Social Isolation, Loneliness and Return Migration: Evidence from Older Irish Adults

Abstract

Across the subjects of economics, sociology and demography, much has been written about the difficulties faced by immigrants. However, much less attention has been paid to the difficulties which return migrants face when they come back to live in their countries of birth. A number of studies suggest that return migrants can experience significant re-adjustment challenges. In this paper, we add to this strand of research by examining the extent to which a group of returned migrants experience higher degrees of social isolation and loneliness compared to compatriots who never lived outside their country of birth. The data used are from the first wave of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Our results suggest that social isolation is a significant feature of the lives of return migrants and that the degree of social isolation is typically stronger for people who spent longer away and who have returned more recently.

Keywords:

• Return Migrants
• Older Adults
• Ireland
• Social Participation
• Loneliness

Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous JEMS referees and the JEMS Managing Editor, Jenny Money, for their insightful comments and suggestions. We also thank Peter Muhlau and seminar participants at the University of Oxford and TILDA. All errors are our own.

Notes

[1] This is an approximation because we assume that migrants spent a single period of time abroad. In reality, this might not be the case—migrants can have alternated periods of time spent in Ireland with periods of time spent abroad. However, our data do not allow us to distinguish between single and multiple migration experiences.

[2] Only three people in our sample can be classified as short-term recent returners. Hence, we do not distinguish for time since return for short-term migrants.

[3] Different marginal effects can be computed in tobit models. In Model 3, marginal effects describe how the observed dependent variable (which is bounded between 0 and 10) changes with respect to the regressors.

[4] As instrument, we use the unemployment rates for the years in which the individuals in our sample would have been deciding whether or not to migrate.