Settlers and Guests – Determinants of the Plans of Return Migration from UK and Ireland to Poland in the Period 2007-2009

According to the Polish Central Statistical Office estimates, after the year 2004, in which Poland joined the EU, more than 1 million Polish citizens moved to other EU countries. The recent economic crisis that influenced Poland asymmetrically as compared to the main migrant destination countries created an opportunity to observe how rapid changes in economic incentives can influence decisions about return migration. This paper has two aims: (1) identification of the strategies adopted by Polish emigrants that can explain their returns to the home country and (2) the verification of two major migration theories (the classical approach versus the New Economics of Migration approach). The analysis is based mainly on data coming from a unique three-edition survey of Polish emigrants conducted by the National Bank of Poland in the United Kingdom and in Ireland in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The discrimination between migration strategies is performed with the use of ordered logit models using extensive information from the survey.The results of the analysis show that, assuming that the plans regarding the migrants' duration of stay abroad reflect their migration strategies, the strategies are diverse and significantly correlated with the personal characteristics of emigrants. The intensity of outward migration flows can be explained by the classical theory but the results support the New Economics of Migration approach in the explanation of simultaneous return migration flows