To Be Mobile to Stabilize and to Return to Enjoy: Safety, Cultural Familiarity and Inner-self in the Context of Mobility vs. Migration

Abstract

Return is discussed mostly in the context of migration, not in regard to mobility. When it comes to return of the EU citizens, it is not seen as much of a return but retro-mobility. However, there are also great differences between member-states regarding return patterns. These patterns are influenced by socialization, work cultures, and concepts such as safety, family and the self. These differences, which do not seem very crucial at first, can result in return, rather than permanent migration. In order to understand the dynamics of return, I focus hereby in two women’s lives where I conducted two interviews with each: one during mobility and another before their return to their home countries, namely to Iceland and Spain. I argue, in this paper, that the motivations for return are complex and cannot be easily categorized as one specific factor. Rather, they are a combination of multiple factors which vary during diverse periods of mobility. These factors can be examined in the context of macro, meso and micro which are the themes that emerged from the interviews as safety, cultural familiarity and inner-self. The inner-self makes the last decision to return whilst ideas on safety and cultural familiarity are facilitating factors for return. Hence, every return is a biographical story and one has to consider the biographies of each migrant and/or mobile person before they examine the reasons to understand return in its full complexity.