This article sheds light on the unintended consequences of temporary migration from Poland by com-bining Merton’s functional analysis with Levitt’s work on social remittances. In addition to economic remittances, Polish migrants have been bringing norms, values, practices and social capital to their communities of origin since the end of the nineteenth century. The article presents a juxtaposition of the non-material effects of earlier migration from Poland, dating from the turn of the twentieth century, with those of the contemporary era of migration from Poland since the 1990s. The analysis shows that some aspects, such as negotiating gender roles, the changing division of household labour, individualistic lifestyles, new skills and sources of social capital, and changing economic rationalities are constantly being transferred by migrants from destination to origin communities. Con-temporary digital tools facilitate these transfers and contribute to changing norms and practices in Polish society. The article demonstrates that migration fulfils specific functions for particular sections of Polish society by replacing some functions of the communist state (e.g., cash assistance and loans from communist factories, factory and post-coop cultures) and by facilitating their adaptation to chang-ing conditions (e.g., changing gender relations, new models of family, job aspirations and social mobility).

This paper describes and tries to explain return intentions of Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian labour migrants in the Netherlands. Previous research has often emphasised the temporary or ‘liquid’ char-acter of Central and Eastern European labour migration. We find that a substantial number of labour migrants intend to stay in the Netherlands for many years, and sometimes forever. Data from a survey of Central and Eastern European (CEE) labour migrants (Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians) in the Neth-erlands (N = 654), is used to test three hypotheses about return intentions. Economic success or fail-ure is not found to be related to the return intentions of migrants. Apparently, some migrants return after being successful in migration, whereas others return after having failed. Migrants with strong links with Dutch society have less strong return intentions, whereas migrants with strong transnation-al ties intend to return sooner.