Reurbanisation in my hometown? Effect of return migration on migrants' urban settlement intention

Return migration has become a critical socio‐economic phenomenon—both between countries and within countries—and profoundly affects the development prospects in a migrants' country or region of origin. Studies have mainly focused on the return of overseas migrants and their employment transformation and social integration upon return; few studies have investigated internal return migrants and their residential choice and urbanisation effect. To fill this gap, the present study used nationally representative data from China to construct a moderated mediation model for examining the relationship between internal return migration, nonagricultural employment, and urban settlement intention. The empirical results indicated that return migration affected urban settlement intention through two paths. In addition to directly strengthening migrants' urban settlement intention, return migration indirectly strengthened this intention by promoting nonagricultural employment. Compared with those returning to eastern China, returnees to central China were less likely to be in nonagricultural employment and had weaker intention to settle in a town. Among return migrants, the impacts of age at return and workplace during migration on the urban settlement intention were mainly through direct effects.