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This article examines voluntariness in migration decisions by promoting the acknowledgement of forced and voluntary migration as a continuum of experience, not a dichotomy. Studies on conflict-related migration and migration, in general, remain poorly connected, despite calls for interaction. This reflects the forced-voluntary dichotomy's stickiness within and beyond academia, which is closely connected to the political implications of unsettling it and potentially undermining migrants' protection rights. We delve into notions of the 'voluntariness' of migration and argue for the analytical need to relate evaluations of voluntariness to available alternatives. Drawing on qualitative research with people from Afghanistan and Pakistan coming to Europe, we hone in on three particular renderings of migration: migrants' own experiences, scholarly qualitative observations and labelling by immigration authorities. Analysing migration as stages in a process: leaving -journey (and transit) -arrival and settlement -return or onward migration, we highlight the specific effects of migration being described as being forced or voluntary. Labelling as 'forced' (or not) matters to migrants and states when asylum status is on the line. For migration scholars, it remains challenging to decouple these descriptions from state systems of migration management; though doing so enhances our understanding of the role voluntariness plays in migration decisions.

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The 2004 EU extension and the 2008 financial crisis triggered new migration flows within Europe, and subsequent debates about what the novelty of these migration flows consists of. We draw on adult Polish and Spanish migrants' in Norway's considerations about future mobility and settlement, and explore how these situate themselves in relation to conceptualisations of intraEuropean migration as 'liquid'. Family concerns, economic factors and working life conditions in countries of origin appear as significant in migrants' reflections about the future. This seems to contrast with conceptualisations of intra-European migration as 'liquid' in the sense of increasing individualisation, lifestyles of mobility and a migrant habitus. Rather a 'normal life' is emphasised by migrants' underscoring desires to lead more grounded lives, under less 'liquid' conditions. Migrants' already established lives in Norway, together with deregulated labour markets in Poland and Spain, are experienced as reasons not to return. Migrants' considerations about the future suggest that key characteristics of South-North and East-West intra-European migration flows to Norway, appear to be converging: with a trend of transition to longer-term settlement and a wish for more grounded lives, where dignity is central and ongoing mobility is less prominent. ARTICLE HISTORY

Return migration and migrant transnationalism are key phenomena in research on international migration. Here we examine how the two are connected. The article introduces a special section and draws partly upon this selection of papers and partly upon the broader literature. First, we argue that there is often a blurred boundary between mobility as a transnational practice, for instance in the form of return visits, and purportedly permanent or long-term return migration. Second, we examine the effects of transnationalism on return migration intentions and experiences. Third, we explore how migration trajectories, involving various forms of 'return' moves, create different forms of transnationalism. Examples include the 'reverse transnational' practices of returnees and the 'residual transnationalism' of migrants who have had an unsuccessful return experience and decided to settle permanently abroad. We end by considering how both return migration and transnationalism exist in the interplay between the personal and the social.