Exploring Returnee Migrant Women, COVID-19 and Sustainability in Spain

The COVID-19 pandemic has signified an historical change in human mobility. By transforming the patterns of people on the move, it has highlighted gender-based inequalities and women’s vulnerabilities. The link between COVID-19 and return migration shapes returnees’ readaptation process in their home countries, as returnees are embedded in a limbo between the pandemic’s pressure on the policy and socio-economic setting, on one hand, and their efforts for reintegration, on the other. Due to the pandemic, the gender-based imbalance has increased existing gender gaps both in migration and return, exacerbating women’s vulnerability. Thus, personal aspirations and professional expectations of highly educated women are caught in a system of socio-economic and geographical (im)mobility, which represents the principal outcome in their relocation and readaptation process. Based on a qualitative methodology through the analysis of ten life histories of highly educated returnee migrant women, this paper sheds light on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their migratory trajectories, providing a typology of them. Findings stress the necessity for more sustainable measures and resources for life–work balance and gender-sensitive policies, to promote a better integration process into the local labour market; to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on returnee women, and to prevent the proliferation of mental health problems among returnee women.