Return Migration, Reverse Culture Shock: A Critical Analysis of Their Patterns and Particularities Amongst Migrant Nigerian Elites

Migration has remained a constant element of 21st-century changes (Appadurai, 1999; Gillespie, 2000; Georgiou, 2001). The prospects of a continuation are certain with growing gains in technologies of communication, transportation, and the increasing ease with which the world can integrate and function. The place of Nigerian migrants as reflected in some patterns and particularities (Georgiou, 2001; Adeniyi, 2008) of its elites reveals key characteristics useful for the understanding of discourses around migrants’ return and reverse culture shock (Naficy, 1999). While the coming home is often imagined, a few have proceeded to actualizations, and subsequently opening up new pedestals for the understanding of travelling and dwelling (Morley, 2000). This paper attempts a critical analysis of identifiable features and concludes that the revelations will ceaselessly grow in substance. The paper uses critical discourse analysis to evaluate the experiences of some elites, as rendered in formal and informal interviews, while also spicing it up with secondary data, obtained from media reports, and related literature. It eventually ended with a recommendation on the need for concerted development efforts to enable a realization of the likely higher quality lifestyle, which the elite might have left behind in the West.