Emigrant homecomings: The return movement of emigrants, 1600–2000 (Studies in Imperialism)

Emigrant homecomings addresses the significant but neglected issue of return migration to Britain and Europe since 1600. While emigration studies have become prominent in both scholarly and popular circles in recent years, return migration has remained comparatively under-researched, despite evidence that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries between a quarter and a third of all emigrants from many parts of Britain and Europe ultimately returned to their countries of origin. Emigrant homecomings analyses the motives, experiences and impact of these returning migrants in a wide range of locations over four hundred years, as well as examining the mechanisms and technologies which enabled their return. The book examines the multiple identities that migrants adopted and the huge range and complexity of homecomers’ motives and experiences. It also dissects migrants' perception of ‘home’ and the social, economic, cultural and political change that their return engendered. Front matter 1 Contents 6 List of illustrations 8 List of tables 9 List of contributors 10 General editor's introduction 11 Introduction 14 Part I Overviews of return 28 Emigrants returning: the evolution of a tradition 29 ‘Come back, Paddy Reilly’: aspects of Irish return migration, 1600–1845 45 Part II Motives of return migrants 66 Children of the diaspora: the ‘homecoming’ of the second-generation Scot in the seventeenth century 68 Running home from Australia: intercontinental mobility and migrant expectations in the nineteenth century 90 ‘My wayward heart’: homesickness, longing and the return of British post-war immigrants from Australia 118 Roots tourism as return movement: semantics and the Scottish diaspora 144 Part III Mechanisms of return 164 ‘Settling down’: masculinity, class and the rite of return in a transnational community 166 Canada in Britain: returned migrants and the Canada Club 197 ‘Two homes now’: the return migration of the Fellowship of the Maple Leaf 210 Part IV The impact of return 228 Returning to Belhelvie, 1593–1875: the impact of return migration on an Aberdeenshire parish 229 The Highlands and the returning nabob: Sir Hector Munro of Novar, 1760–1807 246 Index 276 "Emigrant homecomings addresses the significant but neglected issue of return migration to Britain and Europe since 1600. While emigration studies have become prominent in both scholarly and popular circles in recent years, return migration has remained comparatively under-researched, despite evidence that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries between a quarter and a third of all emigrants from many parts of Britain and Europe ultimately returned to their countries of origin. In twelve essays, Emigrant homecomings analyses the motives, experiences and impact of these returning migrants in a wide range of locations over four hundred years, as well as examining the mechanisms and technologies which enabled their return."--Page 4 of cover Return migration has long been a significant but neglected aspect of international population movements thorughout the centuries. Emigrant homecomings is the first study to rectify this imbalance by analyzing the motives, experiences and impact of returners in a wide range of locations over four centuries. -- .