The Road Back Home is Never Long: Refugee Return Migration

Building on qualitative research for refugees’ return migration, this research provides an empirical evaluation of return migration. The study focuses on the effect of political and economic stimuli on refugees’ return. We used a negative binomial model with fixed effects on a longitudinal dataset for more than 150 countries over 1991–2018. Our results reveal that the strongest predictors of return migration are political factors. Notably, a reduction in human rights violations, the elimination of genocides, and peace agreements are the most influential variables. Economic incentives are relatively weak, indicating they are not the principal factor for refugee returnees’ decision-making.