Re-emigration from the historical, demographical and sociological perspective (between 1918 and 1989)

The aim of this paper is to present re-emigration from a diachronic perspective, i.e. between 1918 and 1989. The analysis focuses on returns during the interwar period, documenting their specifi city, determinants, intensity, as well as on the construction of their ideologies, myths and patterns in a specifi c social and economic context. In historic and sociological terms, the analysed returns are both the background and the reference for comparisons in contemporary research on returns. Knowledge about “old” migration waves may be a useful source of information on macrosocial and global determinants of returns, as well as on state re-emigration policies, and it may help to reconstruct knowledge on experience of return migrants. Recollecting this phenomenon, as well as the process, gains particular importance in the context of a huge wave of contemporary emigration from Poland, on the one hand, and of returns such migration generates, on the other hand. Three important stages of return migration have been distinguished, namely: (1) traditional - before the World War II, (2) during the World War II and directly after its end, as well as at the times of People’s Republic of Poland (by 1989), and (3) after 1989, subdivided into two stages, namely, until 2004 and after 2004 (post-accession to the European Union)