How do global crises affect privileged migrants? Return migration of German emigrants one year into the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses how global crises affect the return of international migrants. It develops a theoretical model and tests this contribution empirically taking Covid-19 as an instance of a global crisis. Existing studies have treated migration and mobility mostly as phenomena of virus dispersion. The reverse impact of Covid-19 on migration has attracted less attention. This article draws on a unique probability-sample of German emigrants to investigate actual return migration during the first year of Covid-19. These panel survey data were collected immediately before the pandemic onset in winter 2019 and one year later in winter 2020. We enhance these data with publicly available country-level data on Covid-19 incidence, excess mortality and Covid-19-induced democratic violations. Our findings from multi-level regression models suggest a moderate impact of country-specific pandemic indicators on return migration behaviour. Moreover, democratic violations in countries of residence and aggravating economic situations of individual households increase the likelihood of return. We conclude with a discussion of what can be learnt from the case of German return migrants about crisis migration in general.