Migration trajectories and return processes: An exploration of multi-generational family experiences between Spain and Argentina

Abstract

Abstract Argentina is traditionally known as an immigration country, but at the end of the 1990s, the largest emigration flow of its history began. Spain was one of the preferred destinations for thousands of Argentines searching for new opportunities after the big 1998 downturn that led to an economical, social, and political collapse at the end of 2001. Since 2008, the international financial crisis has hit the Spanish economy and labor market. Unemployment affected the whole population but especially the immigrants, many of whom decided to return to their countries. The aim of this article is to analyze, within these multiple socio-historical contexts, the intertwined migratory trajectories and return processes of different generations of an Argentine family, highlighting the plural meanings and implications that return migrations have in different stages of the life course. Regarding family dynamics, it is also a main concern to address the tensions and controversies running through each of these collectively embedded experiences. In order to explore these tensions I will focus not only on the negotiations that surround the decision-making process and its implications for the assignment of roles, but also on the un/comfortable and un/expected new distances and proximities, absence and presence, and sojourns and belongings experienced in return processes.