‘But why did you come back in the first place?’ Return migration to India: narratives of longing and belonging, ‘home’ and identity
Creators: name: Kurian, Mini Chandran
Publisher: name: The University of Edinburgh
Year: 2023
Subjects: Return migration to India
identity
home
belonging
gated communities
transnational families
highly skilled migrants

description: Migration flows have not always been unidirectional, yet the phenomenon of return migration has received inadequate attention in sociological literature, and the return migration of the Indian diaspora even less so. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature by examining the lived experiences of highly skilled migrant professionals returning to India and unpacking their narratives to reflect on the many ways migrants construct identity, and a sense of self within the context of resettlement. Adopting a qualitative approach, it analyses the narratives of 24 returnees living in gated communities in the city of Bangalore and explores the ways in which notions of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ are experienced at the intersection of mobility and identity. Mindful that migration literature on India is largely built around its status as one of the top 3 sending countries in the world (MPI, 2006), it shifts the research focus from India as a sending country to India as a receiving one, from migration, to the return migration of the highly skilled Indian diaspora. The research draws on the literature on transnationalism to decode how transmigrants nurse multiple allegiances transcending borders, resulting in conflicted subjectivities. It applies the concept of ‘simultaneity’ to probe the returnees’ sense of dual belonging, self-reflexivity, and need for cultural reproduction in the receiving society. Their narratives provide insights into the ways in which they reconcile their self-perceived identities – both existing and developing identities, that simultaneously straddle the ‘Indian’ and the ‘global’. The thesis also interrogates the reified portrayal of the passive ‘trailing spouse’ in migration literature. It finds that while gender ideology continues to inform migration decisions, what has remained largely invisible is the agentic and partnering role of the female spouse at every stage of the migration process. This study also considers how gated communities simultaneously exhibit systems of exclusion and segregation on the one hand, and social integration on the other, and investigates the ways in which a gated community becomes a spatial expression of identity construction. Living in exclusive gated communities or ‘islands of privilege’, returnees seem to occupy spaces of in-betweenness, hovering between immersion in, and withdrawal from the world outside their gates. Although it is to the home society that these migrants return, the path of resettlement remains uncertain. The ability of returnees to adapt to their environment, the treatment accorded to them by family and community, and their capacity to find the golden mean between expectation and actuality, can greatly influence the possibility of permanent settlement in the home society. This study therefore seeks to tease out the interconnecting threads between return migration, expectation fulfilment, and circular migration. Overall, the research aims to make four contributions to the sociology of migration. Firstly, it is one of the few studies on elite return migration to the Global South. It widens the geographical and epistemic boundaries of migration literature by exploring the dilemmas and mixed emotions of an understudied population of transnational migrant professionals. Secondly, the research calls for a reconceptualization of the term ‘trailing spouse’, thus marking a shift away from a discourse that devalues the non-wage labour of the female ‘trailing spouse’. Thirdly, the evidence from this study strengthens the idea that the success of the return migration project depends greatly on not just the migrant’s level of social and economic integration, but on the quality of the reception given to the returnee by the home society and extended family. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that adaptation to the home society and permanent resettlement will be a natural outcome of return migration. Fourthly, the analysis contributes to the typology of return migration by conceptualising a state of being that can be termed ‘liminal return’. Set in the critical space between return and remigration, ‘liminal return’ embodies the inherent ambivalence of the returnee who must balance mobility with immobility, a desire to move with the longing to stay. It thereby problematizes, and seeks to transcend, epistemological and ontological binaries in studies of migration and mobility.