Blijven of terugkeren?

Labour migrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) form a growing migrant population in the Dutch society. This paper examines to what extent integration, both structural and sociocultural, and transnational activities relate to return intentions of labour migrants from CEE-countries living in the Netherlands. Several hypotheses are derived from four conventional migration theories including neoclassical migration theories, the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) and classical assimilation theory. Using data of 654 labour migrants from Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, both linear and multinomial logistic regression analyses are executed to explore which directions the relationships have, and which of the two concepts (integration or transnationalism) is the strongest predictor. The results show a strong negative relationship between sociocultural integration and return intentions: the stronger labour migrants are integrated in the Dutch culture, the weaker their wishes to return. Occupational status, one aspect of structural integration, relates negative to return intentions. Sociocultural integration turns out to be the strongest predictor of return intentions of labour migrants from Poland, Bulgaria and Romania in the Netherlands.