Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book brings into conversation with each other two concepts which have thus far received little attention as a duality: return migration as a subset of migration studies; and psychosocial wellbeing, part of an overall shift in social science towards emotionalities, relationalities, subjectivities and 'affect'. It then shows that decision-making is highly contextual and contingent upon different factors, often fairly intimate ones operating at a micro level. The book presents an analysis of wellbeing in a continuum, as a developing, non-linear experience of migrants, conditioned by circumstantial as well as structural factors. It looks at the causal relationships between various contextual variables and wellbeing, considering historicity and contemporary configurations of multiple factors, as well as temporal dimensions of return.