Return migration

DEFINITION: Reverse form of migration in which immigrants go back to their original homes

SIGNIFICANCE: Return migration can be important to original homelands when returnees come back with money to invest and with new skills and education acquired while living in the United States. At the same time, the United States can lose people with valuable knowledge and skills.

People who choose to emigrate to other lands—no matter their reasons—generally do not plan on returning to their homelands. Consequently, if they later return to their original homes, they do so for unexpected reasons. Return migration thus differs from movements of migrants who move back and forth between countries to do seasonal work or to take on short-term jobs. The concept of return migration as a special phenomenon was first articulated in E. G. Ravenstein’s seminal 1885 book The Laws of Migration.

Studies have shown that the longer immigrants remain in the United States, the less likely they are to leave. Those who do return home are generally influenced by several factors. Sometimes they are weary of being treated poorly or suffering from racial prejudice and discrimination. Language barriers and difficulty with cultural assimilation can also be factors in deciding to return home. Even something as basic as climate may cause immigrants to leave—people used to warm tropical climates may not be able to adjust to cold North American winters. Immigrants naive enough to have expected to find easy riches in America may find the economic reality too harsh to bear.

Positive factors can be at play, too. For example, some immigrants find that the skills they have acquired in America are badly needed in their home countries. Immigrants who leave their homelands for political reasons may find that improvements in their homelands’ political climates are incentives to return. However, the principal reason most immigrants return is strong family ties in their homelands.

After immigrants returned to their homelands, some settled with other returnees when they found they were unable to live as they did before they left their countries, particularly as many of them had become used to more prosperous lifestyles. Moreover, returnees often found they had more in common with fellow returnees than they did with former friends or even relatives. Women returnees often had difficulties readjusting to societies that placed restrictions on their roles. For this reason, Latin American women have shown an especially strong reluctance to return home. Not all returnees went home as successes, particularly those who originally intended to return and who made little effort to adapt to American ideas. However, returnees were seldom economically worse off when they returned than before they left.

Some immigrants who remained in the United States for long periods of time before returning to their homelands sent money home to build up savings for their planned retirement in their homelands. Others returned home but maintained residencies in the United States. Some countries—such as Jamaica and Portugal—offered financial incentives and other inducements to persuade emigrants to return.

Return migration remains an important issue within international migration, with pros and cons and costs and benefits. In the early 2020s, two migrants out of every five left their host country within a year of arrival. Migrants continued to hope to gain financial savings and acquire skills and specific political and economic norms that might benefit the host country. However, skills acquired or preferences gained could be difficult to transfer back to a home country. Further, data on return migration remained difficult to collect.

In the 2020s, many developed countries undertook programs to pay immigrants to return to their countries of origin. One such example was Sweden that—in 2024—offered over $34,000 for these types of moves. Because many developed countries experienced negative population growth, they previously relied on immigrant labor. Countries also previously opened their borders to foreigners fleeing war zones. As immigrant communities began to increase in size, many native-born citizens voiced concern that their national cultures were threatened by the newcomers. Many nativists also believed the immigrants were poorly assimilated into the native culture and were retaining that of their places of origin. Sweden—a nation of around 10.6 million people—accepted 250,000 refugees within the previous decade. In 2023, Sweden began to impose new restrictions on new entries. Sweden's cash offer targeted many recently arrived immigrants from Yugoslavia, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, and Iraq. Critics of the move contended that such offers would disincentivize immigrants from integration efforts. Media reports suggested few immigrants accepted the Swedish government's offer.

Bibliography

Brettell, Caroline. Anthropology and Migration. AltaMira Press, 2003.

Bucheli, José R., and Matías Fontenla. "The Impact of Return Migration on Economic Development." The Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 107, no. 2, 2025, pp. 393–407, doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01273. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.

Chutel, Lynsey. "Sweden Will Offer Migrants $34,000 to Go Home." The New York Times, 13 Sept. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/world/europe/sweden-immigration-reform.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Kalia, Kirin. "Return Migration: Changing Directions?" Migration Policy Institute, 4 Dec. 2008, www.migrationpolicy.org/article/return-migration-changing-directions. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.

Ohlin, Pia, and Johannes Ledel. "Sweden Wants to Pay Immigrants up to $34,000 to Voluntarily Leave." Forbes, 13 Sept. 2024, fortune.com/europe/2024/09/13/sweden-pay-immigrants-34000-leave/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.

Sowell, Thomas. Migrations and Culture. Basic Books, 1996.

Wahba, Jackline. “Who Benefits From Return Migration to Developing Countries?” IZA World of Labor, 2021, wol.iza.org/articles/who-benefits-from-return-migration-to-developing-countries/long. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.