Paper short abstract:

How can we make sense of return migration to a place where ‘there is no future’? This paper explores how (would-be) returnees to rural Paraguay renegotiate the meaning and prospects of a peasant way of life in light of a protracted crises of smallholder agriculture.

Paper long abstract:

Neoliberal development and global capitalism challenge the rural lifeworlds of smallholders in Paraguay and shrink their spaces of economic and social reproduction. However, contrary to simplistic discourses of rural exodus, there are not only people who refuse to leave, but also migrants who return from urban destinations in Paraguay and abroad. Why do they strive to live in a place where they say themselves, ‘there is no future’?

Ethnographic fieldwork in Paraguay and Argentina shows that there is more to return than nostalgic belonging or surrender to the “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) of migration regimes. It is true that ‘leaving to the cities’ is closely associated with hopes for existential mobility. But, sometimes, so is return migration. The paper disentangles this seeming contradiction by exploring how migrants reassess existential mobility as they navigate rough terrains.

The contribution looks at the permanent comparisons between rural and urban lifeworlds that permeate the transnational field. Focussing at three dimensions - security, belonging and hope(fulness) – it reconstructs how people stress or hide different facets of these, thereby (re)mapping spaces of opportunities. Although the transnational discourse is haunted by a dualism between modern city-life and rural backwardness, there are voices which challenge the futurelessness of rural spaces. Neither romanticizing nor fatalistic, they reimagine a rural way of life.

The paper not only helps to understand changing migration patterns. It also sheds light on the interrelation between social and spatial (im)mobilities and reveals how the comparative logic of diasporic existence (Hage 2021) transforms rural futures.