PRACA I RODZINA: ROZWAŻANIA POLAKÓW MIESZKAJĄCYCH W NORWEGII O POWROCIE DO KRAJU

Post-accession emigration from Central Europe, and Poland in particular, is an important feature of contemporary migration flows in Europe. While there is now a substantial body of research on Polish migration to the UK exploring one of the largest post-accession flows, there has been less focus on other destination countries. This paper is based on a qualitative study of Polish migrants in Norway, the most common destination country in Scandinavia for post-accession migrants. The paper explores return considerations among Polish migrants in Norway through a three-fold focus: first, exploring the notion of Polish post-accession migration as liquid and temporary; second, questioning the primacy of economic factors in understanding return considerations; and third, adopting a transnational framework for the analysis. The paper argues that work and family considerations are key to migrants’ decision-making processes and experiences, and play out differently depending on highly individual circumstances. Yet, despite the fact that open borders within the EU and EEA area support the notion of «liquid migration», it is found that in migrants’ considerations about return to the country of origin, as in their lived experience, the option of a «life in motion» is not a preferred solution. Rather, for most migrants work and family have to be eventually located in one place: either here, or there.