A QUALITTIVE STUDY OF REENTRY ADJUSTMENT ISSUES: THE CASE OF INDONESIAN RETURNEES

Abstract

Returning home issues was interesting to investigate because after someone stays overseas, sojourners should be back in their home country. The critical problem for Indonesian returnees is a complex challenge for returnees and difficulty in re-adaptation when returning to the home country. The purpose of this study is to understand returnees' perception of reentry adjustment and to discover factors that may have contributed to the successful reentry adjustment process. This study uses a qualitative approach through face-to-face interviews; and qualitative descriptive design through open-ended questions that were submitted through an online survey. This study's result raises several factors related to difficulty in reentry adjustment, particularly when contextualized to Indonesian returnees. In general, the elements that appear are grouped in psychosocial factors: problem in re-adaptation, change in identity, and expectation-reality gap, and non-psychosocial factors: career, job, and skills.