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. © 2013 IOM.

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international migration labor mobility Poland post-communism labor market employment