Swedish-finnish return migration, extent, timing, and information flows

This paper performs two tasks. It first describes the return migration behavior of Finnish immigrants to Sweden over the period 1968–1976 as revealed by the Swedish population register. The volume of return migration is considerable but varies by age and sex. Second, we examine the sensitivity of return migration to economic conditions at both destination and origin. The model proposed allows the relative weights attached to information on the two locations to vary as the interval of absence lengthens. Econometric evidence indicates that conditions at the original location appear to exert increasing influence on the decision to return the longer the interval of absence.