Economic approaches and socio-cultural integration are still the most prominent frameworks applied to explain return migration and permanent settlement. In contrast to the bulk of literature focusing on established migrations from poorer to richer regions, the contribution analyses the permanence of emigration from economically highly developed countries. Based on a life-course approach, it highlights the interrelations between life-course domains shaping the intentions of German emigrants to settle permanently abroad, planning to return, and those who are still undecided. The analyses are based on the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS) surveying recently emigrated German citizens. The results show that almost half of those emigrants intend to return home after living for only a few years abroad, whereas every fifth reports permanent settlement intentions in the destination country. Multinomial logistic regressions demonstrate that the status within individual domains of the life course–particularly economic status, family arrangement, as well as existing social interactions–together with previous migration experiences shape the intended length of the current migration project.