IMISCOE 12th Annual Conference
Research panel: Return among ageing migrants
Organised by: Dr. Ruxandra Oana Ciobanu (University of Geneva) and Dr. Anne Carolina Ramos (University of Luxembourg)
Deadline for abstract submission: 7 January 2015
The study of return migration in general has received a lot of attention. Less research has been dedicated to the return migration post-retirement. Moreover this branch of literature is very centred on some themes: (1) return intentions, (2) return among former labour migrants – e.g. Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Turks, North Africans and so on, and (3) the variables contributing or not to return such as integration, economic factors, gender, access to health services, the location of the family, among others.
Through this research panel we aim to cover some of these gaps and encourage researchers to submit papers addressing some of the following issues, but also others.
- The lives of elderly immigrants after return and the process of reintegration of elderly immigrants in the origin countries.
- Friends, loneliness, and social isolation after return migration.
- The transnational lives of ageing migrants, and continuous mobility at an advanced age.
- Return migration to the town or region of birth, and not just home country.
- Comparative research between settlers and returnees, between elderly migrants in different destinations, between elderly migrants from different regions within the same origin country. In other words, do Italians in Australia, France, Switzerland and the UK behave differently or similarly, and which variables influence their return migration or mobility choice?
- Return migration among other categories of ageing migrants: individuals who arrived as asylum seekers, international retirement migrants, and European labour migrants to North and South America or to Australia.
- Taking into account the level of skills in studying return migration (since most studies focus on lower skilled former labour immigrants after WWII).
To submit a paper for this session, please send a proposal with the paper title and an abstract of max. 250 words, together with your name and institutional affiliation to Ruxandra Oana Ciobanu (
Accepted participants will be notified by 20 February 2015. They are required to upload full-length papers (no more than 60'000 characters) on the IMISCOE conference Website prior to the conference, especially if you would like to participate in the selection for the best-paper award. To facilitate discussion and exchanges, these papers will be circulated in advance to conference participants and each paper will be assigned a discussant.