Cognitive return migration: factors that shape returning the mind in situ to invest in a homeward future in Ghana

Abstract

Cognitive migration, the process of mentally travelling ahead of one’s actual physical move, is receiving attention in migration studies. However, the reverse process of mentally returning after failing to move physically, has not received much attention. What are the enablers to this return process? I answer this question to make a case for cognitive return migration. Through the in-depth interviewing of 11 immobile cognitive returnees, the study explores the experiences of these prospective migrants, who displace their migration imaginations outward and later reconfigure them homewards without physically moving. By initially becoming cognitive migrants and being cognitively displaced, these prospective migrants fail to physically travel to their imagined destinations. This creates a situation where their imagination of the distal sphere overwrites their proximal, hereand-now embodied experience. In this state, they invest all their resources, time and money in furtherance of their repeatedly botched dreams of travelling to the imagined destination. This failure starts a cognitive return process that foregrounds the consciousness of the proximal, here-and-now sphere, enabling them to seize opportunities they had earlier not ‘seen’ or discounted to invest in a homeward future.