Beyond dead reckoning: Mobilities of return in the Pacific

Abstract

In recent decades, the term 'mobility' has emerged as a defining paradigm within the humanities. For scholars engaged in the multidisciplinary topics and perspectives now often embraced by the term Pacific Studies it has been a much more longstanding and persistent concern. Even so, specific questions regarding 'mobilities of return'-that is, the movement of people 'back' to places that are designated, however ambiguously or ambivalently, as 'home'-have tended to take a back seat within more recent discussions of mobility, transnationalism and migration. Situating return mobility as a starting point for social inquiry gives rise to important questions regarding the broader context and experience of human mobility, community and identity. This represents an important contribution to emerging perspectives that seek to move beyond binary optics of domestic or translocal versus international migration, local versus foreign identity, and indeed of stasis versus mobility itself. This introductory chapter foregrounds the ways in which the volume as a whole demonstrates the extent to which the prospect and practice of returning home, or of navigating returns between multiple homes, is a central rather than peripheral component of contemporary Pacific Islander mobilities and identities.

Editorial Introduction: The Shifting Geopolitics of Return Migration and Reintegration

“…When it comes to return migration, the link with geopolitics is obscure because of an overwhelming conception of migration as linear and of return migration as ‘homecoming’ (Markowitz & Stefansson, 2004 ; Taylor, 2017 ). An assumption also exists on the part of high-income countries that their responsibility towards migrants ceases when the latter leave their territory, thus making geopolitics of return seemingly trivial for migration scholars.…”

Governing Irregular and Return Migration in the 2020s: European Challenges and Asian Pacific Perspectives

“…The book on return mobilities in the Pacific Islands certainly casts light on the deep gaps between the policy-driven and simplified views on return migration (as is the case in the EU current governance of migration) and what qualitative research on return tells us about the complex phenomenon of return. Indeed, by taking as a starting point, and approaching the perspectives of, the migrants themselves, the book uses the study of return as a window to broadly explore human mobilities and displacement (Taylor, 2017). Through this approach, the authors provide a pertinent analytic frame through which to look at different forms of displacement.…”