Diasporic Homecomings: Ethnic Return Migrants in Comparative Perspective

This project will examine various groups of ethnic return migrants-diasporic peoples who return to their ancestral homelands after living outside their countries of ethnic origin for generations. Project participants will compare the ethnopolitical reception and experiences of ethnic return migrants in different European and East Asian countries. Diasporic return migration has often been enabled by extraterritorial citizenship and immigration policies of homeland governments based on imaginings of a broader ethnic nation beyond state borders that encompasses diasporic descendants abroad. Nonetheless, ethnic return migrants frequently receive an ambivalent reception in their homelands and are often marginalized as immigrant minorities because of their cultural differences and low socioeconomic position, forcing them to reconsider their national identities and loyalties and their previously idealized images of the ethnic homeland.