Return Migration: The Role of Social Networks and Family Relations

Our paper studies young East Asian adults ’ intention to return to their native homes after studying in a Canadian university in order to meet their social commitments and follow their paths of social opportunities. Return migrants are important members of the global creative class, attractive to fast-growing cosmopolitan economies in Asia, but have mainly been stud-ied as an individualistic rational economic responses to the region’s burgeoning economic opportunities. While global economic opportunities are important in influencing youths ’ re-turn migration to their country of origin, we find that social networks and other social struc-tures are also central. We focus on two levels of institutional and social structures that con-tribute to these youths ’ transnationalism and the consequences. 1) Regulations affecting returnees ’ opportunities and rights. 2) transnational social relations and networks that work within these regulations. In this exploratory study we conducted qualitative interviews with 27 youths from East Asia. They were the same age, as new graduates from university, We distinguished three types of migrants by their birth and migration cohort: newcomers to: 2nd generation immigrants, who were born in Canada, the host country, 1.5 generation immigrant youth, who were born in the country of origin, and immigrated to Canada as youngsters, and foreign students in Canada on international student visas. We found that social relations were powerful forces prompting youth’s intention to return, and their transnationalism was espe-cially important. Those youth most wanting to return, had families which interacted with their countries of origin. These transnational contacts gave youth their own transnational social re-lations, that reinforced youth’s intent to return. Apart from international students, the most likely returnees are the 1.5 generation with parents that have kept contact with their Asian home, giving their children a chance to build their own Asian networks. Least likely to return are 2nd generation youth without their own social ties to Asia