REINTEGRATION EXPERIENCE OF RETURN MIGRANTS IN ETHIOPIA: A CASE STUDY ON SILTE ZONE FEMALE RETURNEES

Abstract

The literature on the reintegration of migration returnees provides an overview of the ideal conditions for the reintegration of returnees, highlighting those factors that are most likely to result in successful reintegration as well as potential obstacles. This study, therefore, was conducted with the purpose of exploring the reintegration experience of female migrants by employing a qualitative cross-sectional method with a narrative approach that aimed at capturing the lived and told migration and reintegration stories of the participant returnees. The findings of the study indicated that the returnees encountered numerous reintegration challenges such as lack of employment opportunities, organizing excessive returnees in an enterprise, severe market problems of the sheds (business center) allocated, failure to fulfill infrastructures for the allocated sheds, procedural difficulty to access business start-up loan, inadequacy of the start-up loan repayment grace period,  lengthy  &  non-responsive government bureaucracy,  incoherent & inconsistent leadership. Unless the major precursor of migration which is the economic situation of the returnees is adequately addressed, it is highly plausible to witness the vicious cycle of risky migration. Thus, the study asserted that there is a gap in providing adequate and meaningful reintegration assistance which would bring the desired economic empowerment to returnees and potentially deter the likelihood of remigration, re-victimization, and embarrassment to the image of the nation.