The Migration Tug-of-War: The Interplay of Emotion and Economy in Return Migration

• In Event: 479 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Migration

Abstract

Return migration and the emotional aspects of migration have recently emerged as important, yet separate, contributions to migration studies. Return migration research has prioritized migrant economic reintegration and studies highlighting migrant social-emotional experiences have tended to focus on origin-to-destination migration. We argue that the economic and social-emotional aspects of return migration should be examined in tandem, asking how the social-emotional aspects of return migration help us understand the total migration experience, paying particular attention to the relationship between economic and emotional factors at work in the migration decision-making process. Relying on 38 in-depth interviews with return migrants in a small city in Guanajuato, Mexico as well as ethnographic field notes, we are able to uncover the persistent pull of another migration to the U.S. and the continual nature of the migration decision-making process. We theorize that nostalgia for prior U.S. labor market experience, in juxtaposition to reentry into the Mexican labor market, competes with current feelings of happiness and contentment obtained through family reintegration. These competing feelings operate as a mechanism prompting and amplifying and emotional tug-of-war for migrants: to remain a return migrant, or to become a migrant once again.

Authors

• Sergio Chavez, Rice University

• Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Rice University