Nadler, R., Kovács, Z., Glorius, B. and Lang, T. (eds.): Return Migration and Regional Development in Europe: Mobility Against the Stream 440 Nadler, R., Kovács, Z., Glorius, B. and Lang, T. (eds.): Return Migration and Regional Development in Europe: Mobility Against the Stream. London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 385 p. DOI: 10.15201/hungeobull.65.4.12 Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 65 2016 (4) The European Union (EU) enlargement towards East Central European countries guaranteed free move- ment of people within member states. Perceptions about the new migration policies and the fear of invasion of cheap manual labour from Accession eight (A8) countries such as the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia created the archetypal figure of the ‘Polish plumber’. This shows the excessive politicisa- tion and instrumentalisation of migration issues in Western Europe. Considering the recent migration crisis, the instrumentalisation of migration is not unfamiliar in East Central Europe either. Significant income disparities between the Western and Eastern parts of Europe, better working conditions, skills development such as mastering foreign languages were among the main pull factors for people in post-socialist countries to work abroad. Since the EU enlargement in 2004, and especially during the years of the financial and economic crisis, a significant number of young and skilled has tried to pursuit fortune and happiness in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, and a few years later in Germany and Austria. Even traditionally ‘sedentarist’ and ‘a-mobile’ populations, like Hungarians, opted for mobility along with the more mobile East Central European peoples, like Polish, Slovaks or Romanians (Illés, S. and Kincses, Á. 2012). It is widely accepted that economic reasons influ- ence migration processes, but these are far to be the only ones. The social, cultural and political context in countries of origin affects the decision to mobility. Moreover, emotional processes as well as personal traits and attitude also shape human mobility and vice versa as much in the case of lifestyle migration (O’Reilly, K. 2007) as in the case of labour migra- tion (Wright, K. 2011). During the past decade both the academia and media paid much attention to the receiving countries and on issues like immigration, integration processes and acculturation. Yet, although neglected as a top-research topic, return is also a fun- damental element of East Central European migration schemes. Thus, ‘Return migration and regional devel- opment in Europe’ engages a very pertinent topic. This recent edited volume belongs to the Springer ‘New Geographies of Europe’ series, the aim of which is to welcome contributions “where the focus is upon novel spatial phenomena, path-dependent processes of socio-economic change or policy responses at various levels throughout Europe”. This volume re- sponds to all the aforementioned goals. The book, ed- ited by Robert Nadler, Zoltán Kovács, Birgit Glorius and Thilo Lang, came out of a joint research project entitled ‘Re-Turn’ funded by the European Regional Development Fund, and of a workshop organised in 2013 in Budapest on the topic of return migration and regional development. The collection of studies provides an extensive review of the current state of return migration and reintegration of citizens in their country of origin, with a special focus on policy approaches that should ease return migration. All subjects are of key impor- tance in East Central European countries. The focus of the volume is to “enrich the debate on the chang- ing migration patterns in Europe based on up-to-date theoretical and empirical work” and the book’s mis- sion is to create an “anthology of state-of-art research on return migration in Europe” (p. 3). The volume does not fail to deliver on its aims. It is divided into four main parts, although these parts are not equally balanced since part one, two and three contain four and five chapters each, while part four lists only two. A general overview of the ‘mobility against the stream’ is presented in the stimulating introductory session written by the editors. The scarcity of data is well-known in migration studies, but it is particularly evident in the case of return migration. Still, it is as- sumed that return migration interests more than 3.4 441Book Review – Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 65 (2016) (4) 433–446. million people within the EU, as a map on the main flows of European migration indicates (p. 7). The volume, in fact, provides different methodological and data gathering approaches that could be applied in different scenarios. Furthermore, in the introduc- tion, neoclassical theory and structuralist approaches, widely used in migratory studies, are described with the specific aim to highlight the freshness and dyna- mism of social network theories and transnational ap- proaches applied throughout this volume. The inno- vation of such theories and approaches is the focus on social and cultural processes and motives of (return) migration that give a much human-centred rather than purely economic vision of the phenomena (see the essays by King and Kilinç; Ní Chearbhaill; and van Blanckenburg). Following these parts, the nexus between return migration and regional development is investigated, demystifying the assumption that re- turn migrants can easily, quickly and successfully be (re)integrated in their home society. The authors pre- sent evidence for that, in general, irregular working conditions and unemployment affect return migrants. Part I focuses on the conceptual approaches towards return migration in Europe, and features four essays. In Chapter 2 Ludger Pries from Ruhr University Bochum widely explores multiple and multidirectional mobility patterns from a historical and sociological point of view. His starting point is the German guest- worker programme in the 1970s. Circular migration and transnational mobility are widespread phenom- ena not only in Germany, but in East Central Europe as well. Persons on the move identify themselves less and less as immigrants or returnees, keeping lively the pos- sibility to change their spatial nexus according to their changing needs. The theoretical and methodological challenges to investigate circular migration are also addressed in Pries’s work, in which current migration policies are discussed. Katrin Klein-Hitpass’s contribution in Chapter 3 on return migrants puts skilled labour force in the centre. She analyses the processes that make return migrants knowledge brokers and innovators. In her case study on Poland, Klein-Hitpass compares Polish mobility before and after the EU accession. She evidences that in the 1990s those who emigrated were well-trained and skilled and, upon return, sig- nificantly contributed to economic development in their homeland through their improved technologi- cal, managerial or communication skills. Although this trend seems to have changed after the EU en- largement, the mass of younger and less educated Poles mainly coming from rural areas can hardly be considered as that of knowledge-brokers. From the same geographical area, Poland, is Izabela Grabowska’s inspirational work on how the interplay of opportunity structure and agency influ- ences life course occupational trajectories. Grabowska from the University of Warsaw conducted an exten- sive qualitative research based on structured and bio- graphical interviews in Warsaw and in the small town of Nysa. The research aim was to construct a typology of the meanings of migration to one’s career develop- ment applying the theory on agency approach. Her findings show that the meaning of migration, such as fixative, incident, exploration or project in her clas- sification, always depends on individual personality. She argues that in our current age people, especially the young, are “pushed into global biographies” (p. 103), which means that living in one place during the whole lifetime is extremely hard because occupation- al trajectories often require mobility. She claims for a new perspective on migration. In the case of transna- tional migrants it makes less sense to speak about re- turn migration, because even when they return home they are considered global citizens ready to embark on the next opportunity in a foreign country. I would strongly suggest her essay to the young and gradu- ated who aim to realise their dreams abroad since it helps to cope with emerging challenges. In Chapter 5, Jelena Predojevic-Despic, Tanja Pavlov, Svetlana Milutinovic and Brikena Balli ana- lyse the returning and transnational business practices in Albania and Serbia through a pilot study, contrib- uting to the debate on the nexus between returning migrants and regional development. Investigating micro- and small-sized enterprises, the authors evi- dence that several types of networks were established between the origin and destination countries. Part II deals with research methods and implemen- tations and results. This part highlights the difficulties in data gathering and introduces possible data sources for return migration studies, such as cross-country sur- veys as a quantitative method (Danzer and Dietz), new approaches to analyse existing data sets (Nadler), in-depth interviews (King and Kilinç) and interdisci- plinary research (Nì Chearbhaill). These methods are in part already applied in several research designs in East Central European countries (e.g. Lakatos, J. 2015 in Hungary), but could be further redefined. In Chapter 6, Alexander M. Danzer and Barbara Dietz with a cross-country survey across five EU partnership countries investigate the assistance of mi- gration agencies and pre-migration skill development in the case of 2,000 temporary and return migrants. In this part, Robert Nadler’s essay on measuring return migration in Eastern Germany can be considered as the most innovative from the methodological point of view. His data source was the German Employment History Data based on employers’ social security no- tifications sent to the administrative register between 2001 and 2010. In this way, Nadler managed to meas- ure not only the employability of domestic migrants but spatial mobility between Western and Eastern Germany as well. The other chapters in this part fail to experiment new research methods except Chapter 8. King and 442 Book Review – Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 65 (2016) (4) 433–446. Kilinç’s study explores the most numerous foreign population in Germany, the Turks. Their analysis fo- cuses on second generation Turkish-German men and women using semi-structured life-history narratives. Employing this method, rich data on gendered nar- ratives could be scrutinised. It is interesting to note that self-realisation and belonging were among the main challenges faced by Turkish-German as much as by Irish individuals in the study by Nì Chearbhaill who explored return migrants’ search for linguistic and cultural identity. Part III is entitled ‘New regional perspectives and research questions on return migration in Europe’. Here again readers find the topic of circular migration but the country under scrutiny is Latvia. The chapter is valuable for the methods applied since Krisjane, Apsite-Berina and Berzins use an online survey dis- tributed among 2,565 Latvian nationals in five dif- ferent countries. Their aim was to explore migrants’ return intentions and evidence of the decisive role of labour market constrains in the homeland. The online survey method was employed by Bürgin and Erze- Bürgin as well to study the German-trained Turkish workforce (Chapter 13). In Chapter 11, Birgit Glorius, one of the co-editors of the volume from the Institute of European Studies in Chemnitz studied the mobility decision processes of Erasmus students in Halle, Germany. Her find- ings show that the institutional framework plays a significant role in decision making along with ration- ality, subjectivity and emotionality. Foreign students establish social capital in the destination country that can hardly be capitalised in their home country. It is widely accepted that having constructed a good international network and social capital is valuable, but the missing network in the home country limits the possibilities to career development. This is a fact that all students from East Central Europe who aim to study abroad should bear in mind. Chapter 12 by van Blanckenburg is particularly interesting for covering the importance of memory and cultural identity in successful entrepreneurs’ mo- tivations to return to East Germany. This neglected topic is highly relevant in post-socialist countries, still, our current knowledge on this phenomenon is extremely limited. Childhood memories, percep- tions, beliefs, and strong moral obligation nurtured the wish to return to the antecedents’ territory and this provides a wider spectrum of approaches and methods to apply to migration studies. In Chapter 14, Caroline Hornstein Tomić and Sarah Scholl-Schneider explore the experiences of return migrants in Croatia and Czech Republic. Their research gives voice to the bitter awareness of- ten experienced by return migrants that even if they try hard to be ‘agents of change’ and ‘knowledge- brokers’ in their home society, the obstacles are nu- merous and the chances to succeed are little. Still, return migrants, as showed by Hornstein Tomić and Scholl-Schneider, are more tolerant and more democratic than their fellow compatriots. Having in- novative, new or just simply different ideas, return migrants add their own puzzle-piece to post-socialist countries ‘fluid-democracies’ (Bauman, Z. 2000). Part IV gathers two essays. The first one critically analyses several European national policies aimed at stimulating return migration (Boros and Hegedűs), while the conclusive essay signed by the editors is a sum-up of the analysed topics and issues with clear future research and policy implications. In Chapter 15 Lajos Boros and Gábor Hegedűs from the University of Szeged scrutinises 41 international, national and sub-national policy documents focusing on retention, re-employment or re-attraction of return citizens. For a wider comparison, the authors also examined suc- cessful remigration policy practices and brain gain strategies in China, Taiwan, India, South Africa and Ghana. Their findings show that although national policies vary greatly, European countries, until now, have not been able to leverage on return migrants. It seems to be clear that a co-operation between sending and host countries (e.g. between Italy and Romania, the UK and Poland) is essential not only to convince but also to help migrants to return to their country of origin. It is worth noting that although return migration and retention are issues of current political debate offering fertile ground for propaganda, “efficient return initia- tives and competent institutional background with a decentralised decision-making system” (p. 353) fail to be established. This again shows a huge discrepancy between social and economic trends and political slo- gans. As a common burden, all East Central European countries have to face brain drain. The young and skilled, but as this volume evidences the not so young and lower-skilled as well, cannot be hindered anymore to try to live according to Western European standards. Countries like Poland, Hungary, Slovakia or Romania should work not only on attractive return migration policies, but on establishing an attractive social, cul- tural and political environment, too. The different essays of this volume show how complex the phenomenon of return migration is and how inefficient the current return policies are. Having read this book, one might ask oneself that if it is so challenging to ease return migration within EU coun- tries and to offer policy tools to integrate knowledge brokers, transnational entrepreneurs and graduate students, how will the EU cope with mass migration from war-torn and socially, economically and politi- cally instable countries? From the geographical point of view the volume is well-balanced, although slightly more emphasis is given to Germany and Turkey. The volume presents empirical research not only from old and new EU member states, but also provides essays on Albania, 443Book Review – Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 65 (2016) (4) 433–446. Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Serbia, Ukraine and Moldova, offering a complex vision on return migra- tion in Europe. In my view, the volume could have been more complete with some essays on (re)migra- tion flows between Southwestern Europe and East Central Europe. For its volume, especially the case of Romanians settled in Spain or in Italy would have been interesting to study. To conclude this review, I think that the strong and meticulous editorship makes the book a solid composition and a goldmine for references. It is a highly recommended source for policy makers, academics, undergraduate and post- graduate students. Anna Irimiás R E F E R E N C E S Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge, Polity. Illés, S. and Kincses, Á. 2012. Hungary as receiv- ing country for circulars. Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 61. (3): 197−218. Lakatos, J. 2015. Külföldön dolgozó magyarok, Magyarországon dolgozó külföldiek (Hungarians working in abroad, foreigners working in Hungary). Statisztikai Szemle 93. (2): 93−112. O’Reilly, K. 2007. Intra-European migration and mobility – Enclosure Dialectic. Sociology 41. (2): 277−293. Wright, K. 2011. Constructing migrant wellbeing: An exploration of life satisfaction amongst Peruvian migrants in London. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37. (9): 1459–1475. 1 Tourism Department, Kodolányi János University of Applied Sciences, Székesfehérvár and Budapest. E-mail: annairimias@hotmail.com