“We Go Away and Come Back Whenever We Want To”: Place, Time, and Return Migration in Dugi Otok, Croatia

Abstract

Over the centuries, migration has significantly impacted Croatian islands and islanders. Taking a life course perspective and deploying semistructured interviews, this paper analyses time as a variable in contemporary return migration to Dugi Otok, a small island in Croatia. The focus is on the personal experiences of key events in the interviewees’ individual life histories that influenced their decisions to leave and to return. Comparing with results from an earlier study, the findings challenge traditional notions of a migration cycle in which an initial departure is ‘closed’ by a final, permanent return. A combination of temporally conditioned experiences and shifts in sociotechnical, economic, cultural, and political context mean that emigrants increasingly experience a sense of continuity between island place and immigration destination. Their returns to the island are more likely to be temporary or circular than to be permanent.