From the Return Decision Making Process to Actual Return and (Re)integration: A Study of Iraqi Kurdish Migrants, Returnees and Non-Migrants
This study explores the sociology of return migration within the context of Iraqi Kurdistan. Transnational theory will be applied in the analysis of what is hypothesized as a complex social interplay between migrants abroad, returnees and non-migrants. The main analytic focus is on post-return realities: How is return migration experienced by Iraqi Kurdish return migrants from Europe and the communities of non-migrants to which they return? Post-return reintegration is often conditioned on pre-return factors, such as the degree of volition in returning and the accumulation of financial and/or human capital. This relationship will be explored in part through interviews with actual returnees on their decisions to return, post ex facto. Return is often imagined long before it eventually takes place, and a holistic understanding of the sociology of return migration conditions empirical data on why people do and do not return. To therefore pay attention to the decision making process while it still takes place, interviews will also be conducted with Iraqi Kurdish migrants in two Western, liberal democracies with large Iraqi Kurdish immigrant communities, Norway and the UK, as guided by the primary research question: How do variously positioned Iraqi Kurdish immigrants in Norway and the UK reflect upon and decide upon return migration? In total, the empirical basis for this research will be 45 semi-structured interviews and 15 focus group discussions. The doctoral research project derives from a larger international research project called Possibilities and Realities of Return Migration (PREMIG), funded by the Norwegian research programme ‘Welfare, Working life and Migration’, and led by Dr. Jørgen Carling at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.