Ruptures and continuities in transnational families: emigrants’ descendants’ mobility from Chile to Italy
Résumé
Building on the study of Italian emigrants’ descendants’ mobility between Chile and Italy, that policies often call “return migration”, this paper aims at showing, first, that mobility and a privileged legal status, that of being an Italian and European citizen, are part of a collective heritage in families stemming from historical Italian emigration; second, that personal and family ruptures intrinsically foster both this mobility and the renegotiation of emigrants’ descendants’ sense of belonging. More broadly, this paper aims at pushing a step forward the debate on the nexus between migration and belonging in mobilities linking Latin America and Europe, reversing the point of view usually adopted to apprehend them. Indeed, in this paper, Europe is not considered as the destination towards which South American migrants move and, possibly, from which they come back. This paper proposes to apprehend the connection between what academia and policy call return migration (a definition I am quite critical about) and belonging through a novel gaze. Such a link is often taken for granted by the national and international policies that regulate migration, even though scientific literature has shown that “going back” and reintegrate in one’s or one’s ancestors’ original country is not a straight process nor a smooth one. This paper contributes to this debate by questioning the very notion of return migration and arguing that we may better understand the complex social processes comprised under the semantic umbrella of “return migration”, by shifting our analysis grid from migration to mobility.