ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
Volume 6
RETURN MIGRATIONAND REGIONALECONOMICPROBLEMS
RETURN MIGRATION AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
Edited by
RUSSELL KING
First published in 1986
This edition first published in 2015
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1986 Russell King
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ISBN: 978-1-138-85764-3 (Set)
eISBN: 978-1-315-71580-3 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-85415-4 (Volume 6)
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RETURN MIGRATION AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC PROBLEMS
EDITED BY
RUSSELL KING
1986 Russell King
Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row,
Beckenham, Kent BR3 1 AT
Croom Helm Australia Pty Ltd, Suite 4, 6th Floor,
64-76 Kippax Street, Surry Hills, NSW 2010, Australia
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Return migration and regional economic problems.
1. Regional economics 2. Emigration and immigration
I. King, Russell
330.9 HT391
ISBN 0-7099-1578-9
Croom Helm, 51 Washington Street, Dover,
New Hampshire 03820, USA
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Return migration and regional economic development.
The nucleus of this book is formed by six papers presented at the IBG Population Geography Study Group meeting on Return Migration which formed part of the Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference at Leeds in January 1985.
Includes index.
1. Return migrationCase studiesCongresses. 2. Alien laborCase studiesCongresses. 3. RepatriationCase studiesCongresses. 4. Regional economicsCase studiesCongresses. I. King, Russell.
JV6217.R48 1986 304.8 85-24288
ISBN 0-7099-1578-0
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Ltd, Kent
CONTENTS
Russell King
Russell King, Alan Strachan and Jill Mortimer
Elena Saraceno
Laurence Took
Jim Lewis and Allan Williams
Klaus Unger
George Gmelch
Allan Findlay and Musa Samha
George Gmelch and Barnett Richling
Richard Nutter
Richard Lawless
Vaughan Robinson
The nucleus of this book is formed by six papers presented at the IBG Population Geography Study Group meeting on Return Migration which formed part of the Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference at Leeds in January 1985. As convenor of the return migration meeting I am pleased to acknowledge the support and encouragement of the Population Geography Study Group committee, and to thank all participants at the meeting for ensuring a lively and constructive debate.
The six papers presented and discussed at the Leeds meeting now form of the book. The other chapters are contributions invited by the editor. I would like to thank all authors for contributing their material more or less on time a relatively rare experience, I imagine, in edited volumes of this kind.
The chapters are mainly based on authors field surveys of returned emigrants in various parts of the world Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Algeria, Jordan, South Asia, Jamaica and Newfoundland. They provide a striking variety of geographical and migration settings and, I trust, a well-chosen set of case-studies through which to examine the actual and potential impact of return migration on the regional economic structures of the areas of origin. Although it is repeatedly acknowledged that returning migrants can be a force for economic innovation and social change, the general conclusion is that the extent to which this potential is realised is determined very strongly by the economic environment of the area in which they resettle. Two chapters fulfil rather different roles to the rest. The first provides a general overview of the issues and literature on return migration and regional economic change, while the last provides a useful review of these interrelationships within the specific context of South Asia, an area where much more research on return migration needs to be done.
Three final words of thanks and acknowledgement: to Peter Sowden of Croom Helm for advice and encouragement; to Renie Groves for her expert typing of the camera-ready manuscript under what turned out to be unreasonable pressure; and to all the contributors for so readily agreeing that we donate all royalties from this book to African famine relief. The book is dedicated to the thousands of returnees who, from Newfoundland to Bangladesh, unwittingly provided the raw material for the research on which this volume is so solidly based. Like labour migrants everywhere, their lives provide a sharp counterpoint between poverty and accumulation, sacrifice and contentment, humility and pride. I only hope that this book provides a fair elucidation of their achievements and problems, and that it will appeal to students and policy makers alike.
Russell King
Department of Geography
University of Leicester
Russell King
INTRODUCTION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF RETURN MIGRATION LITERATURE
Before the 1960s the literature on migration made little or no reference to the phenomenon of return migration. If return migration was mentioned it was only to lament that so little material existed on it. It is true that Ravenstein, father-figure of migration studies, mentioned counterstreams in both of his seminar papers published one hundred years ago (Ravenstein, 1885, p. 187; 1889, p. 387), but there was some confusion over whether the counterflows were mainly returnees or flows of migrants merely moving in the opposite direction to the dominant stream. Neither was this point clarified by Lee (1966) in his reformulation of Ravensteins laws 80 years later. One indication of the lack of attention paid to return migration by the late 1960s is the extensive migration bibliography compiled by Mangalam (1968) which, in more than 2,000 entries, lists only 10 references on return migration.
