Return Migration in the Era of Enforcement: Uncertainty and Transnational Lives

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

Return migration has long been central to migration scholarship, yet contemporary enforcement regimes and shifting political landscapes have reshaped its meaning, processes, and consequences. In what might be termed the era of enforcement, intensified immigration surveillance, deportability, and policy uncertainty profoundly influence the timing, conditions, and experiences of return migration. This panel invites papers that examine how enforcement structures intersect with social identities such as gender, race, class, and legal status—to shape return migration trajectories and reintegration processes. We particularly welcome research that explores how migrants negotiate uncertainty across borders, sustain transnational ties under restrictive conditions, and reconstruct belonging in both sending and receiving contexts. Contributions may be drawn from diverse methodological and theoretical approaches, including ethnography, comparative policy analysis, survey research, and transnational theory. By centering return migration in an era marked by heightened enforcement and global precarity, this panel seeks to illuminate the complex strategies migrants employ to navigate risk, resilience, and reintegration. Ultimately, the discussion will expand our understanding of how enforcement regimes and uncertainty reconfigure transnational lives, while pointing toward broader debates on mobility, inequality, and the politics of return in the contemporary world.

Sub Unit

• International Migration Section / Return Migration in the Era of Enforcement: Uncertainty and Transnational Lives

Presider

• Erin Trouth Hofmann, Utah State University

Individual Presentations

• "Canada Took Ten Years of My Life": Return and the Limits of Citizenship Among Egyptian-Canadian Families - Emine Fidan Elcioglu, University of Toronto; Rania Salem, University of Toronto

• Gendered Brian Circulation: A Comparative Study of Return Migration in South Korea and Taiwan - Minyoung An, Stanford University; Gi-Wook Shin, Stanford University

• Geographic Entrapment or Aging in Places? How Immigration Status Impacts Where Older Mexican Immigrants Age - Isabel Garcia Valdivia, University of Oregon

• Ground for Departability - Oscar Ruben Cornejo Casares, Davidson College; Gabrielle Cabrera, University of Colorado, Boulder

• To Leave or Stay?: Negotiating the Risks and Desires of Returning to the U.S. after Deportation - Adriana Ceron, Yale University

Session Organizers

• Saeed Ahmad

• Erin Trouth Hofmann, Utah State University