Return migration and psychosocial wellbeing

The links between return migration and psychosocial wellbeing are multifaceted, exposing macro level understanding and regulation of migration management, welfare and human rights, as well as changing attitudes along the life course at individual level in terms of mobility, belonging, living well and relationality. In this chapter, key writings that expose the challenges and psychosocial outcomes for the returnees are reviewed and analysed. A structural focus on sustainability of return for a long time has obscured the very wide range of psychosocial issues and mental ill health symptoms that returnees’ experience, based on intersectional features such as age, gender, ethnicity and class. A shift towards the sustainability of reintegration and a stronger academic focus on reintegration as a topic worth exploring in its own right shed light on the importance of psychosocial wellbeing at all stages of migration and return process. The chapter concludes that migrant-centered approaches underpinned by human rights considerations are best positioned to enable the integration of psychosocial wellbeing in policy-making and service provision, considering this aspect of return as key to enhancing migrants’ agency and to the deployment of their resourcefulness in the countries of origin post return.