“Un país para volver”: análisis narrativo del Plan de retorno a España

Abstract

A growing number of governments are introducing initiatives explicitly aimed at stimulating the returnof their emigrants. In Spain, the state launched its first policy for return, the “Plan of Return to Spain”, in 2019. Taking this plan as a case study, the article examines the Spanish policy for return and places it in a broader context, both political and historical, in order to understand the limits and biases of this measure in the face of the diverse profiles of Spanish emigrants. Adopting the narrative policy framework as a theoretical-analytical perspective and content analysis as a methodological tool, the authors of this paper identify that, through the new narrative strategy, a paradigmatic change has been produced in Spain in the way of understanding, from the public sphere, the return of Spanish citizens living abroad.Instead of an assistance-based approach, a neoliberal (instrumental and utilitarian) perspective has been adopted, maintaining, however, a conception of “the return to the country of origin” that is closerto the predominant migratory theories of the 20th century rather than to contemporary social-scientific notions. A tension between the policy narratives of Spain and the European Union in relation to Intra-European mobility, and a gap between the state view and the current migratory realities concerning return in contexts of great economic and labor uncertainty, have also been recognized.