Abstract
Reintegration has largely been less researched in international migration scholarship, subsequently receiving limited conceptual and theoretical attention compared with other thematic areas. Though return migration literature has grown in recent years, the topic of reintegration remains understudied, despite its critical importance to understanding the processes, outcomes and policy implications of migrants’ return to their countries of origin. Katie Kuschminder’s Reintegration Strategies is a timely and relevant book that responds to this lacuna, offering a new framework for examining how return migrants reintegrate into countries of origin.
Reintegration Strategies builds on both academic and policy discourses to propose an understanding of reintegration as an ‘individualized process,’ shaped by the migrant’s life cycle and experiences abroad, and the structural and cultural environment of return. The book draws upon Kuschminder’s 2011 study in Addis Ababa, which involved 100 semi-structured interviews with 81 female Ethiopian returnees and 19 key stakeholders. Incorporating a gender dimension, the research examines how different groups of female Ethiopian migrant returnees experience reintegration. It also explores their potential role as change agents, particularly how they adopt ideas of female empowerment and gender equality in host countries, which they carry with them upon their return to Ethiopia.
Chapters 1 and 2 lay the foundations for Kuschminder’s concept of ‘reintegration strategies,’ drawing upon academic and policy perspectives to outline the definitions of return migration, integration and reintegration. The author then uses reintegration strategies to refer to how returnees are able to reintegrate across four dimensions—the migrant’s cultural orientation toward the host and home country, social networks, self-identification and sense of belonging, and access to rights, institutions and the labor market in the country of origin. Chapter 3 turns attention toward the structural and cultural environment of return, in which she identifies three points of analysis and assessment, namely government policies toward returnees, local attitudes toward returnees and return flows of migrants.
Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the reintegration of Ethiopian female returnees, aggregated according to three categories—professionals, students and domestic workers. These groups are examined according to the four dimensions of reintegration strategies, revealing differences in terms of their cultural orientation, their social networks, their sense of belonging and their access to rights and opportunities upon return. Chapter 6 then presents a typology composed of four types of returnees—the reintegrated, the enclavists, the traditionalists and the vulnerable. This typology shows how reintegration is individualized, depending on the migrant’s return preparedness and economic stability, their acceptance or rejection of the culture in the country of origin, their local and transnational ties and their access to rights and institutions. The book concludes with a final chapter on the key messages of the book and their implications for reintegration policy, not only in Ethiopia, but also for other countries of origin. The author also discusses the challenges of gender inequality women returnees face in Ethiopia, a largely male-dominated and patriarchal milieu. She mentions that some female returnees, especially the professionals, felt that reintegration for male returnees is easier, whereas women struggle “finding their place within a male-dominated culture” (p.192).
The book is straightforward, well structured, and shows the author’s strong theoretical grounding in return migration research. The author does well to draw insights from multiple perspectives, showing the book’s contribution not only to the scholarship, but also to policy discourses. Empirically, the research has a rich qualitative dataset, using a life cycle approach for interviews with three different groups of female migrant returnees, which in turn allows for comparative analysis. For example, the research shows that gender and class shape different reintegration strategies that generate advantages and disadvantages. Findings show how professional and student returnees differ from domestic workers, many of whom have experienced traumatic situations abroad and face vulnerable conditions upon return. Domestic worker returnees face difficulties in reintegrating to the local labor market and carrying the burden of unpaid debts and loans they incurred to fund out-migration.
Readers may find some limitations in the book that stimulate further questions. First, ‘reintegration strategies’ in the book is conceived as a process, indeed allowing for a complex understanding of reintegration by considering the dimensions of cultural orientation, social networks, self-identification and access to rights and institutions. However, readers may also wonder whether ‘strategy’—which typically denotes action, decision-making and planning—is apt for articulating dimensions that seem to point more toward a migrant’s capacity for reintegration, or the conditions that enable reintegration, rather than as an act or process.
Second, migrant agency is occasionally mentioned, but the book’s discussion on this aspect is underdeveloped—a missed opportunity for constructing a ‘reintegration strategies’ framework that gives equal attention and weight to agency and structure. The role of migrant intentions and motivations, actions and decisions, and how these also influence the individualized experience of reintegration could have been incorporated conceptually, given that the research includes rich qualitative material on returnees’ actions, decisions and views. For example, the research mentions interviewees’ reasons for returning, their experiences of networking or starting new businesses, and how they negotiate the cultural differences between the country of migration and the country of origin, including choosing which cultural norms and values they adopt or reject. The book remains largely pinned on a structural lens and could have expounded further on a stronger agency component.
Finally, the explanation of ‘structural and cultural environment of return’ in the book remains at the macro-level, citing government policies and local attitudes based on surveys as a means of assessing if countries of origin are favorable, adverse or neutral for reintegration. While important in setting the context of return, this also raises questions on how reintegration translates into the immediate socio-cultural environments of the home, the workplace and the community. The analysis perhaps could have taken scale into consideration, as migrants do not just return to the broader structural-cultural context of the country of origin, but also to specific regions, provinces and communities of return. The book also argues that with ‘reintegration strategies,’ returnees can potentially act as vernacularizers upon return, transferring ideas and practices from one group to another, thereby contributing to social change. As an example, the author mentions that some professionals and student returnees have adopted stronger notions of gender equality, professionalism and assertion after spending time abroad, encouraging many of them to be more assertive and opinionated. While an important point of reflection, these issues are not fully explained, and important details on how a returnee’s vernacularization is directly linked to social change within a specific structural and cultural environment of return are left out.
Overall, Kuschminder’s book is a commendable contribution toward moving the discourse on reintegration further, presenting a framework that would be useful for academic researchers and even policy-makers and practitioners in the field. Reintegration Strategies offers a novel way of examining the different factors that shape migrant returnees’ reintegration in their home countries. This book’s added value is its elucidation on how reintegration is multi-dimensional and intersectional, and a process differentially shaped by gender, class and skill, as well as the structural and cultural context of return. Reintegration Strategies revitalizes reintegration discourse with research material worth reading, and which can serve as a valuable resource for academics, policy-makers and practitioners engaged in the study of return migration and reintegration.