Martinican Family Experiencing Return Migrations: New Transatlantic Mobility Practices and Transnational Dynamics
At present, one finds new mobility patterns between the Ile-de-France and its overseas department, Martinique. Return migrations are an important feature of these patterns. While circulation between the metropolitan center and the island have become normalized in the everyday life of the islanders, I have observed a certain degree of irritation as regards to returnees. My ethnographic work shows that Martinican return migrants face several obstacles when they come back to their homeland. This article focuses mainly on changes in family relationships caused by return migration and on the new hypermobility dynamics between France and its former colony, which makes these families distributed on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean into what appear to be “transnational families.”