Understanding the experiences of return and re-adaptation among Polish returnees from long-term international migration: a conceptual framework of re-adaptation

Abstract

We already know from studies of return migration that factors such as migration duration, return preparedness, and willingness, or returned migrants’ collisions with the home country reality, are vital to their post-return re-adaptation. We know less about which spheres re-adaptation goes most smoothly or is most difficult. Through the analysis of research results, this article proposes a conceptual framework for studying return mobilities and thus contributes to a better understanding of return and re-adaptation realities. Drawing upon 33 interviews with Polish long-term international migrants returning to Poland, the text analyzes their re-adaptation in three layers: individual experience, social relationships, and social environment, and thus, reveals various degrees of re-adaptation. The analysis demonstrates that a complete return requires adaptation in all three layers. Nevertheless, the individual experiencing of return is crucial and determines the process in other layers. To better understand re-adaptation, future research needs to elaborate more on migrants’ individual properties that govern the post-return experiences and to consider the perspective of the receiving society that does or does not welcome the returnees.

Keywords:

• Return migration
• re-adaptation
• post-return experiences
• receiving society
• Polish migration
• international migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

Data available from the author upon reasonable request.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The Polish Census 2011 reports that between 2002 and 2011, almost 300 000 migrants returned to Poland after at least one year-long migration (Karolak 2016), whereas the Public Opinion Research Center polls estimate that in the decade 1998–2007, even 2,900,000 Poles might have returned (Anacka, Matejko, and Nestorowicz 2013). Other estimates are that in the years 2008–2011, between 23% and 32% of Polish migrants returned home (Frelak Segeš and Hahn-Schaur 2019). According to Eurostat (2021), in 2021, out of a total of 241 116 immigrants to Poland, in the case of 76 549 immigrants the reporting country was the country of birth.

2 The cities were Białystok, Gdańsk, Lublin, Łódź, Rzeszów, Warszawa, and Wrocław; they were not a birth place for six returnees.

3 The twentieth century migration from Poland to the USA mainly contributed to the stereotype of returning migrant as a successful person: rich, life-satisfied, aiding their families financially; it also aroused envy in those who did not get their chance to go abroad and thus succeed (Grzeszczyk 2003). Today Agnieszka clarifies: 'To them, it seems that when I came back from America, I got God-knows-what and God-knows-how much, and God-knows-where I've been’.