Chapter 6 begins the work of examining why people expended so much time, effort, money and skill on reclaiming their lost possessions. It explores this question by looking to the rewards offered in ‘lost’ and ‘runaway’ notices and using them to investigate the different values at stake in possessions. It finds that ‘possessions’ such as watches, financial instruments, dogs and people held a range of values in the eighteenth century. Rather than marked by market values as the use of rewards might suggest, these ‘things’ were also valuable for the roles they fulfilled and the emotional or cultural importance they held. As with the previous chapter, by looking to the question of value, we begin to understand how ‘possessions’ were differentiated in this period. Such an insight becomes more apparent when the chapter explores not only the rewards offered, but also what they were offered for.

Chapter 6 details and tests our theory of IO exit by applying it to the predictors of IO suspensions. IO member states use suspension to punish states that have violated IO commitments and to incentivize domestic institutional change. We argue that suspension is not an automatic punishment for violations but instead is influenced by factors related to bargaining and institutional constraints: Violator states that are more powerful, have material resources, and have alliance relationships with regional powers are less likely to be suspended while IOs. Empirically, we analyze 101 IO suspensions from 1939 to 2022 across all IOs and states, and then focus our multivariate analyses on suspensions for political backsliding. This is because we show that most suspensions occur for human rights violations and incursions on democracy commitments (like coups d’état); and narrowing the scope allows us to control for the kinds of violations that prompt suspension. Our quantitative analysis shows that IO membership suspension is imposed against some but not all violators – and that this is partly because powerful states are able to insulate themselves from IO pressures, avoiding punishment for violations that less powerful states get suspended for. IO institutional constraints including their democratic density also affect the likelihood of suspension for political backsliding. Suspension can act as a multilateral diplomatic sanction but power and politics matter.

Chapter 3 outlines and tests our theory of IO exit by applying it to the predictors of IO withdrawal. We argue that many dissatisfied states use the process of withdrawal to broker deals for institutional change in the IO. Many withdrawals are driven by preference divergence from other member states or declining power. Using our IO Exit dataset, we analyze 387 IO withdrawals from 1913 to 2022 across 534 IOs and 198 states. In categorizing the reasons for state withdrawals, we show that two-thirds of IO withdrawals are motivated by the desire to negotiate change rather than by issues that reflect populism, nationalism, or capitulation toward international cooperation. States also use the threat of withdrawal, which supports the notion that exit is a negotiating process with multiple steps rather than a final or singular act. Withdrawal is usually not permanent; half of the time, states return to the IOs they left. States also likely consider costs a priori and avoid withdrawal if the costs are projected to be too high. This prevents many withdrawals from happening in the first place. We do not find consistent support for alternative arguments that backlash against globalization, encroachment from authoritative IOs, nationalism/populism, or legal rules are robust drivers of withdrawal.

The rule of non-refoulement under international law protects a person from being handed over to the jurisdiction over another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that they will be at clear risk of suffering irreparable harm, particularly in the form of killing, enforced disappearance, torture, or other ill-treatment. The version of the rule of non-refoulement included in the 1984 UN Convention against Torture protects a person from return only against the risk of torture. But the broader formulation of the rule that has crystallized as custom in international law also concerns other ill-treatment as well.

Political possibilities closed down as the war ended in 2005. With the negotiation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the death of the SPLA’s leader John Garang – which sparked riots and racialised murder across Khartoum – many people’s connections and trust in inclusive intellectual and political projects were broken. This chapter briefly surveys the aftermath of the riots and peace process, which saw a massive movement of well over a million Khartoum residents to the south, where they reconstructed a very different set of neighbourhoods that in the late 2000s were often known as New Khartoums. The secession of South Sudan in 2011 was not a panacea or end goal of the long conflicts for many of these returned Khartoum residents. Reflecting discussions with returning residents over 2012 and 2013, the chapter examines the lost possibilities of the projects they undertook in Khartoum, and the closing space for political projects and democratic communities that they discussed and worked for during the war.

This chapter explores the spatial dimensions of the trope of the epic return journey (the nostos) and focuses on the physical and emotive experiences which such a journey produces. Loney first highlights dislocation as an important feature in epic, and a motivating force behind its plot: the feeling of being separated in time or space from a more ideal past or home. Under this single conception of ‘dislocation’, the chapter brings together two poetic themes which scholars have traditionally treated discretely: nostalgia and homesickness. Archaic epics, especially Hesiod’s Works and Days, rely on a narrative of decline—of temporal dislocation—from an antecedent ‘golden age’, for which internal characters and external audiences are nostalgic. Similarly, characters in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey may be spatially dislocated and homesick, motivating a return journey (prototypically Odysseus, but also at moments Achilles and Helen).

This concluding chapter looks back at the main findings that emerged from this research and shows how they explain the transformation of long-distance Tunisian politics in the aftermath of the 2011 Revolution. It asks how the anti- and pro-regime struggles evolved following the demise of the central purpose of these struggles and the movements they inspired, and looks at the ways in which boundaries were redefined through different fields of action and the growth of new divisions. The emergence of new actors, the political reconversion of those who had shifted to Tunisian-centred politics, new rules of the game and the various possibilities of return to Tunisia each played a role in redefining the modalities of long-distance Tunisian politics. However, decades of activism had regulated the practice of activists from afar and reinforced the informal rules of the trans-state space of mobilisation. The 2011 Revolution simultaneously represented a decisive rupture and a continuity, reshaping and continuing to reshape the dynamics of the trans-state space of mobilisation.

When Helmut Kohl became chancellor in October 1982, he resolved to fulfill the CDU’s promise of turning a remigration law into reality. But given the potential backlash at home and abroad, he knew that achieving his goal – getting rid of half of the Turkish migrant population – would be difficult. How, after perpetrating the Holocaust forty years prior, could West Germans kick out the Turks without compromising their post-fascist values of liberalism and democracy? How could they do so while minimizing criticism from the Turkish government? The answer, codified in the 1983 Law for the Promotion of the Voluntary Return of Foreigners (Rückkehrförderungsgesetz), was to pay Turks to leave. The West German government offered unemployed former guest workers a “remigration premium” to take their families and leave by September 30, 1984, with no option to return. While the remigration law fell short of Kohl’s 50 percent goal, it sparked one of the largest mass remigrations in modern European history. Between November 1983 and September 1984, 15 percent of the Turkish migrant population – 250,000 people – returned to Turkey. Nearly half of those return migrants came to regret their decision, as they encountered difficulties “reintegrating” both socially and economically into their own homeland.

No parent, partner, or child could quantify the worth of a beloved female family member lost to cervical cancer. And yet, with today’s economic realities – and most particularly in countries that struggle to meet citizens’ basic health needs – quantifying a woman’s financial benefit to her family and community becomes necessary to justify the cost of eradicating this disease. A senior health economist with the World Health Organization estimates that for every dollar spent on cervical cancer prevention, women’s paid and unpaid contributions return $26 USD to an economy: a return rate of twenty-six to one – impressive for any health intervention. Yet for varying political, social, and cultural reasons, most countries are reluctant to spend sufficient funds on female reproductive health care. These financial obstacles to eliminating cervical cancer won’t change until each unique society is willing to question how it values its women. Eliminating death by a preventable cancer makes intuitive sense. But until those sentiments translate into public policy and equitable, affordable health care for all women, lofty ideas are not enough to save lives.

This chapter delves deeper into the process by which artists make their creations available to purchasers. We will also focus on why these purchasers decide to acquire art. Ultimately, these decisions constitute the supply of and demand for art, which eventually helps explain both the levels of art prices and the changes in those levels. We describe the market for paintings that consists of both primary and secondary markets. Finally, we describe the concepts of expected return and risk and how to evaluate whether art is a good investment.

This chapter examines (1) the connection between the movement of return and a messianic redemption, (2) the distinctively Jewish teachings on the Messiah, and (3) the relation between Jewish messianism and a Jewish understanding of history as sacred history. The key to these connections lies in the principle that our humanity is rooted in a responsibility to and for the other human being, which is ultimately a messianic responsibility: If the Messiah tarries it is because we tarry, because we are forever late for the appointment, late in answering, “Here I am for you,” to the anguished outcry of our fellow human being, beginning with the stranger, the other, the child of Adam. This blindness to what Emmanuel Levinas calls “the exigency of the holy,” in the face of the other, which is fundamental to Judaism, lies at the heart of antisemitism.

The fundamental problem defining the human condition, both ontological and metaphysical, is the problem of the movement from a wilderness to a dwelling place. This teaching is couched in the first letter of the Torah, which is itself the foundation of creation. The beit with which the Torah begins designates a “house,” the shelter that we are summoned to transform into a dwelling place. What is a dwelling place? It is a space into which we invite another, the stranger - the space opened up by the Torah that commands the Jews to attend to the care of the stranger. Drawing upon the Hebrew language, this chapter examines Jewish thinking about exile and return. Arguing that exile is not a punishment but is itself part of the Jewish journey to redemption, this chapter addresses (1) the relation between exile and revelation, (2) the condition of the soul in exile, and (3) the traumatic isolation of exile. The chapter shows that (1) Jewish thinking about any spiritual journey is different from the thinking that characterizes Western speculative thought, and that (2) for Jewish thought, exile is a metaphysical condition

The conclusion examines two stories from 2016 that reflect broader themes of veterans returning to Việt Nam. The appointment of Vietnam veteran and alleged war criminal Bob Kerrey to Chair of Fulbright University Vietnam revived the now-familiar narrative about American redemption in Việt Nam, while the pilgrimage of thousands of Australians to Việt Nam for the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan demonstrated a profound sense of entitlement to Vietnamese spaces. The conclusion summarizes that veterans returned in search of resolution or peace, which manifested in nostalgia. Upon return, many returnees found a measure of peace, but were challenged by the erasure of their wartime presence. Veterans negotiated this displacement by drawing from wartime narratives and performing nostalgic practices to reclaim their sense of belonging in Việt Nam. Yet the 2016 stories indicate that veteran influence in the country will decline as Việt Nam moves on from war.

Chapter 8 examines how veterans worked to reassert their wartime connection to peacetime Việt Nam. Many veterans returned to Việt Nam with strong feelings of diasporic connection to the physical space of the country, feelings that were often challenged by local practices, national memories, and the effects of the passage of time. This chapter explores how veterans negotiated that challenge by engaging in nostalgic practices – such as recreating “bar culture,” expressing nostalgic discontent at the corruption of peacetime Việt Nam, and establishing hierarchies of diasporic belonging among the expatriate communities – before turning to explore how veterans justified their presence in Việt Nam, showing how they harnessed Australian and American wartime culture, values, and knowledge in order to establish their authority. This chapter concludes by analyzing how Australian and US returnees made sense of their return to Việt Nam as living legacies of war.

Chapter 5 examines the dynamics in veterans’ meeting with Vietnamese. A common goal of returnees was to meet “the enemy,” and the solidarity they found with fellow soldiers in Việt Nam became a key theme in veterans’ narratives. This chapter unpacks a near-uniform claim made by veterans that the Vietnamese bore no grudge for the war and welcomed veterans back to Việt Nam wholeheartedly. Because many American veterans positioned themselves as atoning for wartime participation, they viewed this reaction as forgiveness. Australian veterans, conversely, drew from Australia’s national mythology to argue that the Vietnamese welcomed them back because they loved and respected Australian soldiers. This chapter situates veterans’ claims about forgiveness, solidarity, and belonging in Việt Nam in the context of Vietnamese diplomacy, examines the inclusion and exclusion of different Vietnamese groups from veterans’ solidarity narratives, and explores concealed hostility on both sides.

Chapter 1 examines the first era of veterans’ return journeys. Between 1981 and 1994, a trickle of Australian and American Vietnam veterans returned to Việt Nam on journeys of reconciliation. As Western war commemorations and popular culture representations allowed veterans to reflect on their wartime experiences, some returned to Việt Nam to address lingering questions they had about the people, the country, and the war. Others returned in reaction to contemporary political issues, while major economic changes within Việt Nam acted as a cue for veterans who had long dreamed of returning. For some veterans, returning marked a turning point that challenged them to atone for the war, while others found new opportunities and relationships. These first returnees discovered a place that had seemingly moved on from war, which brought them a measure of peace. Many became advocates for formal reconciliation with and restitution for the Vietnamese.

Chapter 3 examines the third era of veterans’ return journeys, from 2006–16. This final period was defined by war commemoration. As Vietnam War commemoration surged in Australia and the United States, increasing numbers of Australian veterans chose to mark a string of major war anniversaries in Việt Nam, while the cultural militarization that paralleled the unfolding War on Terror led anti-war American veterans to reflect on their service. Việt Nam’s tourism industry tapped the growing Western market by turning toward kitsch reproductions of war that hinged on American memories. Organized tours became more popular as returnees became more diverse and reached retirement. Australian veterans strongly preferred commercial battlefield tourism and private troop reunions, while Americans favored peace- or healing-oriented returns. Among both groups, tours were refined and contained over the years to expatriate areas, increasingly marketing nostalgia tourism and secluding returnees from the realities of postwar Việt Nam.

The Introduction explains that veterans returned to Việt Nam in search of resolution, or peace, in their personal relationships with the war. This search manifested in nostalgia for “Vietnam,” with returnees acting as a diasporic community forged in war. While many returnees found a measure of peace upon return, they were also challenged by the erasure of their wartime presence. Veterans drew on wartime memories and performed nostalgic practices to recapture their sense of belonging in Việt Nam. Outlining three distinct eras of returnees, this chapter shows how a comparative, transnational perspective reveals stark differences in American and Australian war memories, narratives, and imaginings of “Vietnam.” This chapter presents a review of the existing scholarship on the topic of returning veterans, situating the book in broader literature on the war and its legacies; explains the book’s oral history methodology and analytic approach; and outlines the broader structure of the book.