The study focuses on cases of mobility where the individuals moved from their own instigation and continued relocating, returning and leaving again. The main goal was to find out if such individuals realize they have gained bicultural competence or if indeed they deliberately aimed at gaining it by overseas experience. At the age of globalisation competence to communicate inter- and cross culturally is valued, but is the skill recognised when someone has gained it, is it deliberately acquired or an accidental by-product of activities motivated by something else?

The three research questions were: how do returning migrants perceive their bicultural competence, how do they negotiate their bicultural identity, and how do they value their bicultural competence and how do they think the environment values it?