ABSTRACT
This paper introduces the special issue on return mobilities. Return movements have been relatively ignored in migration and mobilities research, despite their scale, frequency and variety across time and space. This special issue is part of an overdue but now growing interest in return visits, return migration and transnational circulation which lays special emphasis on ‘ancestral returns’ of the second generation and beyond. The main purpose of this paper is to develop an explanatory framework for locating return mobilities within three conceptual domains: the mobilities paradigm, the transnational approach and diaspora studies. A typology of return mobilities is then developed, onto which the following papers in this issue are mapped.
