Publication Date
1-2016
Abstract
This article aims to present an overview of the literature on return migration. Through combining the perspectives of various disciplines, notably economy, sociology, and psychology, the main theoretical issues, studies and findings in the field of remigration are presented. In this paper, we concentrate on traditional immigrants with a ‘pull’ incentive (e.g., labor migrants) who migrated mostly for economic or sometimes educational reasons rather than the immigrants who are forced from their own countries and ‘pushed’ (e.g., political refugees) into a new environment (Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001). We address the strengths and the weaknesses of the extant models and theories in explaining the causes and the consequences of the remigration experiences of the traditional migrants. Finally, drawing from a study of Turkish return migration from Western Europe, we discuss the contextual conditions such as attitudes of mainstream groups in the remigration country which are salient moderators of the acculturation process and which makes return migration different from migration.
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