects concerning "Making emigration a more positive factor in the devel-
opment of Meditteranean countries", Geneva, WEP 2-26-02, mimeographed.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
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
extensive migration bibliography by Mangalam (1968), although
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. Organization of the paper
Bibliographies usually comprise a number of relevant titles and

2 INTRODUCTION
short summaries of their contents. Instead, this essay aims to clas-

sify the material according to a small number of theoretical view-
points, it tries to consolidate the insights we have gained so far
about return migration.
These theoretical questions are as follows:
2. How may return migration by defined?
3. which "laws" of return migration can be constructed?
4. what types of return migration can be distinguished?
5. what motives do migrants have for returning?
6. what readjustment problems do migrants face upon return?
7. what influences do returnees exercise upon their home com-
munities?
8. what research techniques have been used to study return mi-
gration?
In sections 2 - 8 we try just to take stock of the existing ma-
terial, we shall refrain from any evaluations of the individual
sources. In a last paragraph
9. we shall try to delimit which gaps there are in our knowledge
so far and how future research could be directed.
Return migration has been studied by a variety of disciplines:
economy, demography, sociology, geography, cultural anthropol-
ogy and history. The majority of the books and articles that have
been collected in this essay is of sociological nature or directly
related to it (social geography, cultural anthropology). In in-
stances in which sources from a different background have been
used, this has been indicated in the text.
The list of references is restricted in three ways. Firstly it is
not exhaustive since it gives only those sources available in Hol-
land. This excludes quite a number of references that I found,
but I thought it wiser not to present these because not all the
references have proved to be accurate. The result of this limita-
tion is that this bibliography has a possible bias towards Europe.
Secondly, the quality of the sources vary a great deal and the
lowest level of what can be considered as scientifically acceptable
is naturally subjective. Thirdly, I have specially sought for pu-
blications about international return migration. There exists an
extensive body of literature on internal migration, but return
migration studies in this context will seldom be brought up in
INTRODUCTION 3
this article. After summing up all these shortcomings, I can only

say that new references will be gladly received.
CHAPTER II
DEFINING RETURN MIGRATION
The terminological sloppiness found in the relevant literature

presents us with ~orisiderable difficulties in the study of return
migration. One may come across return migration under the fol-
lowing headings: back migration, countercurrent, counterflow,
re-emigration, reflux migration, remigration, return flow, return
migration, return movement, second time migration and repa-
triation. There are various sources of confusion in this terminol-
ogy due to the fact that most of these terms imply something
more than the simple fact that the migrant goes back to his coun-
try of origin.
The first difficulty concerns the terms remigration and re-emi-
gration. Taken literally, both terms mean migration for a second
time and they do not imply return to a place of origin. But apart
from this very broad meaning these words are also used more
specifically when people emigrate again to the same destination
after having returned home, and sometimes they mean that peo-
ple emigrate again to yet another place of destination. In German
a distinct word is used for this last form of migration: Weiter-
wanderung (further-migration). Richmond (1967b, p. 252) has
proposed for this last form of (further-)migration the concept
of transilience or transilient labour.
A second difficulty originates from the fact that in specific
types of cyclical migration, return migration is not named at all,
it is then described as a phase in the to and fro process of migrant
labour. In studies on labour migration in Africa south of the
Sahara (but not only there) a variety of concepts are used for
this type of to and fro migration: circommuting, circulation,
circular migration, oscillatory migration, migrant labour, period-
ic emigration, recurrent migration, short-term migration and tran-
silient labour.
DEFINING RETURN MIGRATION 5
For the sake of clarification in this terminological labyrinth

we shall use the following concepts in this article: when people
return after emigration for the first time to their country (or
region) of origin, then and only then we will use the term return
migration; when people move on to a second destination we will
use the term transilient migration; when people emigrate once
again to the same destination after having returned for the first
time we will call this re-emigration; when people emigrate to a
new destination after having returned, we will call this second
time emigration; when the to and fro movement between two
places includes more than one return we will call this circulation.
A ------------------.. B
emigration
A .~======~==~~. B
return migration
A B C
------------------.~
transilient migration
.
A -.-----------------.. B
re-emigration
A • B
.. .. C
second time emigration
A ••============~· B
•
etc.
circulation
A third terminological difficulty arises when defining the term

repatriation. Until now we have only considered in our short
terminological exercise the forms that population movements
6 DEFINING RETURN MIGRATION
may take and we have avoided all complications as to its con-

tents, causes or functions. The concept of repatriation has a spe-
cial status because it has a surplus meaning that cannot be de-
tached from the return movement per se. We shall use the word
repatriation in those cases where return is not the initiative of
the migrants themselves, but of the political authorities.
CHAPTER III
THE "LAWS" OF RETURN MIGRATION
The study of return migration started by the recognition of its

very existence. In the famous list of migration laws by Raven-
stein (1885, 1889) the fourth law states that: "Each main cur-
rent of migration produces a compensating counter-current"
(Ravenstein, 1885, p. 33). Return migration is recognized as one
component of this counter-current. In later statistical studies of
migration, the existence of this counter-current is demonstrated
again and again. D. S. Thomas (1938) gives an interesting appen-
dix containing migration-literature that is not now readily avail-
able and in which the occurrence of return migration is often
demonstrated in relation to economic crises. Yer Heide (1965)
proved the appearance of such counter-migration-flows in Hol-
land, Hollingsworth (1971) did the same for Scotland. Blau &
Duncan (1967) investigated the occupational careers of no less
than 20.000 Americans and in their analysis they point in pass-
ing the importance of return migrants of high occupational sta-
tus. Eldridge (1965) and Wen Lang Li (1970) developed a statis-
tical instrument to measure and predict the volume of "reverse
streams".
It is by no means easy to make return migration statistically
visible on the basis of the available material, such as the subse-
quent census. The numbers only indicate the net migration and
not the number and the direction of all movements that actually
have taken place (Elizaga, 1965, Jackson, 1969). Not until the
census-questionnaire has been supplemented with questions about
the migration-past of the population can return migration be
discerned. It appears that the number of return-movements have
been seriously underestimated as long as migration has not been
analyzed from the perspective of individual migrant histories.
Lee (1969) developed a relatively simple theoretical migration-
8 THE "LAWS" OF RETURN MIGRATION
model based on plus and minus factors in the place of origin of

migrants and their destination. Return migration is explained in
terms of changes in the balance between these two conglomerates
of positive and negative factors. Although Miller (1973) does not
refer to this model, we could consider his study as an empirical
application. This author made an analysis of economic changes
in the States of the U.S.A. relative to each other and found that
the volume of return in relation to the total number of potential
return migrants, responded to factors such as the growth rate of
employment.
It is remarkable to note that all the so-called "laws of migra-
tion" have only been developed in relation to internal migration,
there are so many indeterminate factors in international migra-
tions that they pose analytically serious obstacles. The three ge-
neralizations in the field of internal return migration that seem
to hold are:
a. the shorter the distance of emigration, the higher the incidence
of return migration (Caldwell (1969) for Nigeria, Wendel (1953)
for Sweden and Vanderkamp (1972) for Canada).
b. the longer the emigrants stay away the less chance they will
return (see Hollingsworth (1971) on Scotland, also quoting
quite a few other interesting sources).
c. changes in the economic balance between the place of origin
and the place of destination directly affect the volume of re-
turn migration (D.S. Thomas (1938), R.I. Crane (1955) for
India, Vanderkamp (1972) for Canada, Miller (1973) for the
U.S.A.).
CHAPTER IV
TYPES OF RETURN MIGRATION
There is little reason to study return migration with theoretical

instruments other than the ones usually employed in migration
studies in general. The actual research concentrates on the classic
migration topics: the demographic composition of the (return-)
migration flow, the motives for (return) migration, the (re-) inte-
gration of migrants etc. The only crucial difference lies in the
fact that it is impossible to study return migration without first
considering the emigration factors. The most important question
here is: was the emigration meant as permanent or only as a
temporary step?
We can imagine a continuum with a 100 percent intended per-
manent emigration as one extreme and at the other extreme a
100 percent intended temporary migration. The extremes repre-
sent ideal types in the sense that in the vast majority of intended
permanent migrations, at least a few migrants will return, and
that in most intended temporary migrations, at least a few immi-
grants will stay behind. These strong contrasts are, however, es-
sential in the theory of return migration as it seems logical to
assume, as most authors do, that in the first case (permanent)
the returnees represent the failures, while in the second case
(temporary) the returnees are the successful ones.
We consider the proposed continuum of analytical importance,
but it also poses problems of how to cope with the empirical
reality. Firstly: not all the individuals who take part in a partic-
ular emigration flow intend to stay away for good, or not all in-
tend to go only temporarily. We can only observe a preponder-
ant tendency. Secondly: there is often a clear difference between
the publicly stated emigration intention (standard-motive) and
the actual behaviour. It is also clear that many emigrants do not
decide how long to stay away, or even do not consciously think
10 TYPES OF RETURN MIGRATION
it over. Carleton (1960) writes that from the late fifties, when
air fares had been considerably reduced in price, visiting from
Puerto Rico to the United States mainland had become a com-
monplace. Many passengers just went over to decide later what
the purpose of their trip was, whether to migrate or just to visit
friends and relatives. Thirdly: whether migrants decide to stay
or plan to return is sometimes not so much decided by them-
selves but rather by outside forces. For instance in a situation
of war in which migrants who intended to stay temporarily are
unable to return, or as in the case of emigrants who intended
to stay for good are forced to repatriate by economic recessions
or discriminatory legislation.
On the basis of the last two considerations it seems wise to
add a new dichotomy of actual return versus non-return to the
proposed continuum of duration-intention. We can then pro-
ceed to classify' the various types of return migration in a typol-
ogy which comprises four ideal types.
actual migration movement

duration intention non-return return
permanent (1) ( 2)
temporary (4) ( 3)
(1) intended permanent emigration without return

(2) intended permanent emigration with return
(3) intended temporary migration with return
(4) intended temporary migration without return
4. 1. Intended permanent emigration without return
This type is by definition the least important of all four for the
study of return migration. Some research has been done on the
willingness among permanent settlers to go back to their home-
lands. The purpose of this research was not to predict any real
migration behaviour, but to measure indirectly the degree of as-
similation. R.B. Davison (1966) gives an example. The author
originally studied a group of Jamaican emigrants before their
TYPES OF RETURN MIGRATION 11
departure to England in 1961. Later he re-studied the same group

settled in Britain with a questionnaire in which he asked whether
they wanted to return to Jamaica. He notes (p. 106) that "wheth-
er they will, in fact, ever do so, is beside the point. What matters
now, is the motivation towards any kind of cultural assimilation
with the English community".
4. 2. Intended permanent emigration with return
As regards this type of permanent intended emigration where

return does take place, the study of return migration has scored
surprising results. Many more West- and South-European immi-
grants have returned from Australia, Canada and the U.S.A. than
one would suppose at first glance. Konig (1962) rightly points
out in his review of Vagts' book (1960) on the return of Germans
from the U.S.A., that up till now it has been a matter of prejudice
to consider all emigration to the U.S.A. as emigration "to stay
for good". Isaac (1947) estimates that in the period between
1821 and 1924, 30 % of all immigrants have returned from the
U.S.A. Saloutos (1956) mentions a percentage of Greek return-
ees from the U.S.A. between 1908 and 1931 of 40 Ofo. The per-
centage of Norwegian returnees between 1865 and 1960 is put
at 25 Ofo (Backer, 1966). Isaac (1953) notes varying percentages
of return from immigration countries like Argentine, Australia,
Canada and Venezuela before and after 1950. From Australia
quite a few "settlers" have returned: the Committee on social
patterns of the immigration advisory council (1967) estimates
for the years between 1959 and 1965 a return of16 Ofo. Among
those were a large number of migrants who had intended only
to come to Australia for a few years (Richardson, 1968). CA.
Price (1963) estimates that of the South-Europeans coming to
Australia between 1921 and 1940 a third returned, and that many
of these immigrants had not come for definitive settlement. They
only followed a long-standing South-European tradition of mi-
grant labour. On the other hand it must be noted that among the
total outflow of Italians there have been many cases' of apparent
re-emigration (Borrie, 1954): many single men only went back
to marry Italian women and then to settle with their families in
Australia for good.

Among the Dutch that emigrated to Canada and Australia be-
tween 1956 and 1960, it was found in 1961 that 10 Ofo had al-
ready returned (Beyer, 1961; Frijda, 1962). Richmond (1967b)
mentions that 30 Ofo of British emigrants to Canada returned.
of this 30 Ofo, a remarkable number of migrants had no intention
of permanent stay. of the Canadians who emigrated to the U.S.A.
between 1955 and 1960 one third returned (Samuel, 1969). And
in Ireland, the classic example of a country with a high rate of
permanent emigration it was found that, now that the destin-
ation has shifted from the U.S.A. to Great Britain, at least 25 Ofo
of the emigrants return (Jackson, 1967; Bovenkerk, 1973a).
From Israel there have always been smalI numbers of immi-
grants who left, like the Austrian cews described by Wilder-
Okladek (1969), but recently this country has expressed anxiety
about a much higher incidence of return among its immigrants.
The Israeli government has started a large research project on the
reasons for return migration, especially to the United States and
to France (Guttman & Elizur, 1972), of which the first results
have been published by Elizur (1973).
Another example of emigration that is usually considered ir-
reversible is the process of urbanization on the Indian subcon-
tinent. Zachariah (1966) reports a first analysis of recent cen-
sus data in the Bombay area, in which one of the unexpected
results is the evidence of considerable return migration. R.I. Crane
(1955) mentions important migration streams out of Indian towns
in response to seasonal declines in urban employment. Krotki
(1963) compared age distribution in towns of East and West Pa-
kistan and noted a regular male excess in the towns of East Pa-
kistan, which could only be explained by the large numbers of
temporary in-migrants among the total rural-urban migration.
4. 3. Intended temporary migration with return
Studies of temporary migration or labour circulation seldom put

forward the return movement as a problem to be studied as such.
Their first concern is to study the different forms such migrations
can take in terms of the following variables: the duration of ab-
sence, the frequency of migration and the periodicity of the in-

terval that the migrants stay away from home. The variation of
these migrations are well-studied in the case of labour circulation
in Africa south of the Sahara (e.g. Mitchell, 1961), but not only
there. Van den Muyzenberg (1973, Appendix A) in his book on
"circommuting" in the Philippines gives a good survey of these
African studies.
A second concern of studies in this field are the interesting
questions of the advantages and disadvantages of return for both
sending and receiving societies. There has grown a discussion on
these matters in relation to the recent labour migrations in Eu-
rope of Jugoslavs, Greeks, Turks, Tunesians, Algerians, Moroc-
cans, Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians to the rich countries of
North-West Europe. The wealthy states of Western Germany,
France, Belgium, Holland, England, Sweden and Switzerland in-
tended originally only to recruit cheap foreign labour for low
status jobs at the outset of a short period in the early sixties
during a wave of economic expansion. But apart from a few shal-
low recession periods these economies kept growing and more
and more so-called "guest workers" were taken in. The result is
that these rich economies have become more and more depen-
dent on large contingents of foreign workers. Theoretically the
membership of this group is constantly being replenished, since
all migrant workers are expected to return home after a few years.
The advantages of the receiving countries are clear enough: they
import cheap labour and because these workers are temporary
no expensive investments have to be made for their social and
cultural integration. And at every first sign of a decline in the
economy the short-term labour contracts are not renewed and a
redundant labour force is written off before it can become a
burden for social security. For the migrants themselves this per-
spective of expected return means an all-important uncertainty
in their already difficult existence.
The Marxist interpretation of this process as the functioning
of an industrial reservist army is now generally accepted, although
not all students of European migrant labour will consider com-
pelled return as a conscious manipulation by the ruling class in
the way that Cinanni (1969) and Castles & Kosack (1973) argue.
The notion of the foreign workers functioning as a "Konjunktur-

puffer" is also attacked; the empirical reality presents too many
anomalies for a simple traditional Marxist model. In fact, it has
never yet occurred that these modern guest-workers were forced
to return en masse. The assumed "throw-away"-function can be
illustrated by what happened during the slight economic reces-
sion in Western-Germany of 1967, but recent research has shown
that this recession was mainly dealt with by putting a halt to
new immigration (Kayser, 1972; Bohning, 1972).
We will deal with the consequences of the return of these mo-
dern European migrant labourers in ch. 7.
4. 4. Temporary intended migration without return
There are numerous emigrations in which the main emigration

motive is to attain a definitive goal and to return as soon as plans
are fulfilled. Main goals in this respect are: education, vocational
training or the acquisition of practical skills and the desire to
earn a definite sum of money. In very many cases, such migrants
do not in fact return, but this does not mean that return or the
contemplation of return is dead or buried. On the contrary, one
will seldom find so much philosophizing about returning to the
homeland as among emigrants who will never return.
This phenomenon can easily be observed among University
students from poor countries who don't return after finishing
their courses in the U.S.A. and in Western Europe. Aich (1962)
has shown that among students in Western Germany from Egypt,
India, Indonesia, Iran and Jordan, the willingness to return de-
creases the more the end of their studies becomes in sight. The
numbers of University graduates, especially from Asian countries,
who do not return are high. Fortney (1970) estimates the total
student non-return from the U.S.A. as high as 50 0/0, but amongst
students from Taiwan, India, Pakistan and Israel this percentage
is considerably higher. Platt (1966) notes a percentage of non-
return by students from Taiwan out of the U.S.A. of no less than
95 Ofo! Naraghi (1967) mentions a non-return among Asian stu-
dents from the U.S.A. of 80 Ofo. Chansarkar (1970) shows that
among a snowball sample of 70 Indian-born doctors, architects,
chemists and other intellectuals in England 3/4 want to leave

the UK, but not to return to their native land but to the U.S.A.
and to Canada (transilience).
The stated reasons why these students don't want to go back
are in general: low salaries, lack of financial and social security,
lack of appropriate jobs, lack of information about existing va-
cancies, inadequate facilities for scientific research and practice
and attachment to the country of immigration e.g. through mar-
riage.
A seeming example of the contrary, students who are willing
to go back, has been found by Lowe (1963). Of the 143 inter-
viewed Jamaican students at Harvard University in 1961/6280 %
expected to return. These students lived at Harvard in a "Jamai-
can community", so that very little alienation from their native
culture had occured. They expected successful careers, and the
anticipated pride their families were going to derive from their
achievement was an especially strong motive for return. Mark
that it is only said that these students were willing to go back,
it was not studied how many really did so! Ritterband (1968)
investigated explicitly the factors that predicted the return or
the non-return among a total of1934 Israeli students in the U.S.A.
by a mail questionnaire. The likelihood of return was overwhelm-
ingly determined by factors working prior to the student's arri-
val in the U.S.A. such as the national commitment of the res-
pondents' parents, the social class and participation in Israeli
youth movements.
The non-return of students from the third world may be high
in general, but this phenomenon of non-return of high-level man-
power is certainly not the sole privilege of poor countries. There
exists a body of literature on brain drain and non-return of in-
tellectuals from European countries and from Canada to the
U.S.A. as is proved by the bibliographies of De dijer & Svenningson
(1967), Scobie-de Maar (1971) and Beyer (1972). This literature
consists mainly of concise articles in periodicals of a general
scientific nature: New Scientist and Nature in the UK, Entwick-
lung und Zusammenarbeit, Mitteilungen des Hochschulverbandes
and Information Bildung und Wissenschaft in the Federal Re-
public of Germany, Bulletin IA U/ AIU in France, Convergence
in Switzerland, Science, NAFSA-newsletter and Educational and

Cultural Exchange in the U.S.A.
Discussions on brain drain concentrate upon the question how
to check the emigration and much less how to promote the return
of the already emigrated brains. But there are a few examples of
publications in which programs for the return of intellectuals are
being proposed or evaluated. Sheffield & McGrail (1966) edited
a report on "Operation Retrieval" in which the experiences were
summarized of 9 Canadian college representatives who had gone
on excursion to Universities abroad in order to interview Cana-
dian students about their willingness to return. Among the many
recommendations one important suggestion was to maximize
communications between students abroad and job opportunities
in Canada. Haniotis (1964) writes of a project in which the Greek
government tries to persuade Greek scholars to come back. Mer-
riam (1970) interviewed 206 returned scholars in India (Kanpur)
about the sort of difficulties they had encountered upon their
return. By far the greatest problem had been to get an appropriate
job. The so-called "scientist pool" seems to offer a solution to
this problem (Awasthi, 1966): the Indian government guarantees
a secured job in a central scientific institute to a selected group
of separate Indian scholars. In the same institute all offers of and
demands for jobs on this level are matched in order to find a de-
finite job for the returnees concerned. No less than 60 Ofo of all
the invited scholars came back under these conditions. Another
measure to facilitate the return of Indians from the U.S.A. was
to send returned professionals back to America to discuss the
problems of return with prospective returnees (Kizilbash, 1964).
A similar approach is reported by Naficy (1967) on the promo-
tion of return to Iran. Students were offered inexpensive tariffs
for travelling home during their University vacation, pamphlets
were distributed about work opportunities in Iran, and success-
ful returnees lectured on American campuses to inform their
studying countrymen about prospects back home. A further so-
lution to the problem of non-return is of a more preventive na-
ture. Wellington (1968) interviewed medical staff members in
Indonesian Universities who had had their postgradua te training
in the U.S.A. and in Europe. They had been a carefully selected
group of 42 phisicians who had been given leave by their sponsor-

ing schools only after agreeing to return to their teaching posts
on completing their training. Forty of them had come back.
A second group of temporary migrants, the already discussed
modern migrant labourers in Western Europe, seem to return in
ever diminishing numbers. Economic expansion in West European
countries goes on and these countries have become dependent
on these "guestworkers" to fill the lower echelons of their labour
market. Migrant labour has changed into a permanent labour
force. Labour contracts are renewed every year and the desire
to return (that was still high in 1965 as can be deducted from
research of that time: Enquiry... (1966) has gradually abated.
An important number of migrant workers have naturalized. Es-
sentially these countries could also employ a constantly rotating
group of foreigners, but employers prefer to retain the best ad-
justed and therefore the longest staying workers. Bohning (1972)
describes the same process, but now from the point of view of
the migrants themselves: the longer these "guest workers" stay,
the more their material expectations rise, to the point where
they have internalized all the deprivations of the working class
in the West European consumer society. They postpone their re-
turn again and again to return with more and more money to be
able to satisfy their newly acquired consumption demands. Fam-
ily members are then sent to participate in wage-earning, the re-
sult is that the "guest workers" become ever more anchored in
the immigration country.
A third type of intended temporary migration that ended up
as permanent settlement is the urbanization in Africa south of
the Sahara. Plotnicov (1965, 1967) made an intensive anthro-
pological study of four rural-urban immigrants, who had come
to the town of Jos, Nigeria for a short stay. But it seemed that
after many years despite the strong wish to go back, these im-
migrants had not been successful enough in town and they will
not return to the "uncivilized" world of their home villages.
Caldwell (1969) observed the same pro<;:ess happening in Ghanaian
towns. Recent town-dwellers maintain publicly that their stay in
town is only a short-term affair, but in fact urban life has become
an accepted way of life for them and chances are very small that
they ever return (see also Hanna & Hanna, 1971). Heisler (1973)
found the same in Zambia, where it has become clear that much
of what is called labour circulation in Africa has in fact become
permanent urbanization with much less returning than has been
assumed.
We have seen that many intended temporary migrations end up
in definitive settlement, and moreover that the migrants them-
selves are apt to give the impression that they will return in the
near future. In some cases one should ask to what extent emi-
grants really started with the short-term intentions which they
professed. But the criteria used are always these professed inten-
tions. It has been recognized in studies of motives for emigration
that migrants do not always have a clear idea about their inten-
tions and, moreover, that people tend to rationalize their reasons
into motives that are accepted by the community as legitimate
"standard-motives". Thomas&Znaniecki (1958, p. 1493) point-
ed out as far back as 1927 that the Polish community insists that
emigration to the United States is only temporary, "it never re-
conciles itself to the idea that the emigrant may never return".
Among the Polish who emigrated to America for good there was
"always a latent feeling of obligation to return". Another inter-
esting example of this is presented by Vredenbregt (1958) who
studied emigration from the small island of Bawean, north of
Java, to Singapore. Baweans refuse to say that they are going to
emigrate ("migrasi" in the Indonesian language), but they refer
to it as "meranti", which literally means "to go abroad" but
with the secondary meaning that this is only temporary. In fact
"meranti" is always permanent emigration.
The ideal of returning is very much alive in many immigrant
communities. In the United Kingdom this has often been shown
in relation to West Indians, Indians and Pakistani. Demographic
studies that give prognoses of the number of coloured people in
England in the next ten years (Eversley & Sukdeo, 1969, Jones
& Smith, 1970 and E.J.B. Rose, 1969) explicitly assume no re-
turn of coloured migrants in their calculations. And this does
not seem unjustified with respect to the recent past. However,
it is shown in many questionnaires that the expressed wish to
return is strong enough (Rex & Moore, 1967, Azim, 1971,
Dahaya, 1973, R.B. Davison, 1966, Philpott, 1968, 1970). The

same results appear in a study of Surinamese students in Holland
(Sedoc-Dahlberg, 1971) and in a study on West Indians in Ca-
nada (Greene, 1970).
Some authors go so far as to relegate this propensity to return
to the field of unrealistic ideology, which has its roots not in
the country of origin but in the difficult first phase of adaptation
of immigrants to their new life or as a reaction to discrimination.
Hinds (1966) uses in this respect the term "two way dream",
Philpott (1970) calls it "migrant ideology" and Dahaya (1973)
refers to "the myth of return".
4. 5. "Return" that is not return
One must distinguish the migrant ideologies mentioned from re-

vivalist movements among the descendants of immigrants. Black
Nationalism in the U.S.A., the "Back to Africa" ideal of the Ras
Tafarians or Zionism are phenomena so different from the return-
ideal of immigrants to whom return might in effect mean that
they leave for home, that they will not be considered here.
There exists a form of migration that is named return mi-
gration, but in fact it is not. I mean the forced repatriation of
white colonial settlers back to the mother countries at the time
colonies fought their independence and after. Kraak (1957a,
1957b, 1958) reports the results of an extensive piece of social
research on the repatriation from Indonesia in the years round
1949. In fact the majority of these "repatriates" saw the mother
country for the first time in their lives, there was a large group
of Eurasians, a considerable number of Indonesian wives and
among the Dutch, many were born in Indonesia. For this reason
the research was not done as a study in return migration, but
completely in terms of immigration, adaptation and assimilation.
Ex (1966) called his study on the same repatriation rightly "ad-
justment after migration". And also among Algerian repatriates
to France in 1962/63 large numbers of "harki's" came with the
repatriation waves. These "harki's" were a muslim group which
set foot on French soil for the first time in their lives (McDonald,
1963).
CHAPTER V
SUCCESS OR FAILURE:
THE MOTIVES FOR RETURN MIGRATION
A topic that is characteristic for the study of return migration is

the question of the motives for returning, and more specifically
to find out whether returnees are those who made a success out
of their emigration or the failures, persons who could not make
it and had to return with nothing to show for their pains. Before
going into these matters one type of return migration has to be
set apart for which the question of success or failure is totally
irrelevant: the repatriation of displaced persons after a war or
the forced repatriation of refugees. Kulisher ( 1948) gives an im-
pressive historical survey of all the population movements and
repatriations in Europe, resulting from two world wars. Storbeck
(1963) discussed the repatriation of evacuees of war as one com-
ponent in the migration from East Germany to the Federal Re-
public before the construction of the Berlin wall in 1961. In
Taft & Robbins (1955) and Murphy (1955) one can find data
on the enormous problems involved in the repatriation of refu-
gees. Fermi (1968) gives examples of "illustrious" emigres, states-
men, political leaders, writers and other intellectuals who returned
from the U.S.A. to their European home countries after world
war II.
This peculiar circumstance aside, by far the most important
cause of mass return is undoubtedly the economic recession in
the country of immigration. Isaac (1947) says that during the
great depression of the thirties the number of returnees exceeded
the number of immigrants in the U.S.A. and in Argentine. Sa-
lou tos ( 1 9 56) writes of streams of Greek migrants returning from
the U.S.A. in the depression years in the decades around the turn
of the century. Peach (1968) points out how the small return
flow of West Indians from England grew during a few minor re-
cessions. Hernandez-Alvarez (1967) also showed how American
THE MOTIVES FOR RETURN MIGRATION 21
economic recessions stimulated the return of Puerto Ricans (see

also: Senior, 1955) and of Mexicans (Hernandez-Alvarez, 1966).
Kayser (1972) investigated the consequences of the homeward
flows of European migrant workers for the labour exporting
countries after the small recession in Western Germany, France
and the Netherlands in 1967/68. In these cases of relatively mass
return, it makes of course little sense to consider the success or
failure of individual migrants.
Otherwise it is quite remarkable from the literature, how little
economic motives affect migrant returns. Undoubtedly this is
due to the fact that in those migrations in which economic bet-
terment is the main cause of emigration in the first place, it hap-
pens very seldom that the country of emigration rises economi-
cally above the level of the receiving country. I found only one
clear case in which emigrants had emigrated to a poorer country,
namely the movement of European and American Jews into Is-
rael. Elizur (1973) found on questioning 378 migrants that had
returned to the U.S.A. that economic considerations played a
most important role in their motive to leave Israel.
In a number of other migrations however, non-economic rea-
sons have been responsible for return. Appleyard (1962a, 1962b)
interviewed 100 Britons who had returned after their attempted
settlement in Australia. These were people of high and average
levels of occupation, who had almost all been better off econom-
ically in Australia and who had been able to buy considerable
more material goods than they had ever done in England. 86 Ofo
of these returnees told the interviewer that they came back for
non-economic reasons. They had returned because of strong fam-
ily ties and because of homesickness. They had decided shortly
after their arrival in Australia to return and they had not made
serious steps to integrate. Richardson (1963) came to similar
conclusions. CA. Price (1966) found that departing English from
Australia were not a group of maladjusted or disgruntled per-
sons, "the departure rate of former settlers is an unsatisfactory
measure for immigrants' failure to adjust" (p. 29). Of the Dutch
settlers in Australia and Canada (Beyer, 1961;Frijda, 1962) 10 Ofo
had come back within 44 years. From a follow-up study it ap-
peared that compared to the Dutch who stayed overseas, there
22 THE MOTIVES FOR RETURN MIGRATION
was no difference in wage- or worksatisfaction. Personality fac-

tors and the degree of social adjustment, especially of the wives,
had been of more importance in the decision to return. The same
results hold for English returnees from Canada. Richmond (1967a,
1967b, 1968) came to the conclusion that the number of econom-
ic failures amongst the returnees was small. Motives for return
had more to do with homesickness. It was found that compared
to a control group of non-returnees they had been economically
well-off in Canada and that there was little unemployment among
them. In terms of income 83 Ofo of his sample of returnees were
satisfied with Canada. Among the Canadians who emigrated to
the U.S.A. many came back for reasons other than economic
ones (Samuel, 1969). A last example of the non-economic mo-
tivation to return within one country is given by Simmons &
Cardona (1972) who observed a very high level of education
among the emigrants who returned from Bogota in the Colum-
bian rural districts.
So far we have considered intended permanent emigration. We
shall now turn to temporary forms of migration. Baucic (1972)
found that Jugoslav workers returning from West Germany re-
presented a negative selection of less enterprising people, invalids,
and people who could not endure the heavy work in German
factories. Abadan (1972) reports similar results for Turkey. Stark
(1967a) says that of the European "guest workers" only the fail-
ures come back permanently; people who were unable to adjust
to the industrial working climate. Kayser (1967) reveals that the
Greek migrant worker-returnees are those who are still completely
unskilled; the successful migrants remain in Germany. Trebous
(1970) came to the conclusion that among the Algerian return-
ees from France the percentage of skilled workers was very low.
Bohning (1972) writes that only the workers who came from
che most backward corners of their countries, and who had prov-
en to be unfit to West European working conditions, did come
back. Among the returning migrant workers from Nigerian towns
Caldwell (1969) found a large group of recent widows, and re-
rurning men were seldom the successful ones in the prime of
their lives: they were the old, the shabby and the sick. For the
return of widows, see also Ejiogu (1966). I have found no sour-
ces about labour circulation in which, among those who return

permanently, was a large quota of successful workers who came
back with savings and skills.
It is most curious that we found exactly the opposite of what
we expected (see par. 4): the returnees of permanent emigration
were seldom failures, the returnees of temporary migrations were
seldom successful. In the case of permanent emigration this can
be explained in two ways: firstly, the total emigration stream
contains a subsidiary flow of intending temporary migrants as
we have seen. Secondly, it is possible that emigrant failures have
not enough money to return and/ or are reluctant to demonstrate
their obvious failure back home. For example Isaac (1947) tells
us that among the European returnees from the U.S.A. there
were relatively many successful migrants because the unsuccess-
ful ones could not afford the trip back. Saloutos (1956) thinks
that many Greeks did not go home from the U.S.A. because to
do so would have been an admission of failure. Ruck (1960)
writes that when English welfare agencies propose repatriation
to West Indians as a solution to their individual problems, the
West Indians consider the thought of return abhorrent for the
same reasons given by the Greeks. In the case of temporary mi-
gration, it has not been realized enough, I think, that a certain
amount of integration in the receiving country is a necessary
condition for success and as integration proceeds the chance of
return diminishes.
There are descriptions of migrants in which it is uncertain
whether permanent or temporary emigration was intended, or
in which different migration types intertwine. Cerase (1967)
classifies returning Italians from the U.S.A. in two groups: the
retired ones and those who, having realized their economic gains,
seem eager to show them off in their native village. Myers &
Masnick (1968) investigated in what respects the Puerto Ricans
in New York who were planning to return differed from those
who wanted to stay for good. He found that prospective return-
ees maintained stronger ties with Puerto Rico than the stayers.
Graves & Arsdale (1966) studied Navaho Indian migration to the
city of Denver. They found that those who returned to the re-
servation had personality structures directed to sociallove-and-
24 THE MOTIVES FOR RETURN MIGRATION
affection goals, whereas the "stayers" in the city appeared to

have personality structures more compatible with urban oppor-
tunities and high expectations of achievement within the ur-
ban setting. Hernandez-Alvarez (1967, 1968) also described the
return of Puerto Ricans from the U.S.A. He found a segment
of about one quarter or one third of highly successful people
who now occupy important positions in business and the gov-
ernment. The other element comprises persons of modest social
levels and to whom migration proved to be something they could
not manage. For similar results on Puerto Ricans, see Sandis
(1970). Schmiedeck (1973) interviewed a small sample (20) of
returned scientists and academics to Austria. He was able to
divide his. sample into two categories. Group I comprised people
who went to Germany and Switzerland as a stage in their scien-
tific careers. They came back to the highest positions at Aus-
trian Universities. Group II consisted of returnees from the U.S.A.,
where they had not been able to build up a successful academic
career. They are now to be found among the academic middle
groups as frustrated individuals (older assistants etc.).
A separate kind of returnees consists of immigrants who re-
turn after retirement to their homeland. Cerase (1967,1970)
found those in Italy, Kulp (1925) in South China, Handlin (1948)
and Saloutos (1956) in Greece. J. G. Crane (1971) gives a short
description of the existence of a group of American-naturalized
who after retirement had come back to their sunny island of
birth, Saba. Shyrock & Larman (1965) pointed out that internal
return migration in the U.S.A. was principally an affair of old
people. In France this phenomenon has also been noted (Cribier,
1970;Merlin, 1971). In Africa it is not different; there are many
urban migrants who return (voluntarily, but often also forced
by legislation or when their contracts expire) after a hard working
life to their home bases, to their social position and to their fam-
ily property (van Velsen, 1961; Watson, 1958). It has also been
noted that the lack or the inadequacy of social security in towns
is an important factor encouraging Africans to cling to a foot-
hold on the land in their tribal homes. In South Africa (Vander-
Horst, 1965) and in Southern Rhodesia (Gluckman, 1960; Gar-
bett, 1963) there is no security of tenure of housing in towns,
there are no unemployment benefits or old age pensions. Migrant

workers adjust their stay in towns to the inevitable retreat to
their homes after retirement. Mitchell (1969) views this old-age
return in a theoretically very interesting way as he describes it as
the final phase in the life cycle of circulating workers.
In this chapter on motives for return I want to pinpoint one
more phenomenon, namely the case in which it is not the wish of
the migrants themselves to return, but rather the idea put for-
ward by a government or by an intolerant public opinion to re-
patriate the immigrant minority. Mexican migrant workers were
forced by the American authorities to return after the great de-
pression of 1929 (Bogardus, 1934). In the loaded social atmos-
phere prevalent in Britain since the appearance of Enoch Powell
in 1968, a discussion has been taken up about the rightness of
"assisted repatriation" of coloured people in the Race today-
magazine. The arguments pro and contra, which I shall not dis-
cuss in this context, are quite interesting because they comprise
all the classical arguments that can be found in those situations
where racism and intolerance appear (see: Lord Walston, 1969;
Brooks, 1969~ Sealy, 1970; Young, 1970; Moore, 1971, and
Holt, 1971).
CHAPTER VI
READJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF RETURNED MIGRANTS
Migrants face a great variety of difficulties upon return. They

normally come back from relatively rich countries to countries
with limited job opportunities and with lower standards of living;
they come back from differentiated social systems to relatively
simple social and economic structures in which much of the over-
seas acquired skills may prove to be not very useful; they come
back from countries with sometimes very different norms, val-
ues and ideas, into their traditional cultures etc. There is mas-
sive evidence of the enormous personal problems returning mi-
grants encounter upon homecoming, and the resulting disappoint-
ments. This is well documented in the case of students from the
third world who returned after graduation at European and Amer-
ican Universities. These students have usually been abroad during
their formative years and they have been very much influenced
by their foreign experiences. The processes of alienation and re-
adaptation of overseas students are very well described in two
impressive case studies: Bennett et al. (1958) about Japanese
returning from the U.S.A. and Useem & Useem (1955) about
English and American educated Indians. Merriam (1970) wrote
of the problems of returned Indian scholars, Kizilbash (1964)
gives some cases of returnees from the U.S.A. also to India.
Baldwin (1963) reports the result of a survey among returned
intellectuals from Europe and America to Iran. Frohlich & Schade
(1966) interviewed 16 graduates from West Germany who re-
turned to their home countries in the Middle East. Cajoleas (1959)
mailed a questionnaire to 81 doctoral alumni from Teachers Col-
lege (Columbia) who had returned to their 30 countries of origin,
in which he asked for the personal problems they had met. Levine
(1965) described the personal demoralizations of the foreign-
educated among the new class of intelligentsia in Ethiopia. Du-
READJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF RETURNED MIGRANTS 27
Bois (1956) wrote in general about "factors in postreturn ad-

justment" of returned U.S.A. graduates to their countries in the
underdeveloped world. Danckwortt (1959) carried ou t research
in several West European Universities to study the effectiveness
of Western education in the formation of Asian and African
elites.
Students are not the only ones that find great difficulties in
readaptation. It is all too often mentioned in the literature of
return migration how much the home country has been idealized
during the time of emigration and how great the disillusionment
is upon return. Nelli (1970) describes the disappointments of
Italians, back from the U.S.A. Saloutos (1956) those of Greek
returnees. Dahaya (1973) mentions the shock Pakistanis get af-
ter return from Britain: they don't recognize their "familiar so-
ciallandscape" any more. B. Davison (1968) found that for her
small sample of Jamaican returnees from England, although their
dream of return had been realized, the shock was enormous;
there was no work, no housing, the cost of living had risen
alarmingly etc. Lowenthal (1972) reports similar results from
other Caribbean countries. Knowles (1967) found great disillu-
sionment among Puerto Rican returnees from the U.S.A. They
complained about the lack of privacy, about gossip and about
generation problems with their American educated children.
Richardson (1963) mentions some of the personal problems of
Australian returnees to Britain.
I think it is most interesting to set those findings against stu-
dies about migrant labour in Africa south of the Sahara, where
it is often demonstrated how easily the re-adaptation process
took place. Fortes (1938) described how Tallensi migrants of
the gold coast "dropped their town experience like an old coat"
when they returned. Schapera (1947) thought that urbanization
in South Africa did by no means imply detribalization. Soon
after migrants return, there is a short period of idleness and dis-
play of new clothes and affectations in speech and behaviour,
but after a short while they settle down and revert to their nor-
mal routine as if nothing had happened. Watson (1958, 1961)
reaffirmed Schapera's viewpoints in Rhodesia, where re-adjust-
ment of former urban dwellers proved to be an equally quick
28 READJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF RETURNED MIGRANTS
and easy process. It must be remembered that in South Africa

migrant workers are compelled to live with a perspective on re-
turn as a result of influx control regulations. Only very few mi-
grants are able to stabilize in town. Mayer (1961) showed how
"Red" Xhosa (tribal orientated) as well as "School" Xhosa (west-
ernized, christian) remain country-rooted during their stay in
town. Van Velsen (1961) pointed out the great extent to which
Tonga migrants retain their orientation towards their rural back-
ground; they send home money, interfere in home politics etc.
just in order to take up their positions as smoothly as possible
on returning. Skinner (1960, 1965) also reported how easily mi-
grant labourers of the Mossi tribe in Upper Volta are absorbed in
their home community after a short rite of display of wealth,
"the day of the grand tour". The only instances outside Africa
I have found in the literature in which the easy re-adaptation of
ex-migrants was made explicit were among bush negroes of Suri-
nam who return to their native villages after many years of work
in town (Kobben, 1968 and R. Price, 1970).
In several of the aforementioned studies it is argued that re-
adaptation is not so much the problem of the returnees them-
selves, as for the population that stayed behind which for one
reason or another did not accept the returnees. Bogardus (1934)
described how the sudden mass return of Mexican labourers from
the U.S.A. aroused various forms of resistance by the population
that stayed behind. It seems that returnees are often castigated
by the local ruling class for their arrogant behaviour (e.g. Gilkey,
1968, in the case of Italians coming home from the U.S.A.). The
latter defends its position against the potential threat of migrants
who bring back with them money, education and political train-
ing. Levine (1965) analysed how the modernizing potential of
foreign-educated Ethiopians is enfeebled by resistance of the
"new nobility" class of politicians who defend their position, the
resentment of the locally-educated as regards the privileged sta-
tus of the returnees, that is attributed to them as a matter of
course and the control exercised by a patronizing emperor. A
clear example of this sort is also found in Heeren (1967) who
devoted one chapter in his book on inter-island migration in In-
donesia to the repatriation of Indonesian indentured labourers
READJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF RETURNED MIGRANTS 29
from Surinam in the early forties. The Sumatran population re-

fused to yield land to these repatriates and the settled Muslim
leaders condemned their creolized behaviour. Often it is not just
the ruling elites but the lower strata of society which feel of-
fended by the presumptuous style of its returnees. Fanon (1967,
p. 37) cites some good examples of this in the Caribbean, e.g.
when a returnee comes home from France and his family and
friends wait at the dock for the returnee. "They need a minute
or two in order to make the diagnosis. If the voyager tells his
acquaintances 'I am so happy to be back with you. Good Lord,
it is hot in this country, I shall certainly not be able to endure it
very long', they know: A European has got off the ship."
It is clear that there are in fact many returnees who do not
endure living in the conditions of their land of birth: many re-
turnees re-emigrate to the country they came back from This
phenomenon is very often demonstrated in the literature. In in-
terpreting the occurrence of re-emigration and also of second
time emigration we face the same theoretical problems as are
presented by return migration itself: did migrants return only
for a short stay or did they intend to settle down back home
permanently? In the first instance the migrant leaves again ac-
cording to plan and there is no reason to label him as an unsuc-
cessful returnee, in the second instance he leaves in full disap-
pointment. It is practically impossible to study this phenomenon
of re-emigration from migration statistics, it affects statistics only
in so far as it exaggerates the rates of emigration because re-
emigrants are counted twice as emigrants. Appleyard (1962a,
1962b) found that no less than 3/4 of the returned Australian
settlers to England re-emigrated to Australia. Richmond (1967a)
found in his survey among English returnees from Canada, that
many who had never intended to return to England for good re-
emigrated again. B. Davison (1968) expected that a high percent-
age of the Jamaican returnees she interviewed would re-emigrate
with no illusion left about their "home" island. Philpott (1970)
reports similar results for migrants from Montserrat who went
back to England after return. Knowles (1965) estimates the per-
centage of re-emigration from Puerto Rico to the U.S.A. main-
land as high as 50 Ofo. Lewis (1965) pictures in La Vida a few of
30 READJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF RETURNED MIGRANTS
these families whose members travel to and fro between New

York and San Jose.
Re-emigration is also very apparent in Europe's modern mi-
grant labour (OEeD, 1967b; Baucic, 1972; Bohning, 1972 etc.).
Particularly interesting in this respect is the study by Kayser
(1972) who considered the return flow that followed the re-
cession in West Germany, France and the Netherlands in 1967
as "prolonged holidays" for the migrants concerned. They never
gave up the ties with their employers and as soon as the economic
tide turned they re-emigrated. Second time emigration and tran-
silient labour are a recurrent phenomenon among these European
"guest workers". Kindleberger (1965) calls these constantly mov-
ing labourers "flying Mediterraneans".
Some psychologists reduce these phenomena to personality
factors. Richardson (1968) discerns among the returnees from
Australia a category of "undecided" people, which is analysed
in psycho-social terms. Menges (1959) did research into the psy-
chology of 50 Dutch returnees. He diagnoses these persons as
individuals driven by purely negative motives, eternal migrants,
seeking to escape from themselves. Sjollema (1965) thinks that
returnees and re-emigrants have ended up in a no man's land,
they belong to neither of the two worlds they live in, and may
become schizophrenic. The social historian Vagts (1960) gives
clear-cut cases of this type among German returnees from Amer-
ica. Schrier (1958, p. 132) found an excellent example of such
a person in his historical search for the returned "Yankee" in
Ireland in the second half of the 19th century. In County Leix
a woman was remembered who crossed and recrossed the At-
lantic six times trying to make up her mind in the process of
which she became known as "the Atlantic swimmer".
CHAPTER VII
SOME INFLUENCES OF RETURNEES

ON THEIR HOME COUNTRY
7. 1.
It is remarkable how little attention migration studies have paid

to this aspect of return migration. Even in the massive pile of
literature on social change, modernization and Westernization,
one hardly finds any discussion about the role returnees play in
these processes. This is all the more surprising if we remember
that many elites in the "new states" have been educated in West-
ern countries (short references can be found in Benda (1962)
and Shils (1960) but these authors certainly do not make for-
eign education the focus of their analysis). The main reason, I
think, why returnees have been passed unnoticed in social re-
search so often, is that their number is nearly always very modest.
Though their local effect can certainly be important.
The first influence that is often mentioned in the literature
has to do with migration itself: returnees stimulate further emi-
gration. This has often been pointed out in the case of Ireland:
Commission on Emigration (1954), Schrier (1958), jackson (1963).
GA. Price (1964) has given this influence an important place in
his theoretical discussion on the development of "migration
chains": many mass emigrations are started off by a few adven-
turous individuals. These latter send home letters and offer as-
sistance for emigration to family and friends, but the demonstra-
tion effect of the successful returned migrant alone exercises a
most important influence on further emigration. Bohning (1972)
describes the same mechanism: emigration becomes widely known
as a possible way out of distress when migrants come back and
show off their success. In this way the "maturing" of an emigra-
tion goes on un till the phase of full mass migration has been
reached. But the opposite may also happen. Hofstede (1964)
32 SOME INFLUENCES OF RETURNEES ON THEIR HOME COUNTRY
reveals how press reports about Dutch emigrant failures who re-
turned from Canada and Australia had a clear anti-propaganda
effect on the willingness to emigrate even though the government
encouraged emigration.
A second influence of return migration concerns the class
structure of the home society. Form & Rivera (1958) found in
a Mexican village that the stratification system had lost its former
rigidity as a consequence of the return of wage labourers from
the U.S.A., notably through the widening of the middle class.
Feindt & Browning (1972) examined the life histories of approx-
imately 2000 men in two Mexican communities, one urban and
one rural. They came to the conclusion that return migration
had introduced a good deal of fluidity in the social structure.
Lop rea to (1967) studied the position of returnees from the U.S.A.
in a South Italian village. They were a pitiable group of traditional
eccentrics who were unable to assimilate all the changes in Italian
country life that had taken place during their absence. But they
invested their savings in the education of their children; the se-
cond generation of the "old Americani"now hold a strong posi-
tion in the new middle class. Dahaya (1973) followed Pakistanis
who went from England back to their native villages and found
that families who had sent out and received back family mem-
bers had gained considerably in status. Through the additional
income and the prestige of the returnees, these families managed
to make alliances with urban commercial and professional classes
and to marry hypergamously. Baldwin (1963) carried out a sur-
vey among 414 foreign-returned students in Teheran and made
father-son comparisons in occupation. A very high degree of in-
tra-generation mobility appeared. Livi-Bacci (1971) reports a
recent Italian research project involving 80.000 sample families
in which one member had returned after emigration. The occu-
pations of these migrants were compared before emigration and
after return: no less than 72 % did exactly the same type of
work, which in the opinion of the author confirms the general
finding (7.3) that very little has changed in the class structure
of the emigration countries as a result of modern European mi-
grant labour: the original setting is not altered.
SOME INFLUENCES OF RETURNEES ON THEIR HOME COUNTRY 33
7. 2. Return and innovation
Then there is, thirdly, the all important question as to the in-
novating or conservative functions of return migration for the
home communities. Several authors attempted to classify re-
turning migrants with respect to their innovative potential (Ce-
rase, 1970; Sachetti, 1969; Levine, 1965), but for the purpose
of this essay we shall not go beyond the general distinction be-
tween innovation and conservatism.
Some authors are optimistic about the profits of return, es-
pecially with regard to developing countries (Miracle & Berry,
1970). The most documented strand of research is of an eco-
nomic nature. It is argued that the returnee migrants have gained
technical training and experience during their stay in advanced
countries and that they take home with them substantial savings.
In my opinion, the best reasoned model that supports this point
of view is presented by Friedlander (1965), who considers tem-
porary migration as a panacea for the economic problems of un-
derdeveloped countries. In order to "take off' economically,
countries with high unemployment rates should send away for
some time a large number of unemployed, unskilled people in
their child-bearing ages. Their temporary absence provides these
countries with some economic elbow-room through the resulting
improvement of the capital-labour ratio, increased savings and
a reduction of governmental expenditure on welfare benefits.
As soon as the country is on its economic feet, like Puerto Rico
in the early sixties, the emigrants should be encouraged to return.
The skills they acquired in the immigration countries are eagerly
used for the ongoing economic expansion. And the savings they
bring home can be well used as productive capital. Arguments
of this nature (but less well founded) can be found nowadays in
many publications of immigration governments of labour re-
cruiting employers' associations, e.g. by Jelden (1969).
We have two descriptions of clear-cut economic innovations
that have been effectuated in the past. The historian Holzman
(1926) demonstrated how the wealthy returning nabobs from
India played an active role in Englands industrial revolution at
the end of the 18 th century by acting as moneylenders. Semming-
sen (1961), also a historian, discovered how Norwegian migrant

labourers, who came back from the U.S.A. had been very innova-
tive after return. From records of medical officers in the south
of Norway during this time it appeared that these migrants in-
vested their money in agriculture and fishing, that they were more
daring in trying new agricultural methods, that they were the first
to acquire agricultural machinery etc. (see also Miracle & Berry,
1970).
Innovations brought about by returned migrants have been
studied in numerous publications from a wider cultural point of
view. Migrants have acquired new norms, values, ideals and as-
pirations during their stay abroad, especially when they have
been away for longer periods of time. In the case of innovative
return migration these migrants are considered to come back to
their fatherland highly motivated to effectuate many construc-
tive changes. Saloutos (1956) perceived among returnees in Greece
an atmosphere of advancement, a strong influence of the Amer-
ican ideals of democracy and he observed the introduction of
new and more orderly working practices among them. It is often
shown how difficult it is for these returnees to put their ideas
into practice as they encounter resistance by the home commu-
nity. Among the returned Italian migrants from the U.S.A., Ce-
rase (1970) found a small minority of the innovating type. Due
to local resistance very little was accomplished.
We find the same again in several studies about returning stu-
dents to countries of the third world. Useem & Useem (1955)
explain extensively which stumbling blocks of traditionalism in
India had to be coped with before a sufficiently large number of
foreign-trained returnees had taken over key positions in their
organizations and to press through needed changes. Similar anal-
ysis of innovations and its hindrances have been made by DuBois
(1956), Danckwortt (1959), Bennett et al. (1958), Naficy (1967)
and Levine (1965). All these authors show in fact how enorm-
ously difficult it is for foreign-trained students to bring about
any progress: the results of their innovation attempts are thrown
into the shadow by their frustrations. An exception to this rule
is given by Ransom (1970) who described the dubious role the
U.S.A. played in the coup of general Suharto in Indonesia in 1965.
Many young Indonesian intellectuals who had been educated in

the University of California became what is known now as the
"Berkeley Maffia". They took over important posts in the newly
formed Indonesian government.
In a number of other sources the diffusion of new ideas and
practices by returned migrants have been noted in passing (Cald-
well, 1969; R.I. Crane, 1955; OECD, 1967a, 1967b; Pakleppa,
1969; Read, 1942), but it struck me that in these cases very little
empirical proof has been given (in sharp contrast to the research
material on conservative return). Thus Read (1942, p. 613) tells
us about African migrant workers (Nyasaland) that "in the re-
lative leisure of their homes men from north, south, east and
west discuss the assimilation or rejection of new elements in cul-
ture, and African standards and values are altered and crystal-
lized". But the reader is kept in ignorance as to what new cultural
traits have been adopted.
On the other hand there exists much literature about moder-
nization in developing countries and often the people concerned
are strongly involved in processes of labour migration or urbani-
zation. In these studies it is usually very difficult to determine
the precise part the returned migrants have contributed to the
social change that has taken place in the home community. How
much influences of modernism have to be attributed to educa-
tion, missionary activities or mass communication? Therefore
we shall not include those studies in which the influence ofre-
turnees has not explicitly been discussed.
7. 3. Return and conservatism
We have seen (7.2) how several authors tend to consider the sys-
tem of labour migration as a positive contribution to the eco-
nomic development of the home country: migrants return with
productive savings and useful skills. During the last five years
considerable social research has implicitly tested parts of the
model a la Friedlander, especially in Europe. The findings argue
strongly against any such optimistic theory: (see de long, ] 965;
Stark, 1967a, 1967b; GECD, 1967a, 1967b; Descloitres, 1968;
Migration News, 1969; A.M. Rose, 1969; Trebous, 1970; Niko-
linakos, 1971; Livi-Bacci, 1971; Dietzel, 1971; Kayser, 1971,

1972; BauCic, 1972; Abadan, 1972; Marshall, 1973; Gokalp,
1973, about the non-innovative influence of migrant labourers,
who have returned to Italy, Spain, Algeria, Jugoslavia, Turkey,
Greece and Portugal). Castles & Kosack (1973) give a good sum-
mary of all the established objections against optimistic models.
- Even during th~ absence of many migrants, a real economic

"take off" does rarely take place. The emigration is not em-
bedded in a grand strategy for economic development, but is
normally a direct result of a weak or deteriorating economy.
This is not only so in some of the labour exporting countries
in the Mediterranean region. Bovenkerk (197 3b) has shown
how the objective possibility of absorption in the Surinamese
economy of its 15 Ofo emigrant population now residing in Hol-
land had become worse rather than better during the past
few emigration years. B. Davison (1968) described how re-
turned Jamaicans from Britain found "no place back home"
on the labour market. For a similar conclusion for the West
Indies as a whole, see Norton (1971).
- It appeared that a very high proportion of immigrant work-
ers in Western Europe never progress beyond unskilled status,
and that the small minority that did manage to be skilled had
stayed so long to acquire these skills that in the meantime
they had already settled down. Employers in Western Europe
naturally take great pains to retain just these workers. One
possible difficulty to this is made by Dietzel (1972) who ar-
gues that the planned return of a small group of German-
trained workers to Turkey serves the interest of the German
ruling class. It is just another move of the aggressive German
imperialism; these returnees have been trained to act as the
bootlickers for German capital, he says, because they are ex-
pected to break down resistance to the penetration of foreign
investment.
- Even those skilled workmen who really went back had seldom
acquired skills that corresponded to the needs of their coun-
tries.
- It appeared also that a great number of these returnees could
not readjust to their home country and re-emigrated or emi-

grated for a second time.
- There have been very few Mediterranean countries that have
taken active steps to get their emigrants back. Stark (1967b)
mentions Turkey as a country that charges favourable ex-
change rates for the money-returned workers bring back with
them. The government also sets up taxation facilities for re-
turnees, who put their savings into cooperatives. Also in Greece,
returnees are not being charged import duties; attractive mon-
ey loans are offered and the authorities try to mediate in find-
ing suitable jobs. Dimitras (1967) announces a scheme for en-
couraging return to Greece, but I have not found any serious
evaluation of results after attempts of this kind.
- There is overwhelming evidence that the majority of these re-
turnees did not aspire towards industrial employment, they
try to ascend socially and economically within the traditional
unproductive means. Acquisitions like skills and money are
used for the direct improvement of the migrant himself and
his family, and this is done completely in terms of the local
tradition, i.e. to survive at home, not to change home. Most
examples in the literature on migrant labour point clearly to
this kind of conservatism. It is very interesting, I think, to see
that in all these studies the same elements show up again and
again, irrespective of time and place. During the first weeks or
month after homecoming the returnees are conspicuous by
their dress, their speech, their easy spending on friends and
relatives, their new food habits, their leisure and at the same
time restlessness, their arrogant behaviour (as perceived by
the home society), their self-confidence. They are never tired
of talking about the luxuries of the immigrant societies they
come from. After this first period of return it depends on the
amount of money they have been able to save whether they
invest in houses or in small enterprises like pubs, restaurants,
shops or taxi-businesses. If their savings have not been this
big, they quickly resume former routine.
We have mentioned a long list of studies about migrantlabour in

Europe in which this conservatism has been demonstrated. phil-
pott (1970) found exactly the same among returnees to the Ca-
ribbean island of Monserrat from England. Money is spent on
houses, to buy a taxicab or to set up a small shop. Schrier (1958)
described the same pattern for the Yankees who returned to Ire-
land during the second half of the 19th century. Foerster (1924)
wrote about returnees in Italy in the first decades of the 20th
century. His descriptions could almost have been taken from
any current publication about migrant workers to-day. Lasker's
(1931) remarks about Filipino returnees from the U.S.A. and
Hawaii, Banton's (1953) paragraphs about returned sailors from
England to Sierra Leone, Caldwell's (1969) findings about Gha-
naians returning home from the towns, and Kulp (1925) about
Chinese who had come back from Indo-China and Singapore, all
point in the same direction. The hopeful initiative of the Turkish
government to invest the savings of migrant workers in their own
agricultural cooperatives has resulted in failure (Abadan, 1972).
Even Friedlander (1965) who developed the previously discussed
optimistic model of economic development through temporary
emigration, has recognized that many Puerto Ricans had not ac-
quired any skills at all in the U.S.A. and that very little innovating
incentives had to be expected from this grou p. Schapera (1947)
found that Bantu migrants had not come back from town with
any innovative intentions. They returned, first to rest, and to
spend their time loafing about, and later to settle down to their
normal routine. As far as innovation could be expected, it had
to come from a completely different class of "well-educated
people". Cerase (1967, 1970) observed among returnees from
the U.S.A. to Italy a large group who led a marginal life in the
countryside. They had done quite different work in America
and they certainly did not represent an innovating class.
CHAPTER VIII
TECHNIQUES IN RETURN MIGRATION RESEARCH
I shall try to classify the various research techniques that are

being used in the study of return migration. In several studies
more than one technique is applied, but we shall place the pre-
valent approach under its appropriate heading. Moreover only
those studies will be referred to that are interesting from the
point of view of the research technique used.
8. 1. Historical studies
The book by Vagts (1960) is an erudite example of historical

research into written life histories of an eminent group of re-
turnees from the U.S.A. This type of study is too unsystematic
for sociological interpretation (see Konig's (1962) critics). Holz-
man (1926) investigated bibliographies of the illustrious nabobs
who came back from India to England in the eighteenth century.
The article by Gilkey (1968) about the return of Italians is very
interesting in its details but it does not lend itself to any form
of sociological verification. The same holds for Schrier (1958),
Fermi (1968) and Semmingsen (1961).
8. 2. Interpretation of migration statistics
There are numerous studies in which return migration is demon-

strated on the basis of statistical population figures: both clas-
sics by Ravenstein (1885,1889) and further D.S. Thomas (1938),
Shyrock & Larmon (1965), Wen Lang Li (1970), Hollingsworth
(1971), Krotki (1963) and Zachariah (1966). Vanderkamp (1972)
used a 10 % sample of social insurance data which gives person-
al records longitudinally. Courgeau (1968) made use of police
files for subsequent years in two French departements to calcu-
40 TECHNIQUES IN RETURN MIGRATION RESEARCH
late the percentage of returnees among foreign workers. An ex-

cellent example of the ingenuity by which careful interpretation
of census-data and other statistical material may reveal relevant
sociological facts, is the monograph on Puerto Rican return mi-
gration by Hernandez-Alvarez (1967). In this study, statistical
data have been interpreted into meaningful relationships through
the additional help of the techniques of questionnaires and the
collection of case studies.
8. 3. Questionnaire, interview and survey
Four stages in the process of return migration in which samples

of returnees or prospective returnees have been interviewed can
be discerned.
a. Questioning the willingness to return of an immigrant popu-
lation.
Aich (1962), Azim (1971), Chansarkar (1970), R.B. Davison
(1966), Elizur (1973), Lowe (1963) and Sedoc-Dahlberg (1971).
b. Questioning returning migrants before departure.
It is remarkable to see how seldom returning migrants have
been interviewed in this crucial stage of their return. The only
example seems to be Appleyard (1962a). I may also mention
my own forthcoming work on Surinamese return migration.
c. Questioning during the voyage back home.
If returnees travel by ship it gives the investigator an excellent
opportunity to interview the people during the abundance of
time of their voyage. Shipboard studies have been made by
H.O. Patterson (1968) and Richardson (1968).
d. Questioning returned migrants in their home countries.
The overwhelming majority of studies about return migration
is based on interviews with smaller or larger samples of already
returned migrants: Appleyard (1962a, 1962b), Baucic (1972),
Cajoleas (1959), Caldwell (1969),Cerase (1967, 1970),B. Da-
vison (1968), Ejougu (1966), Feindt & Browning (1972), Form
& Rivera (1958), Frohlich & Schade (1966), Hofstede (1964),
Livi-Bacci (1971), Migration News (1969), Saloutos (1956),
TECHNIQUES IN RETURN MIGRATION RESEARCH 41
Schmiedeck (1973), Menges (1959), Merriam (1970), OECD

(1967a, 1967b), Richmond (1967a), Simmons & Cardona
(1972), Useem & Useem (1955), Wellington (1968), Wilder-
Okladek (1969).
A methodologically important combination of two types of ques-

tionnaire-research is used by authors who compare the motives
for return migration with the reasons why other migrants of the
same group stay behind: Frijda (1962), Graves & Ars:dale (1966),
Myers & Masnick (1968), Richmond (1967a, 1967b, 1968), and
Ritterband (1968).
Most of the material on return migration is based on inter-
viewing the already returned migrants. This may have serious
consequences for our knowledge of return migration so far, and
especially for what we have said about the motives for return.
This is aptly demonstrated by Appleyard (Committee on social
patterns of the immigration advisory council, 1967, p. 25) who
was able to compare motives for return of Australian settlers
before and after homecoming. He first made a shipboard study
and 12 months later he re-studied the very same sample of people
in Britain. It then appeared that aboard the ship the returnees
had been principally concerned with developing acceptable sto-
ries to be told to friends and relatives on return. Twelve months
later their motives for return had changed a great deal!
8. 4. Surveys on the possibilities for return and evaluations ofgo-

vernmental action-programs for return
These two types of studies have direct relevance for government

policy on return migration. The first type studies the existing
labour market in relation to its absorption capacity for return
migrants: Migration News (1969), OECD (1967a, 1967b), Kayser
(1971), Bovenkerk (197 3b). The second type of evaluation re-
search has been very much neglected. The existing literature con-
sists of impressionistic reports rather than of careful social and
economic research: Haniotis (1964), Awasthi (1966), Naficy
(1967).
42 TECHNIQUES IN RETURN MIGRATION RESEARCH
8. 5. Anthropological studies
In this type of study two techniques are used: participant ob-

servation among the immigrant colony (Vredenbregt, 1958;
Mayer, 1961; Dahaya, 1973) or in the home community (Kulp,
1925;Fortes, 1938; Read, 1942; Schapera, 1947; Watson, 1958,
1961; Skinner, 1960, 1965; Lopreato, 1967; K6bben, 1968;
Philpott, 1968, 1970) and the collection of detailed life histories
(Bennett et al., 1958; Plotnicov, 1967).
CHAPTER IX
THE DIRECTION OF FUTURE RESEARCH

IN RETURN MIGRATION
In this essay it is shown that return migration is by no means

the unexplored field of study that most of its students take it
for. The essential theoretical weakness lies in the scarce com-
munication between the relevant authors and the lack of coordi-
nation in their studies. Very little accumulation of knowledge
has taken place. In this last section of this paper I shall try to
point out, in a very broad way, where the gaps in our know-
ledge are and in what directions future studies could be most
fruitfully made.
- The study of volume and direction of return migration as

well as its causes should be carried further by means of cross-
cultural research. Theoretical propositions of the kind as pre-
sented at the end of paragraph 3 have been derived from re-
sults of studies of internal migration. These propositions
should be evaluated, extended and refined by systematic com-
parison of international flows of return migration. A neces-
sary condition for this type of study is that sufficiently de-
tailed migration figures are available. These are too often
lacking and we would therefore plead to insert questions on
individual migration histories in the census.
- In paragraph 4.3 an economic model has been presented (Fried-
lander, 1965, see also Miracle & Berry, 1970) in which the
return of migrants contributes a great deal to the fulfillment
of the need for higher training and skills as well as to the need
for productive investments in poor emigration countries. We
have shown that this model could not stand up to the test of
the empirical reality, except in the case of Puerto Rico in the
late fifties. And even here the success of a migration policy
has been expressed in terms of the growth of a national prod-
44 mE DIRECTION OF FUTURE RESEARCH IN RETURN MIGRATION
uct rather than as a way out of misery for the poor mass of
the population. It would be a strategic choice to select pre-
cisely those countries for study that planned their emigration
along the aforementioned lines. It would be of enormous pr:ac-
tical relevance if we could be able to specify the empirical
conditions under which a policy of return migration makes
for economic development.
- In many underdeveloped countries it is felt that their foreign-
trained nationals, now working overseas, could contribute a
great deal to the national development. We have seen (4.3,
4.4) how reluctant these people (university graduates as well
as industrial labourers) are to come back. Several governments
have developed plans to make return more attractive. To my
knowledge, there has never been carried out a profound study
as to the effect of such policies.
- In this essay we have confined ourselves to the study of return
migration as a phenomenon of groups. It would seem parti-
cularly worthwhile, especially with respect to the influence
of returnees upon the home country, to study the return of
leading individuals. There must be a great deal of interesting
material in the bibliographics of political leaders like Ho-Tsji-
Min, Nkrumah, Senghor, Kenyatta etc.
- Another unexplored source of material on return migration
can be found in novels. In the works of Italian, West African
and West Indian writers one will find interesting accounts of
the individual problems returnees face upon return in their
homeland and the reactions of the homecommunity on them.
- I think that one of the most fascinating strands of research,
theoretically as well as socially, is the study of return and
innovation. I shall therefore go into these matters somewhat
deeper. In the purely bibliographical part of this essay, we
have found only very few well-documented examples in which
innovations have been effectuated by migrants who returned
from societies in which they had gained completely different
life experiences. How can we account for this fact, wh y do
return migrants apparently represent so little innovative po-
tential? In the study of return migration much more attention
should be paid to the question of which factors promote in-
THE DIRECTION OF FUTURE RESEARCH IN RETURN MIGRATION 45
novation and which factors hamper it. Since we already have

so much proof of failures in this respect, I would suggest as a
strategy for future research, that we explicitly look for in-
stances where returned migrants have proved to be an inno-
vative force.
Until now we have consciously avoided any discussion about
what innovation is. The way in which the various sources have
been presented is a reflection of what the authors concerned
meant by it. In almost all the literature in which the influence
of returned migrants on the social and economic development
has been studied, development and the various innovative
stages that lead to it, is implicitly defined in terms of the
model presented by the rich Western countries of the world.
This is supposedly the viewpoint of most returnees themselves,
because they bring back influences from these very countries.
There may, in these sources, be some discussion about the
way Western ideas are to be translated by the returnees in the
context of their home countries, but the usefulness of these
ideas themselves is never questioned. To my disappointment,
the superior American type of society is used as a sole cri-
terion to judge how far returnees are capable of bringing about
change'S and to what extent the home community shows "re-
sistance to change". This is very much so in the literature
about the returning students of the third world from the U.S.A.
(Useem & Useem, 1955; DuBois, 1956; Danckwortt, 1959).
To remove this objection of one-sidedness, I think it wise that
we specially look for those cases in which migrants re.turn
with different ideologies. I found one such case in Daniel &
King (1972), who gave an enthousiastic journalistic report of
a group of 8 Italians, who had been working in Swiss mines,
and who set up an agricultural cooperative in the most back-
part of Sicily. They were ideologically well prepared in Swit-
zerland, and they founded a complete Marxist-orientated li-
brary to introduce their ideas. This project has only been des-
cribed in its very first stage and one wonders what became
of it.
The empirical evidence of return and innovation up till now
is too little, too unreliable, too unspecific, too fragmentary
46 THE DIRECTION OF FUTURE RESEARCH IN RETURN MIGRATION
and as said too partial, to make possible a comparison of the

conditions under which innovation by return migrants suc-
ceeded and in which attempted innovation became a failure.
The possibility of weighing the relative importance of the var-
ious factors is even more out of the question. I can only- sug-
gest here a number of variables which could prove to be of
importance. The variables here presented bear only on the
migration process itself, for it would be far too complicated
to include factors that characterize the countries of emigration
and immigration in their possible influences.
It is clear e.g. that factors like the receptivity of the
home society towards modernization are important.
There is an enormous difference between the following
two extreme historical situations: Japan during the
Meji restauration and Ireland at the end of the 19th
century. The Japanese government during the Meji re-
gime picked several hundreds of their best students to
send to the U.S.A. in order to playa paramount role
in the modernization of Japanese society (Bennett et
al., 1958). The impact of the returned Yank on Irish
rural society on the other hand, is estimated by Schrier
(1958) as negligible. Social pressures for conformity
in this tradition-bound society were an insurpassable
obstacle for every single act of innovation by returned
migrants.
1. the number of returnees, in absolute numbers as well as rela-
tive to the home population. Several studies mention the volume
of return migration as a factor why influences remain only of little
importance. Useem & Useem (1955, p. 106) note that in India on-
ly in those cases where a sufficiently large number of returnees
are working in one organization, measures of modernization can
be put through. If, however, the number of returnees is very
high, it may arouse massive resistance of the home population.
Bogardus (1934, p. 92-93) compared Mexican districts to which
few migrants had returned from the U.S.A. and districts in which
there were many returnees during the depression year of 1929
and after. In the first case these "repatriados" were easily ab-
sorbed in their native villages. In the second case they had be-
come a minority of recalcitrant "gringo's", who came into open
conflict with the settled population until the minority succumbed
and their leaders slunk away to the towns.
2. the concentration of returnees in time. It is easily understand-
able that different situations result whether the same number of
returnees all come home within a short span of time or if they
drip in individually during alonKperiod of time. For a given mo-
ment in time the effect is similar to what is hypothesized in va-
riable 1: in the first case the number of returnees is high, in the
second it is low. It is quite possible that when migrants return
dispersed over time, the few individual returnees re-assimilate
completely. They then may react to new returnees as if they
had never been away.
3. the duration of absence. Descloltres (1967, p. 13) proposes a
sort of optimum length of stay in the immigration country in
relation to the contemporary European migrant workers. If they
have been away too short a time they have gained too little ex-
perience to be able to promote modernization. If they have been
away too long their alienation from the home society has become
too large.
4. the social class of the migrants. Returning graduate students
(given a relatively stable social order) have in general a greater
impact on the home society than migrant labourers. This is es-
pecially made clear in the case of students who originate from
the elite of their countries. Among these groups the willingness
to return and the chance of obtaining a high position is consid-
erably higher as is demonstrated by Naficy (1967) for Iran,
Useem & Useem (1955) for India and Bennett et al. (1958) for
Japan.
5. the motives for return. At first sight it seems plausible to hy-
pothesize that the more the returnees have been motivated by
pull-factors in their homeland the greater chance for innovation
and the more they have been motivated by push-factors in the
country of immigration the less the chance for innovation. But
old age return is a clear example of the contrary of the first part
48 THE DIRECTION OF FUTURE RESEARCH IN RETURN MIGRATION
of this hypothesis, while the aggressive inclination to change re-

sulting from the discord of forced repatriation is an example
contrary to the second part of the hypothesis. We are dealing
here with two incompatible hypotheses that seem worth-while
to investigate.
6. the degree of difference between the country of emigration
and the country of immigration. It has often been demonstrated
that the influences of a modern, industrialized metropolitan
world that returnees take home are of little use in their tradi-
tional, agricultural village community. Schapera (1947, p. 191)
remarks in his discussion why Bantu returnees from South African
towns adapt so easily to their traditional reservation way of life,
that "civilization of the white people is something so alien and so
remote ( ... ), they do not go back discontented at having to re-
turn to their former life". Fortes '(1938, p. 87) concluded in
more general terms (with reference to the Tallensi migrants of
West Africa returning from towns) that· "skills and ideas cannot
function independently of the proper material apparatus, the re-
levant social context and the recurrent situations in which they
are appropriate". The historian Ingrid Semmingsen (1961, p.42-
45, 52) makes a comparison, that is highly relevant in this con-
text, between Italians and Norwegians that emigrated to the
U.S.A. in the last decades of the 19th century. The Italians moved
to the American towns and worked in the industry. Upon return
they tried to copy city life in the countryside and they therefore
remained "strange birds" in the Italian rural society. The Nor-
wegians, on the other hand, worked in America as farm labourers
in the countryside: these emigrants had been very innovative
after return (see also 7.2).
7. the nature of the acquired training and skills. Many writers
are of the opinion, that in those cases in which migrants have
been educated or trained, the chances for innovation increase
the more their training has been of a general nature. The sort of
education students from poor countries get in a highly differ-
entiated Western University or the skills migrant workers acquire
in specialized industries are seldom easy transferable in the home
countries. In the wording of the late Pandit Nehru: "I have found
often enough that Indians who come back after a full course of
foreign training are very competent. They can do much, but they
always ask for complicated machines to do their work. They
seem a little helpless without their little pet machines with them"
(Danckwortt, 1959, p. 56).
8. the organization of return. When return is well-organized and
carefully planned the chances for change increase. Poor organi-
zation was the main factor, according to Gamio (1930, appen-
dix VII), why Mexican resettlement of returnees from the U.S.A.
during the great depression became a complete failure. On the
other hand we have the example of the "Berkeley Maffia" (Ran-
som, 1970) whose great influence on the new Indonesian polity
was due to vigorous planning in the U.S.A.
9. the political relationship between the countries of emigration
and immigration. The study by Bennett et al. (1958) on the re-
turn of Japanese students from the U.S.A. is very interesting in
that it shows that in the course of Japan's recent history, the
position and possible influences of the returnees shifted accord-
ing to Japan's ideological definition of progress.
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Sociology (Migration)

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THE SOCIOLOGY OF RETURN MIGRATION

PUBLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH GROUP

Dr. G. Beyer, 17 Pauwenlaan

© 1974 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1708-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-011-8009-2

II, DEFINING RETURN MIGRATION 4

III. THE "LAWS" OF RETURN MIGRATION 7

IV. TYPES OF RETURN MIGRATION 9

V. SUCCESS OR FAILURE: THE MOTIVES FOR RETURN MIGRATION 20

VI. READJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF RETURNED MIGRANTS 26

VII. SOME INFLUENCES OF RETURNEES ON THEIR HOME COUNTRY 31

VIII. TECHNIQUES IN RETURN MIGRATION RESEARCH 39

IX THE DIRECTION OF FUTURE RESEARCH IN RETURN MIGRATION 43

In 1971 a research project was initiated by the University of Am-

1. 1. Why this essay?

It is customary for the author on return migration to complain

1. 2. Organization of the paper

Bibliographies usually comprise a number of relevant titles and

short summaries of their contents. Instead, this essay aims to clas-

this article. After summing up all these shortcomings, I can only

DEFINING RETURN MIGRATION

The terminological sloppiness found in the relevant literature

For the sake of clarification in this terminological labyrinth

A third terminological difficulty arises when defining the term

may take and we have avoided all complications as to its con-

THE "LAWS" OF RETURN MIGRATION

The study of return migration started by the recognition of its

model based on plus and minus factors in the place of origin of

TYPES OF RETURN MIGRATION

There is little reason to study return migration with theoretical

actual migration movement

(1) intended permanent emigration without return

4. 1. Intended permanent emigration without return

departure to England in 1961. Later he re-studied the same group

4. 2. Intended permanent emigration with return

As regards this type of permanent intended emigration where

Australia for good.

4. 3. Intended temporary migration with return

Studies of temporary migration or labour circulation seldom put

sence, the frequency of migration and the periodicity of the in-

The notion of the foreign workers functioning as a "Konjunktur-

4. 4. Temporary intended migration without return

There are numerous emigrations in which the main emigration

chemists and other intellectuals in England 3/4 want to leave

in Switzerland, Science, NAFSA-newsletter and Educational and

group of 42 phisicians who had been given leave by their sponsor-

Dahaya, 1973, R.B. Davison, 1966, Philpott, 1968, 1970). The

4. 5. "Return" that is not return

One must distinguish the migrant ideologies mentioned from re-

A topic that is characteristic for the study of return migration is

economic recessions stimulated the return of Puerto Ricans (see

was no difference in wage- or worksatisfaction. Personality fac-

ces about labour circulation in which, among those who return

affection goals, whereas the "stayers" in the city appeared to

there are no unemployment benefits or old age pensions. Migrant

READJUSTMENT PROBLEMS OF RETURNED MIGRANTS

Migrants face a great variety of difficulties upon return. They

Bois (1956) wrote in general about "factors in postreturn ad-

and easy process. It must be remembered that in South Africa

from Surinam in the early forties. The Sumatran population re-

these families whose members travel to and fro between New

SOME INFLUENCES OF RETURNEES

It is remarkable how little attention migration studies have paid

7. 2. Return and innovation