To Return or Not to Return: Understanding the Impact of Transnational Family Ties and Social Networks on Immigrants’ Return Migration from the Netherlands

Özge Elif Özer , University of Groningen

Return migration and transnational family ties are complex issues that are increasingly discussed among academics and politics. In this paper, the aim is to fill the current gaps in return migration and transnational family ties and to increase our understanding of the influence of transnational family ties and social networks on the migrants’ return to their origin country by looking at the case of Netherlands. I will use the theoretical framework of social capital, and I will also benefit from various concepts and theories of migration literature such as transnationalism, linked lives and family ties. The paper aims to answer to what extent transnational family ties and social networks influence immigrants’ return migration from the Netherlands. The presence of family ties in the Netherlands is expected to lower the probability of return while the presence of family ties in the origin country is expected to have the opposite relationship. This paper will benefit from the Survey integratie minderheden (SIM) and register data from the System of Social Statistical Datasets (SSD) by Statistics Netherlands. With the combination of these datasets, we will employ discrete-time event history models to examine factors associated with return and onward migration to understand the specific type of determinants (family ties in place of origin and interethnic families) and additionally to examine heterogeneity across specific countries of origin.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe