Returnees, knowledge spillovers and the family's role in international migration - The case of Brazilian families returned from Paraguay

The complexity of family arrangements that constitute the return migration of Brazilians from Paraguay can be identified as an important element in maintaining the circularity between the two countries. The return plays an important role in migrants’ direction and in the daily interpersonal relationships between migrants and non-migrants, either in Brazil or Paraguay, forming a web of friendship and solidarity that sustain this intense cross-border transit of people, goods and information. Thus, in order to understand the phenomenon of migration as a social product, not only as a result of individual decisions and / or economic and political constraints, it is necessary to consider the key role played by social networks, mostly those related to families and households in the entire process. This paper describes the changes in volume and composition of family arrangements of Brazilian returnees from Paraguay in the five-year periods 1986/1991, 1995/2000 and 2005/2010 and raise some points for reflection and discussion on the participation of families in the migration process and circularity of these migrants. Information from the Brazilian Demographic Censuses of 1991, 2000 and 2010 will be used to do so, and to estimate the direct and indirect effects of international migration return to that country.