Evaluations of Return Within A Mass Deportation: Ethiopians’ Experiences of Return After Expulsion From Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the role of the migration lifecycle in the subjective evaluation of return by Ethiopian deportees from Saudi Arabia, focusing on the conditions that lead to positive evaluation of the return. Logistic regression analysis was carried out on a unique data set of 2,039 Ethiopian deportees from Saudi Arabia collected in 2014. Despite having been deported, 45 per cent of respondents evaluate their return positively. It is found that subjective socio-economic position is highly influential in returnees' assessment of their reintegration, but those who are self-employed on return are much less likely than those who are unemployed to describe their return positively. This may be linked to work conditions and because these respondents are engaged in necessity entrepreneurship. Additionally, all stages of the migration cycle, including before and during the migration episode, are influential in shaping perceptions of return.

Introduction: definitions, typologies and theories of return migration

“…Schuster and Majidi's (2013) research on deportees in Afghanistan shows how they are regarded as 'contaminated' and are ostracised by the society of return, driving them into isolation and further situations of vulnerability. Lemberg-Pedersen (Chapter 9) stresses the globalising nature of the 'deportation turn', reflected in empirical research in several countries worldwide, including Ethiopia (Kuschminder et al, 2021), Afghanistan (Schuster and Majidi, 2013), Jamaica (Miller, 2008) and the Dominican Republic (Ceciliano-Navarro and Golash-Boza, 2021). In all these studies, returnees are frequently found to be worse off post-return, due to economic failure, sudden forced return or other circumstances.…”

Dynamics of immobility: Capability conversion among aspiring migrants in Pakistan

“…g . de Haas, 2010; Ordóñez, 2015; Kuschminder et al, 2020). Thus, an important aspect of capability conversion, and the focus of the empirical analysis, is that the transformation of capability, including whether it transforms at all, depends partly on the capability an aspiring migrant and her household are able to secure at the start of a migration attempt.…”