Circular migration or repeat migration is the temporary and usually repetitive movement of a migrant worker between home and host areas, typically for the purpose of employment.
It represents an established pattern of population mobility, whether cross-country or rural-urban.
An example of the effects of poorly reasoned immigration policies is the broad-based effort to restrict the circular flow of workers between Mexico and the US in the 1960s and 1970s.
Those policies have transformed legal, temporary migration into permanent, unauthorized or illegal migration [1].