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Article History

Received: 11 May 2025

Accepted: 27 April 2026

First Online: 7 May 2026

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: The paper was reviewed, and the Ethical Committee approved the study titled: Reintegrating Home: Economic, Social and Cultural Challenges of Return Migration in South Punjab, Pakistan under the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad, Pakistan. Approval/Reference: (37 DMS/2025) Dated: 15-02-2025, and adhered to ethical principles to reduce the risk and not to harm respondents. Everything was done in relation to the accepted institutional and national research ethics regulations (and, in the case, principles of the Declaration of Helsinki).

: Each participant gave their oral informed consent before participants took part between 1 March 2025 and 30 April 2025. The subjects were notified as to the nature of the research, participation procedures, applied in the collection and use of the data, struggle to guarantee the confidentiality and anonymity, as well as the right of the subjects to quit the research process without penalty. This was informed by the fact that oral consent was more suitable in the field setting, where the participants were considered, and literacy factored in. The consent was recorded in the interviewer notes at the time the consent was received. All the gathered information was considered as highly confidential and used exclusively with an academic purpose. They do not provide any personally identifiable information in this manuscript.