Back to the Philippines: Connecting aspirations, return and social remittances in international student migration

The growing volume of international students has attracted research interest on their return experiences and the potential impacts of their overseas education in their home countries. This paper uses the notion of aspiration to investigate international students’ return experiences in connection to their motivations and perceived gains from studying abroad. Interviews with Filipino returnees who completed their postgraduate studies in Europe suggest that their plans to study abroad involved aspirations to return to the Philippines for different reasons, including career and family-related factors. Their aspirations also reflect their desired contributions to their respective occupational fields in the country. Their narratives of returning to the workplace, however, reveal institutional factors that either facilitate or constrain the transfer of ideas, knowledge and practices gained from their experiences abroad. Findings point to how returnees' workplace experiences, in turn, reshape their career aspirations and migration intentions.