Exploring the Reintegration Challenges of Irregular Migrant Men Returnees from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
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Date
2014-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study was conducted with the purpose of exploring the reintegration challenges of irregular migrant men returnees from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) focusing on deportees residing in Addis Ababa. The research used a qualitative cross-sectional method by employing the narrative approach which was aimed at capturing the lived and told reintegration stories of the participant returnees. Using the purposive and snowball sampling technique, the researcher managed to contact and interview eight KSA returnees and six key informants. The findings of the study indicated that the returnees were encountering numerous reintegration challenges. Among the challenges, the following were identified by the study as contributing factors for the economic reintegration challenges of the returnees: lack of employment opportunities, organizing excessive returnees in an enterprise, severe market problem of the sheds (business center) allocated, failure to fulfill infrastructures for the allocated sheds, procedural difficulty to access business start-up loan, inadequacy of the start-up loan repayment grace period, lengthy & non-responsive government bureaucracy, incoherent & inconsistent leadership, and on the other hand, declining family care & support, family and peer pressure, community misconception and self-imposed social isolation were pointed out by the study to constitute the social reintegration challenges. The study also unveiled that given the mounting economic reintegration challenge, the future plan of the returnees has highly tilted towards remigration via the risky channel. Finally, the participants of the study urged the government for swift intervention on the income earning problem, lack of employment, market problem of the allocated sheds, excessiveness of the size of members in a business, complexity of the loan access preconditions, gaps in honoring promises, absence of consistent government follow-up and the need to retract the indefinite government ban placed on the regular migration channel
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Keywords
Challenge; Ethiopia; Irregular Migrant; Reintegration; Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Men; Returnee