Remigration As A Second Migration: Relational Continuity, Temporal Asymmetry, and Cultural Memory

Abstract

Return migration is often described as the closing movement of a migration cycle. This conceptual and phenomenological essay argues that, after decades abroad, return may instead function as a second migration. Its central mechanism is a mismatch between remembered relational continuity and lived relational continuity: migrants may preserve emotionally intense representations of people and place while everyday relationships and institutions continue to change in their absence. Drawing on return-migration, transnationalism, ageing, narrative, and psychoanalytic scholarship, and using Yugoslav labour migration as a historical frame, the article examines how temporary migration becomes a life course, how visits preserve attachment without reproducing everyday social time, and how competence and obligations shift across generations. Aleksa Šantić’s “Ostajte ovdje” and Drago Mlinarec’s “Povratak” are used as interpretive cultural texts. Return, the essay concludes, is not restoration but a renewed negotiation of belonging.