Introduction

Currently, there is a growing interest in the process of return migration and the question of whether return migrants and especially high-skilled return migrants support the economic development of the nations or regions they are returning to. Research thus far has predominantly been based on high-tech regions in newly industrialised countries (NIC), such as Shanghai, China, and Bangalore, India (Saxenian 2006; Iredale & Guo 2001; Chacko 2007; Hunger 2000; Müller 2007; Müller & Sternberg 2006; Fromhold-Eisebith 2002), or the capital regions of some West African countries (Black & King 2004; Ammassari 2004; Ammassari & Black 2001). In all of these studies, an analysis of the regional pattern and selectivity of high-skilled return migration is missing. Instead, they seem to implicitly assume that high-skilled return migrants settle only in economically more advanced and dynamic regions.

The spatial pattern of high-skilled return migrants in Poland shows that this is not necessarily a valid assumption. The Polish census data of 2002 reveals that only 34 per cent of high-skilled Polish return migrants move to the region Mazovian, in which Warsaw as the main destination is located. The remaining two thirds move to other Polish voivodships (i.e., regions), which are quite heterogeneous in their economic structure and development (Fihel, Górny & Matejko 2006; Klagge et al. 2007). Hence, it is – at least for the Polish case – an open research question whether high-skilled migrants, in general, and more specifically, return migrants, actively seek economically advanced and dynamic regions.

At a national level there is evidence that migrants do not return to their country of origin before it has reached a certain level of economic and social welfare (Müller 2007; De Haas 2007a, 2007b). This can be observed in Poland and in other CEE countries, where return migration did not become an important trend before the deep political changes in 1989-1990 and the shift from a planned to a market economy. The extent to which high-skilled return migrants choose to relocate to economically more advanced and dynamic regions of their home countries has not yet been analysed. In general, Fassmann and Meusburger (1997) point out that job opportunities for the highly skilled are spatially concentrated, especially in finance and banking, specialised occupations and high management positions in transnational corporations.