Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to critically examine the link between educational migration, development and the ‘myth of return’ with attention paid to the expectations of return built into prevailing ideas of education and mobility in the context of educational migration from Nepal to Denmark.

Paper long abstract:

The scholarly literature on Nepalese transnational migration has mostly focused on low-skilled labour migration and the importance of economic remittances for the economy on both national and household level. Portraying migration as primarily a low-class phenomenon and giving priority to socio-economic aspects of migration, this perspective resonates with the prevailing developmentalistic approach, which conceives of migration as an engine for economic development through the transfer of both economic and social remittances. Educational migration to countries in the global North offers a different vantage point from which to explore transnational migration and its returns.

Based on ethnographic data collected among Nepalese students in Denmark and returnees in Nepal, the paper claims that many student migrants, partly with reference to their educated status, have taken on the idea and rhetoric of the "migrant hero," who is morally obliged to contribute to the development of the home country. At the same time it is obvious that ideas of 'meaningful' returns take on different and sometimes conflicting meanings when translated into individual life projects. The aim of this paper is to critically examine the link between educational migration, development and 'return' with attention paid to the expectations of return built into prevailing ideas of education and mobility in contemporary Nepal. It does by exploring the 'myth of return' as both a collective idea reflected through migrants' engagement in homeland associations and as a future point of orientation for individual migrants.