Emigrant homecomings

The return movement of emigrants, 16002000

Edited by Marjory Harper

Paperback - £19.99

Publication date:

01 January 2012

Length of book:

288 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

234x156mm

ISBN-13: 9780719070716

Emigrant homecomings addresses the significant but neglected issue of return migration to Britain and Europe since 1600. While emigration studies have become prominent in both scholarly and popular circles in recent years, return migration has remained comparatively under-researched, despite evidence that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries between a quarter and a third of all emigrants from many parts of Britain and Europe ultimately returned to their countries of origin. Emigrant homecomings analyses the motives, experiences and impact of these returning migrants in a wide range of locations over four hundred years, as well as examining the mechanisms and technologies which enabled their return.

The book examines the multiple identities that migrants adopted and the huge range and complexity of homecomers’ motives and experiences. It also dissects migrants' perception of ‘home’ and the social, economic, cultural and political change that their return engendered.