The Evolution of Return Migration Studies: A Systematic Literature Review With Text Mining and Topic Modelling

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.