Migrants’ children’s schooling and identities make return to homelands increasingly impossible

Evidence

Migration networks provide the basis for processes of settlement and community formation in the immigration area. This is linked to family reunion: as length of stay increases, the original migrants (whether workers or refugees) begin to bring in their spouses and children, or found new families. People start to see their life perspectives in the new country. This process is especially related to the situation of migrants’ children: once they go to school in the new country, learn the language, form peer group relationships, and develop bicultural or transcultural identities, it becomes more and more difficult for the parents to return to their homelands. Migrant groups become a permanent part of the population of the receiving country - yet without necessarily giving up their original languages and cultures, nor their links with their countries of origin. Thus most international migratory movements lead to settlement of a proportion of the migrants (whatever their original intentions). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3842

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The mechanism where a child’s school friendships and bicultural identity quietly foreclose a family’s return could anchor a novel about parents who intended their migration as temporary and now find their children have chosen the new country for them.