The Evolution of Return Migration Studies: A Systematic Literature Review With Text Mining and Topic Modelling
2026-01-08
The study offers a systematic review of scientific literature on ‘return migration’ performing computational text mining and topic modelling. On a sample of 3000 studies indexed in Scopus and published between 1960 and 2020, we present a textual analysis and a clusters' analysis of titles, keywords, abstracts and publications' metadata. Results show a rapid growth in research since the 1970s, mirroring the evolution of migration events and the pace of theoretical advancements. The research landscape appears dominated by receiving high‐income countries' perspective. Throughout the entire period, topics related to culture, ethnicity and political identity have been prominent. A progressive shift in the economic paradigm has been identified, with labour‐related keywords leaving room for more subjective aspects of well‐being. Growing attention has been paid to different forms of migrants' capital and vulnerabilities, along with a declining interest in demographic implications of return, especially with respect to African and European internal and international migrations.