Navigating psychological disruptions on the move: Instrumentalism, Altruism and Reattachment as Strategies for Sense-Making among Migrants
The aim of the research was to examine the degree to which the psychological disruptions that develop in migrants following relocation to a host country and the associated responses can help the migrant shape their identities and the relations with both host country and the former homeland. This PhD by publication drew on six papers published in various social science journals and a book chapter. The papers and the book chapter were all peer-reviewed and published in the past five years, between 2018 and 2023. All the papers addressed issues of migrant integration and wellbeing. The methodology that was used in all papers was qualitative in nature and utilized interviews. To achieve the best result in deciphering their similarities and derive new conceptualization, I undertook two rounds of reading to record key words, then themes. The first reading was based on the abstracts and skimming the papers and the second reading was an in-depth one to identify additional key words that did not appear in the abstracts. A comparison of the two sets of key words allowed me to eliminate those that did not have particular significance, either because they were too generic or were not recurrent. The synthesis revealed significant concepts that, individually, the original papers failed to identify. The research found that homesickness and identity uncertainties were critical emotions that mine the migration journey. While this finding was to some degree arrived at by some of the papers, the review of all the papers showed that these emotional issues were prevalent but were not picked up by every single paper. A significant novelty is the finding relating to the healing process. The research found that some migrants do not necessarily adapt to the host society owing to the above emotional issues. In order to cope with the issues, migrants resort to altruistic investment and remittances, which help them to firmly reattach themselves (I conceptualise these migrants as reattachers) to the former homeland. While reattachers could potentially be seen as failed migrants, the research found that they could be significant assets for the former homeland as they can be development and knowledge transfer agents. This challenges the assumptions often made that migrants leaving developing countries constitute brain drain. The research argues that these assumptions can be nuanced since reattachers can become brain gain for the ‘former’ homeland.
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