The idea of eventually returning home is recurrent in many migration traditions as well as in return migration narratives. The same challenges that met Homer's Odysseus, concerning the sense of home, family ties and sources for support, are what face today's returnees. This is not least the case for older people. The incentive for this migration anthology is the general lack of knowledge about migration in later life, particularly return migration. Since only few migration studies focus specifically on return migration by older people, there is a limited understanding of the experiences and motivations of later life immigrants who in different ways ‘return’. This is despite the increasing number of ageing immigrants and the growing phenomenon of elderly people deciding to live ‘away from home’. This book is then a welcomed supplement to the field of research. It can also contribute in raising public policy profile on this increasingly important, but highly complex and potentially problematic subject.

The main objective of the book is to explore the motivations, decision-making processes and consequences when older people consider or actualise return migration. The book achieves its objective as it develops contemporary knowledge and understandings of the driving forces behind homecoming and the different factors that influence decision-making. Key themes identified are: migration patterns; identity and place attachment; lifecourse perspectives; family ties and obligations; and health and resource planning. When exploring these themes, the book takes a broad approach, both disciplinary and empirically. It brings together a range of social gerontology, anthropology, migration and human geography perspectives, resulting in a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as a wide international representation of empirical examples. Of particular importance is the fact that the book employs a wide definition of the concept of return migration, focusing on different return motives as well as actualisation processes.

A recurrent experience, highlighted in several chapters, is the returnee's wish to be closer to children and grandchildren, both to be able to give and receive help if needed. It is shown that relatives and the location of children can affect decisions, motivations and outcomes as regards return strategies. The importance of family is described both as a positive pull factor for return migration and, when loyalties are conflicting, as a potentially negative one: pointing out that future research needs to look further into the influence of family ties and obligations as motives for return migration among older people. It would be particularly interesting to investigate the family motives in a context where social obligations have taken the form of policy, as with the European Union demands for increased solidarity between generations.

Many chapters in this book highlight the fact that retirement tends to be thought of as a time for acting on return migration wishes. The desire to retire, and to let the body find its final resting place ‘at home’, has long been a pull factor influencing return migration. This makes it relevant to approach return migration from a lifecourse perspective. But simultaneously, there is the potential risk that a lifecourse perspective becomes age-normative or paradoxical. This is not least evident with respect to the phenomenon of (international) retirement migration, a theme briefly touched upon in some of the chapters, but which needs further studies. How is the idea of ‘returning’ understood by those who have migrated for amenity reasons and to whom ‘moving away’ has become a central part of their identity as retirees? What is the cultural implication of return migration within a discourse that enjoins the elderly to remain in the third age by staying healthy, active and mobile? Does returning ‘home’ even symbolically move the returnees into the supposedly passive and stagnant fourth age? Through questions like these, studies of return migration can contribute to the joint body of knowledge on ageing in general, since thoughts of ‘return’ tell us something about priorities and processes in life. This book offers an important contribution in this direction and it is of academic, as well as of political interest, not least in a time where the ageing population is recurrently perceived to be a threat.