In parts of Europe, migrant workers head home

By Gareth Jones and Kuba Jaworowski

WARSAW/EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Four years after Polish graphic designer Chris Rychter headed to Britain to find work and study as a citizen of the European Union, he and his wife have returned home.

Part of a swelling tide of migration back east, they are having a house built in a suburb of the Polish capital.

"It took me just three days to find a job back in Warsaw," Rychter, 27, told Reuters. "We never saw Britain as home... We went for the adventure and to get some professional experience."

Their move highlights strong economic growth in the new EU member states and an accelerating slowdown in Britain -- but also how quickly a pragmatic younger European generation has adapted to working in the 21st-century globalised economy.

Rychter's wife Sabina has brought her job with a British-based credit insurance company with her.

"You could say I am tele-commuting," she said. "In today's world, with computers and mobile phones, my presence in head office is not required as before. I can sit here in Warsaw and have the flexibility to do my job irrespective of time zones."

Helped by cheap travel as flights between Warsaw and London grew almost tenfold since Poland joined the EU in 2004, the Rychters show how Europe has shrunk and that -- contrary to a popular view -- migrant flows are not all one-way.

Economists now see a turnstile or pendulum effect of people moving between countries after quite short stints, in search of better conditions.

Statistics on migration within the 27-nation EU are not precise, but around half of an estimated one million people from eastern Europe who moved to Britain since 2004 have already returned home, according to a recent report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a British think-tank.

Work applications from the eight east European countries that joined the EU in 2004 were down 13 percent in the January to March period from last year, British government data show.

For many eastern European migrants, recent currency market trends favor a return, and Poland's government wants people back to help plug labor gaps that are stoking wage inflation at a time of fast rising food and fuel prices.

EASTERN PROMISE

The trend is also positive for the wider Polish economy. Warsaw real estate broker Malgorzata Czerwinska said around 20 percent of the apartments she sells now go to such returnees, who generally pay cash with savings made abroad.

Only Britain, Ireland and Sweden opened their job markets to the easterners in 2004: other older member states have slowly followed and France will open its labor market in July.

Poland, with 38 million people, is by far the largest of the 2004 eastern entrants. Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007.