Return mobilities of highly skilled young people to a post-conflict region: the case of Kurdish-British to Kurdistan - Iraq

• Published in: Journal of ethnic and migration studies Vol. 48; no. 3; pp. 790 - 810
• Main Author: Keles, Janroj Yilmaz
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 17.02.2022; Carfax Publishing Company, Abingdon Science Park
• Subjects: 1.5 generation; Attention; Children; Conflict; Country of origin; Currency instability; Diaspora; Ideology; Kurdish people; Middle Eastern cultural groups; Migrants; Migration; Nostalgia; Parents & parenting; Political ideologies; Political institutions; Political risk; Post-conflict homeland; Refugees; Return mobilities; Root migration; Second generation; Statehood; Transnationalism; Trauma; Youth; Kurdistan; Iraq
• ISSN: 1369-183X; 1469-9451
• DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2019.1600401

Building upon insights from recent studies on the 'return mobilities' of children of migrants to their parents' country of origin, this paper focuses on the motives of highly skilled young people from the UK who migrate to their parental post-conflict region (Kurdistan-Iraq), an area that has experienced long-term conflict and profound economic and political instability. The existing studies on children of migrants' return mobilities place more emphasis on cultural and economic considerations while paying little attention to the associated ideological and political elements. Based on interviews concerning 32 highly skilled young British-Kurdish people's migration to Kurdistan-Iraq, this paper argues that the transnational mobilities of the 1.5 generation and second generation of refugee-diasporas are more driven by the collective trauma of their parents' displacement, their feeling of expulsion and intergenerational articulation with an imagined homeland, than they are by economic considerations and/or nostalgia. The Kurdish political aspiration to develop Kurdish institutions and a national economy for a potential statehood in Northern Iraq has also created hope among young Kurdish people and influenced their motivations to 'return'. In this context, this paper focuses on the political, ideological and emotional dimensions of return mobilities and draws attention to return mobilities among a new generation of refugees to their parental post-conflict homeland.