Socioeconomic reintegration of return migrants and the varieties of legal status trajectory in Europe

That migrants' legal status has impacts on their integration in receiving countries is a recognised fact. We further argue that it also affects their reintegration on returning to the home country, although with some significant variations depending on the details of their legal status history. Using data from the Senegalese TEMPER survey, we adopt a life course approach of migrant's status while they were in Europe to identify links between several indicators of reintegration and different patterns of irregular status (moment when they were in an irregular situation and the duration in this situation). The results of our multivariate analyses show that only those migrants whose irregular situations were the most extreme (deported, or irregular throughout their stay in Europe) are at a disadvantage compared to nonmigrants as well as other returnees. This shows that the initial disadvantage of out-migrating from Africa without proper documentation does not turn systematically into a cumulative disadvantage