Boomerang Behaviour and Emerging Adulthood: Moving Back to the Parental Home and the Parental Neighbourhood in Sweden

This paper makes two original contributions to research on young adults’ boomerang mobility. First, it reveals the magnitude and complexity of return moves by young people to their parental home and neighbourhood. Secondly, it shows that the determinants and associates of return migration vary significantly when analysed at two different geographical scales—the parental home and the parental neighbourhood area. Using longitudinal data (1986–2009) on four cohorts of young adults, we find that boomeranging to the parental home in Sweden has increased in times of economic recession and is associated with economic vulnerability, such as leaving higher education or entering unemployment, and partnership dissolution. While returning to the parental home can offer financial support in times of life course reversal, we found gender differences indicating a greater independence among young women than men. Returning to the parental neighbourhood is found to be a very different kind of mobility than returning to co-reside with one’s parents, involving the migration decisions of more economically independent young adults. Results also indicate that returns to the parental neighbourhood, as well as returns to the parental home, can be part of young people’s life course changes.