Understanding Return Migration: Impacts and Implications for Kenya’s Rural Development

This paper investigates the causes and implications of urban-rural migrations to rural development. The study focused on individuals who had migrated from their rural regions to the urban areas and later moved back to their rural places of origin. The paper was informed by the findings of a previous study on rural-urban migrants that established a growing trend of return migrations among internal migrants who were moving back to their rural places of origin. We employed an interpretive study design that permitted the adoption of mixed methods. Participants were purposefully selected from two rural sub-counties of Makueni County. Study findings established that those returning to the rural were not only the old, retired and retrenched. Early and middle-aged adults had the largest percentage of in-migrants returning to their rural places of origin. Major reasons for return migration included the increasing attractiveness of the rural regions following the adoption of devolved governance, the relatively low cost of living where rural regions were said to be presenting a better alternative than the urban, and opportunities for income diversification with less reliance on paid work. The paper concluded that return migrants had positive implications for rural transformation. Returnees contributed significantly to rural development in different sectors such as farming, business, information, and skill distribution. This consequently expanded the revenue base for the county governments, ultimately becoming real drivers of rural economy and development.