The "Return" of British-Born Cypriots to Cyprus

Interaction of ancestry and agency: Challenges, constraints and options for second‐generation Albanian youth relocating from Greece

“…Meantime, he was working in a café. Niko's remark that he believes he 'belongs' in Albania was not so typical of the other participants in our study but does resonate with other research on second-generation 'return', notably to Greece (Christou, 2006) and to Cyprus (Teerling, 2014).…”

“…By the same token, the short distance involved makes it possible for these transnational activities to be 'reversed' once the relocation to Albania takes place , keeping open the hope of an 'easy return' to a familiar neighbouring environment when economic conditions in regarding their integration and record varying degrees of disappointment over certain aspects of their new lives in the ancestral homeland. Their relocation was for the most part voluntary, so they are generally highly motivated to 'make it work', even if the obstacles are considerable (for a selection of examples that reach this general conclusion see Christou, 2006;King & Kılınç, 2013;Teerling, 2014;Wessendorf, 2013). Our study is of a group that, because of the push factor of the Greek crisis, creating a wave of migrants expelled by the combined effects of unemployment, plummeting incomes and loss of residence and welfare rights, had reduced agency in deciding their relocation.…”

“…Hence, the process of second-generation relocation to the parents' country of origin raises tricky conceptual and definitional questions about 'home' and 'host' countries, 'return' migration, emotional feelings about belonging and hybrid or transnational identities (cf. Christou, 2006;Teerling, 2014).…”

“…Other studies on second-generation 'return' include Turkish-Germans relocating to Turkey (King & Kılınç, 2013), Swiss-Italian 'secondos' moving to Southern Italy (Wessendorf, 2013), second-generation British-Cypriots moving to Cyprus (Teerling, 2014), secondgeneration British-Caribbeans relocating to Barbados and Jamaica (Potter, 2005;Potter & Phillips, 2006;Reynolds, 2008) and secondgeneration US-born Indians moving to India (Jain, 2011). Most of these studies reflect a 'geographies of diaspora' genre of writing in which space, place, distance and time are critical elements framing each of the examples cited above (see also Christou & Mavroudi, 2015;Mavroudi et al, 2017;Sun, 2021;Tsuda, 2009).…”