Coming Home to an (Un)familiar Country

This volume focuses on the process of return migration, from a holistic and policy-oriented perspective. Studies in return migration, which remains a vibrant field for academics, researchers, and policy-makers, have provided a large body of knowledge on particular issues, but generally fall along two lines: they are either broad macro analyses and models (especially economic ones) or narrow ethnographic views (anthropological, sociological, or psychological). This volume attempts to chart a course between these two approaches, combining returning migrants' life trajectories, as seen by themselves, with analysis of the structural processes that have taken place in the last three decades in Europe and in Poland, as a new EU country. In analyzing the social and cultural changes reflected in the biographies of returning migrants, the author uses a framework based on an original synthesis of Alfred Schütz's phenomenological approach, focusing on the returnees' life words, with the social realism of Margaret Archer, focusing on the concerns and projects of individuals interacting with social and cultural structures.

Combines micro and macro approaches to return migrants' life trajectories to paint a full picture of returnees' life worlds Provides an alternative to the dominant transnational approach to return migration Creates a typology or taxonomy of returning migrants' strategies cutting across five dimensions, giving a holistic and multidimensional perspective on migration

Autorentext

Mariusz Dzi glewski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland, where he also runs an inLAB - Research and Innovation Centre focusing on professional qualitative and quantitative research in culture, education, and B&R.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction: Migratory streams in Europe and in Poland.- Chapter 2: What Do We Know and How Can We Learn More about Homecoming?.- Chapter 3: The Structural Background of Migration and Homecoming in Europe after 2004.- Chapter 4: Homecomers' Perceptions of Opportunities and Constraints in the Migration Cycle.- Chapter 5: Aspects of Return Migrants' Strategies.- Chapter 6: One of Us or Stranger? A taxonomy of Homecomers.- Chapter 7: Conclusions.