Return migration to South Africa is still an unexplored and relatively new phenomenon. By using data collected through an online survey with around 400 South African participants, this paper investigates the relationship between stated reasons given by participants and the implicit reasons tied to their socio-economic profile. First of all, exploratory factor analysis is carried out in order to reduce items, obtaining a sensible classification of push and pull factors. Then, these factors are used as dependent and independent variables in some binary and multinomial logistic regression models that produce significant evidence about the differences between returnees, planners and stayers’ migration decision mechanisms.