Theorising return migration: a revisited conceptual approach to return migrants

The attention paid by international organisations to the link between migration and development in migrants’ origin countries has highlighted the need to revisit return migration approaches. Moreover, the growing diversity of migratory categories (ranging from economic migrants to refugees and asylum-seekers) necessitates a desegregation of the various types of returnees. We still need to know who returns when, and why; and why some returnees appear as actors of change, in specific social and institutional circumstances at home, while others do not. The first objective of this paper is to analyse how return has been dealt with by international migration theories, emphasising particularly the assumptions on which they rest. This theoretical overview is necessary to show how return has been defined and located in time and space, and how the returnee has been depicted. The second objective is to take the various approaches to return migration a step further by elaborating on the theoretical insights which have been extensively proposed so far. It will then present a revisited conceptual approach to returnees, taking into account a set of distinguishing criteria, i.e., ‘the returnee’s preparedness’ and ‘resource mobilisation’.