Of Counter-Diaspora and Reverse Transnationalism: Return Mobilities to and from the Ancestral Homeland

Abstract

This paper introduces the special issue on return mobilities. Return movements have been relatively ignored in migration and mobilities research, despite their scale, frequency and variety across time and space. This special issue is part of an overdue but now growing interest in return visits, return migration and transnational circulation which lays special emphasis on 'ancestral returns' of the second generation and beyond. The main purpose of this paper is to develop an explanatory framework for locating return mobilities within three conceptual domains: the mobilities paradigm, the transnational approach and diaspora studies. A typology of return mobilities is then developed, onto which the following papers in this issue are mapped.

‘Home is Never Fully Achieved … Even When We Are In it’: Migration, Belonging and Social Exclusion within Punjabi Transnational Mobility

“…It has also been argued (Rapport and Dawson 1998;Mallett 2004;King and Christou 2011) that, in an era of intensifying global movement, home (or mooring) is an increasingly a-spatial phenomenon, a notion which is particularly relevant to the mobile global Punjabi diaspora being studied here. Simultaneously though, wherever it is located, home is often represented as offering complete familiarity and comfort, a place that we either leave and long for, or we move towards, for ontological security.…”

“…Simultaneously though, wherever it is located, home is often represented as offering complete familiarity and comfort, a place that we either leave and long for, or we move towards, for ontological security. This assumption has been usefully attacked (Brah 1996;Ahmed 2000;Fortier 2003;Mallett 2004;Wiles 2008;King and Christou 2011;Levitt et al 2011;Herbert 2012), as it is clear that feelings of comfort and estrangement can be experienced concurrently within the same location, or in relation to the same location and events through different imaginings and memories. The diasporic pursuit of home entails human labour and can involve 'physically or symbolically (re)constituting places which provide some kind of ontological security..."home"…”

“…The artefacts and possessions on display in these homes, such as carpets, rugs, pictures, crockery, ornaments and religious symbols, were much more likely to signify the Sikh, Punjabi and Indian roots of our respondents. The search for ontological security in the context of migration, the pursuit of home, occurs transnationally and through mobility, both 'here' and 'there' (Fortier 2003;Mallett 2004;Hannam et al 2006;Mand 2010;King and Christou 2011) and is intrinsically linked to processes of inclusion and exclusion 'here' and 'there' (Brah 1996;Hannam et al 2006;Ghaill and Haywood 2011).…”

Developments and key issues in tourism mobilities

“…The mobilities of global tourism, then, are intimately entwined with broader geopolitical issues such as migration, inequality and indeed, climate change. From this perspective the relations between migration, return migration, transnationalism, and tourism are thus being increasingly researched (King and Christou, 2011). And, of course, the ways in which physical movement pertains to upward and downward social mobility are also central here as research on expatriates demonstrates (Butler and Hannam, 2013a).…”

Americans and Return Migrants in the 1881 Scottish Census

“…In a more recent publication, King and Christou have suggested the terms 'counter-diasporic migration' and 'second-generation return' to describe the phenomenon of second-generation 'return' to the country of their parents' birth (King and Christou 2010). King and Christou in a slightly later paper (King and Christou 2011) describe a typology of returns particularly as they relate to second and subsequent generations. These include short-term return visits, return mobilities of childhood, second-generation return as adults and ancestral return.…”