Labour Market Behaviours of Back‐and‐Forth Migrants From Poland

Abstract

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Poland became the main sending country in Central Europe. Despite the lack of institutional barriers to settling in member states of the European Union since 2004, many Polish migrants continued to undertake temporary labour mobility including repetitive, back‐and‐forth moves. This article examines the relationship between migrants' back‐and‐forth international mobility and their activity in the labour market of the sending country. It describes changes in the labour market status of migrants engaging in repetitive migration, based on two surveys conducted in Poland in 2001 and 2007, complemented by qualitative follow‐ups. The results show that migrants deploy various economic strategies: reconcile employment in both countries; abandon jobs in Poland; or only remain economically active abroad. In many cases back‐and‐forth migration led to being unemployed in Poland, which constitutes an important challenge for labour market policy. Local Public Employment Services (PES) should be able to distinguish unemployed persons who undertake repetitive, back‐and‐forth migration. Local PES should include profiles of unemployed persons and questions about migration experience and its character: labour/non‐labour migration, short‐/long‐term, single/repetitive, etc. For each unemployed person, the process of career guidance provided by the local PES should assess the possible impact of back‐and‐forth migration on the labour market situation in Poland. The back‐and‐forth migration should be taken into account at the level of career guidance supplied by Career Centres at high schools and universities.

Juxtaposed intra-EU youth mobility: motivations among returnees to Latvia

“…Eastern European migrants are largely perceived to be low-skilled (Parutis, 2014;Favell, 2008), as relocation implied a trade-off of lowered social status for higher income (Markova and Black, 2007;Favell, 2008). Polish migrants tend to return after economic goals have been achieved due to personal motives or attracted by welcoming economic conditions in the home country (Coniglio and Brzozowski, 2016;Fihel and Grabowska-Lusińska, 2014 for existing family members, realized goals or a desire to start a business in the home country (Sandu et al, 2017).…”

Can the Concept of Lifestyle Migration be applied to Return Migration? The Case of Estonians in the UK

“…Much of the research on East-West movement has focused on Polish workers, not least due to the large number of Polish migrants and researchers (see Burrell, 2009;Drinkwater et al, 2009;Fihel and Grabowska-Lusi nska, 2014;Janicka and Kaszmarcyk, 2016;McGhee et al, 2012). In terms of Eastern Europeans in the UK, most studies have focused on low skilled workers, which has pushed Cook et al (2011) to make an ironic remark about the stereotypical Eastern European migrants being depicted as male, Polish, low-skilled workers saving up money to return.…”

Migration and development at home: Bitter or sweet return? Evidence from Poland

“…In spite of the intensive return waves of migrants – in particular from Central and Eastern Europe – there exists limited evidence on the economic implications of such labour movement back to source countries (see De Coulon and Piracha, 2005; Iara, 2006; Fihel and Grabowska-Lusińska, 2014; Grabowska, 2016; Martin and Radu, 2012). Moreover, the knowledge on whether and under which circumstances the returnees are able to productively exploit the skills acquired during the migration spell is generally scarce in the migration studies literature.…”