At a meeting I recently went to, there was a special welcome to returnees.
The production of this new word is interesting:
The employer is the person who employs another. The employee is the person thus employed.
This is a productive pattern in law: grantor and grantee, lessor and lessee.
It is used also in the pattern sponsor and sponsee.
Now, the term returnee is interesting because it implies the individual is a passive subject: the individual has not 'done the returning' but is 'that which has been returned'.
I once said to Doug, 'I have definitely given up alcohol.' He replied, 'Princess, you didn't give it up; it gave you up.'
If I drank again, providence would return me to AA: I would not be able to return myself.