Narrative constructions of (non-)return in older migrants

Much research has been carried out on (retirement) return migration, emphasizing the importance of family ties, infrastructure, the healthcare system and social relationships as factors that often boost non-return. Less research, however, has looked at the biographies of older migrants from a phenomenological and social-constructivist approach and how return is part of one's biographical narration and narrative identity in old age. In this article, we address this gap by discussing return and non-return as a tópos that is woven throughout migrants' biographical narrations. We reconstruct how one's narrated life story is told, how socio-historical contexts and discourses are part of older migrants' narratives and how (non-)return appears as part of their lived life and narrative identity. We show that staying or returning is not a simple decision but rather a central theme to which the interviewees refer when giving sense to their life course.