Focusing on a case study of a non‐state actor called The Homecoming Revolution, which included interviews with staff as well as an analysis of reports, position papers, and testimonials on their website, I argue that attempts to incite return migration of skilled overseas South Africans, as an attempt to provide a fix for failures of the neoliberalising South African economy, hinge on a particular ideology of the body. I suggest that a constant focus on the supposed multiplier effects of the physical presence of skilled migrant bodies that have returned to South Africa, as well as the deployment of emotion as a means of mobilising expatriate bodies, constitutes an attempt to instrumentalise the transactionality of these bodies. This paper argues that more attention needs to be paid to the ways in which bodies are imagined and mobilised in neoliberalising states’ engagements with their diasporas. It also notes the irony of how skilled white bodies have emerged as a key focus of South African economic growth strategy.