Incentives and Disincentives to Return Migration: The Case of Iranian Experts Living in the United States

The first step in making appropriate policies that encourage return migration is to study expatriates' patterns of behavior, which has not received sufficient attention. In this paper, based on a qualitative study, a number of hypotheses are formed regarding factors that encourage or discourage Iranian experts' living in the United States to return to Iran. The strongest incentive is family and homeland attractions and the strongest hindrance is quality of life factors. Not all of the factors are of the same strength for all people: for example, passage of time makes quality of life factors stronger hindrances and family and homeland factors weaker attractions, whereas for younger people, economic conditions are stronger barriers. In general, there is a strong and statistically significant inverse relationship between age and self-reported chance of return. Finally, except feeling indebted to Iran (which has a positive effect) and feeling that the quality of research in Iran is low (which has a negative effect) other incentives and disincentives are not related to whether expatriates would like to help Iran even if they do not return to Iran, as most of the expatriates express interest in helping Iran.