Return Pressure — the Second Migration Nobody Talks About

The Topic Nobody Talks About Until It Affects Everyone

Migration is often described as the movement of one person: you go to Europe, build something, integrate. In reality, migration is usually a strategy of a family unit. You go because the family income allows — or demands it. You bring expectations that rarely stand in a contract.

Three areas where this becomes clear:

• Sending money home (remittances)
• Frequency of home visits
• Expectation of return at the end

We call this return pressure here, even though the term is reductive: it refers to the entire spectrum between family expectations and your own life plan in Europe.

What the Data Says

The World Bank has been measuring personal money transfers from migrants to their countries of origin for decades. Figures for 2024:

• Global total: ~€660 billion per year — more than the entire official development aid of OECD countries combined
• Top recipients: India (€120 billion), Mexico (€70 billion), Philippines (€40 billion), Pakistan (€30 billion)
• In some smaller economies, remittances make up 20–30% of GDP (Tonga, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal)
• From the EU: Main countries are France, Germany, Spain, Italy — typical corridors: Morocco-France, Senegal-Spain, Turkey-Germany, Brazil-Portugal, Ukraine-Poland

In most cases, remittances are not a luxury, but part of the family economy: parents are supported, younger siblings sent to school, a house built, debts repaid, help in case of illness.

A World Bank survey in several corridors shows: migrants send an average of 10–15% of their earnings home, in some cases up to 30%. This is significantly more than the savings rate of the majority population in the host country.

Why It’s Harder Than It Sounds

What the statistics don’t show is the emotional dual structure in which this happens. Three recurring tensions:

“I earn more than all of you combined — but I can’t stop”

Compared to the wage level in many host countries, you are, once you have regular work, statistically wealthier than most people in your country of origin. But compared to the cost of living in Berlin, Paris or Amsterdam, your net remaining amount is often disappointingly small. If you send 15% of your earnings home, you don’t have much left at the end of the month in an expensive EU city. Saving for emergencies, your own retirement, your own family planning — all secondary.

The result: you feel privileged (compared to those at home) and precarious (in your everyday life) at the same time. Both perceptions are correct.

“When are you coming back?” — the question rarely answered honestly

In many migrant families, the expectation is that migration is temporary. “Three, maybe five years, then you’ll come back, have saved money, build a house.” This expectation is often quieter than it should be — no one says it out loud, but everyone acts accordingly.

What actually happens: statistically, less than a third of EU migrants return permanently. The reasons are varied — children in the host country, your own career, partnership, habit, changed circumstances at home. This is not a failure, but a normal movement. But most migrant families are not prepared for “three years” to become twenty.

“You don’t understand us anymore” — the drift

With every year in Europe, your frame of reference shifts. Jokes don’t quite work in the home language anymore. Political debates at home seem more distant than you expected. Expectations regarding gender roles, work ethic, religious practice differ between you and those who have not migrated. Some migrants experience this as liberation, others as loss, many both.

This drift is mutual. Your family at home does not stop changing either — but the changes take place at a different pace and in a different environment. From afar, they often seem slower than they are.

Strategies That Migrant Families Have Developed

There is no one right way to deal with return pressure. But three strategies that frequently appear in counselling and research literature:

Clear Financial Agreements

Those who explicitly negotiate the money they send home with their family — as a percentage or as a monthly amount, with adjustments for life events — have fewer conflicts than those who improvise every month. It sounds formal, but it protects your flexibility and makes the use transparent (siblings’ school vs. house building vs. emergency).

Practical: a fixed percentage of your salary at the beginning of the month via standing order, rather than re-negotiating every month.

Separation Between “Supporting Family” and “Securing Your Own Future”

If your migration will last several years, it is wiser not to exhaust yourself completely. Three tips from the practice of migration counselling:

• Build your own emergency reserve in parallel to remittances — three to six months’ expenses in an account you do not use for family
• Build your own retirement provision as soon as you are subject to social security in the host country (statutory pension plus possibly private pension). If you do not return after 20 years, you will have no pension in your country of origin — the protection must be built up in the EU.
• Investments in the home country carefully examine. House building, buying land, opening a business — many migrants lose money over the years in investments that cannot be monitored from afar. If so, with clear administration on site and written documentation.

Realistic Home Visit Planning

Home visits are expensive and emotionally demanding. A trip to India, Brazil, Senegal costs €800–2,000 plus vacation days; emotionally, it is often a mix of reunions, old conflicts and the realisation of what has changed. Those who plan a longer trip every 18–24 months — instead of a short one every year — often have a more honest encounter. But this depends on the family unit.

When Professional Support Helps

Return pressure is not a problem in the classic sense. But it can lead to symptoms that are treatable: sleep disorders, overload, guilt, relationship problems, depressive phases. If this persists, mother-tongue or culturally sensitive psychotherapeutic counselling is useful. In most major EU cities, there are:

• Psychosocial counselling centres for migrants, often with free initial consultations (in Germany, among others, the Caritas Migration Services, the AWO, Refugio, Xenion; in France, Comede and Primo Levi; in Spain, CEAR)
• University outpatient clinics with a research focus on migration psychology
• Online therapy in your first language, often also covered by health insurance

This help is not an admission of weakness. It is a very old answer to the very old experience that migration is more complex than the departure suggests.

Differences Instead of Hierarchy

A final note. In many public narratives, migration is either told as a success story (successful integration, independent career) or as regret (wasted effort, homesickness, desire to return). Both narratives are reductive.

The reality is: most migrants live in a permanent duality — they are at home in Europe and they are not; they send money and they do not give up; they plan to return and they postpone it. This is not a weakness, but a normal form of migration.

So if you notice that you feel both at the same time — pride in what you have achieved and longing for what is lost — you are in the majority, not the exception.

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vamosa has no answer to the question of whether you should return or stay. The question is yours — and it is more lasting than you think right now. On the country detail pages, you will find information on migration-specific counselling centres with psychosocial support in the respective city. Most initial consultations are free and confidential.