Clustering Reasons for Returning: an Overview of Return Migration in Albania

Return migrants in Albania show highly heterogeneous motivation-for-return profiles. It is certainly complicated to obtain a full vision of returnees’ characteristics, but this paper contributes to better understand the complex nature of their experiences before and during their life abroad, and after their return to Albania. Cluster analysis allowed grouping returnees that have similar characteristic by their reason for returning, leading to homogeneous empirical types that reflect the multifaceted system of interactions between the host and the home countries in which migrants are embedded. This paper clearly identifies at least two well-differentiated groups based on migrant reasons for returning and gives some policy recommendations to increase the in-flown and fully take advantage of returnees’ potentialities for the economic and social development of the country. Existing programs and services for the reintegration of return migrants in Albania must abandon their general stamp to consider the complex heterogeneity of returnees’ profiles.