The book draws on research encompassing four different continents - Europe, North America, Africa and Asia - to show how contextual differences affect wellbeing in return migration. Previous research has been heavily informed by clinical approaches and concepts, whereas the contributions in this book come from a wide range of social science disciplines. By considering psychosocial wellbeing as an empirical question, this book shows how wellbeing is affected during the return process. It will enable academics and policymakers to understand the repercussions of return, and indeed each chapter of this groundbreaking collection integrates implications for policymaking into its analysis.

Zana Vathi is Reader in Social Sciences at Edge Hill University.

Russell King is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex and Visiting Professor of Migration Studies at Malmö University.

Introduction

The interface between return migration and psychosocial wellbeing

Zana Vathi, Edge Hill University, UK

1. The forced-voluntary continuum in return migration

Return to wellbeing? Irregular migrants and assisted return in Norway

Synnøve Bendixsen, University of Bergen, Norway

Hilde Lidén, Institute for Social Research, Norway

Forced to return? Agency and the role of post-return mobility for psychosocial wellbeing among returnees to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland

Marta Bivand Erdal, Peace Research Institute, Norway

Ceri Oeppen, University of Sussex, UK

Between 'voluntary' return programs and soft deportation: sending vulnerable migrants in Spain back 'home'

Barak Kalir, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2. Ancestral returns, adaptation and re-migration

Roots migration to the ancestral homeland and psychosocial wellbeing: young Polish diasporic students

Marcin Gonda, University of Lódz, Poland

'This country plays tricks on you': Portuguese migrant descendant returnees narrate economic crisis-influenced 'returns'

João Sardinha, Universidade Aberta, Portugal

David Cairns, University of Lisbon, Portugal

'Invisible' returns of Bosnian refugees and their psychosocial wellbeing

Selma Porobic, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

3. Asylum systems, assisted returns, and post-return mobilities

'Burning without fire': the paradox of the state's attempt to safeguard deportees' psychosocial wellbeing

Daniela DeBono, Malmö University, Sweden

The return of refugees from Kenya to Somalia: gender and psychosocial wellbeing

Nassim Majidi, Science Po, France

Time heals? A multi-sited, longitudinal case study on the lived experiences of returnees in Armenia

Ine Lietaert, Eric Broekaert and Ilse Derluyn, Ghent University, Belgium

4. Life-Course, family and health

The need to belong: Latvian youth returns as dialogic work

Aija Lulle, University of Sussex, UK

Migration and return migration in later life to Albania: the pendulum between subjective wellbeing and place

Eralba Cela, Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy

To stay or to go? The motivations and experiences of older British returnees from Spain

Kelly Hall, University of Birmingham, UK

Charles Betty, University of Northampton, UK

Jordi Giner, University of Valencia, Spain

'Is this really where home is?' Experiences of home in a revisited homeland among ageing Azorean returnees

Dora Sampaio, University of Sussex, UK

Conclusions

Exploring the multiple complexities of the return migration-psychosocial wellbeing nexus

Russell King, University of Sussex, UK