A collection of essays that examine the return migration experiences of refugees, migrants, and various others as they confront social pressures and sense of displacement.

The returns depicted in "Coming Home" range from temporary visits to permanent repatriation, from voluntary to coerced movements, and from those occurring after a few years of exile to those after several decades away. The geographic sites include the Balkans, Barbados, China, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Germany, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Vietnam. Several studies portray the experiences of returning refugees who earlier fled war and violence, while others focus on economic or labor migrants. As the essays show, connections between permanent returnees and home communities are contentious and complex. On the one hand, issues of land title, property rights, political orientation, and religious and cultural beliefs and practices create grounds for clashes between returnees and their home communities, but on the other, returnees bring with them a unique ability to transform local practices and provide new resources.

Introduction: Toward an Ethnography of Return--Ellen Oxfeld and Lynellyn LongPART I: IMAGINED RETURNChapter 1: Illusions of Home in the Story of a Rwandan Refugee's Return--John JanzenChapter 2: Contemplating Repatriation to Eritrea--Lucia Ann McSpaddenChapter 3: Filipina Depictions of Migrant Life for Those at Home--Jane MargoldPART II: PROVISIONAL RETURNChapter 4: Viet Khieu on a Fast Track Back?--Lynellyn LongChapter 5: Chinese Villagers and the Moral Dilemmas of Return Visits--Ellen OxfeldChapter 6: Changing Filipina Identities and Ambivalent Returns--Nicole ConstablePART III: REPATRIATED RETURNChapter 7: Returning German Jews and Questions of Identity--John BornemanChapter 8: Repatriation and Social Class in Nicaragua--James PhillipsChapter 9: Refugee Returns to Sarajevo and Their Challenge to Contemporary Narratives of Mobility--Anders H. StefanssonChapter 10: The Making of a Good Citizen in an Ethiopian Returnee Settlement--Laura HammondChapter 11West Indian Migrants and their Rediscovery of Barbados--George GmelchChapter 12: An Historical Exploration of "Coming Home" from Central Africa--David NewburyIndexList of ContributorsAcknowledgments