When wanting to return is not enough: social protection and the capability to realize return aspirations

Migration research increasingly distinguishes between desired mobility and the capabilities required to realize it. Yet this distinction remains insufficiently developed in return migration research, where aspirations, intentions, expectations, and actual return are often treated as closely aligned. In this Perspective, we argue that return should instead be examined as a future-oriented project whose realization depends on migrants' effective opportunities to act. We propose the return aspiration–capability gap to describe the discrepancy between a desired return and the capabilities available to enact it. These capabilities are shaped by economic, institutional, relational, and place-based resources and conditions. We focus particularly on social protection as an underexamined component of this configuration. Pension income, portable social rights, healthcare access, and institutional accessibility may expand return capability, whereas fragmented contribution histories, non-portable benefits, administrative barriers, and insecure legal status may constrain it. We further conceptualize the portability–mobility paradox as one mechanism through which rights accumulated through international mobility may subsequently restrict further mobility when they cannot move with their holders. The gap need not result in permanent immobility; it may be expressed through delayed return, constrained staying, recurrent cross-border mobility, recalibration of return aspirations, or return followed by renewed migration. We conclude by proposing an aspiration-sensitive research and policy agenda that distinguishes what migrants desire, expect, intend, and are effectively capable of doing.