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1. Introduction
The Eastern enlargement of the European Union was followed by massive East-West migration with the majority of migrants being young and highly educated (Kahanec and Zimmermann, 2010; Kureková, 2011). The impact of post-accession migration on home countries is determined by whether or not the migrants return to the home country and how well they assimilate into the home country labour market after returning. The literature has been unclear about the degree of return migration to Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. While some studies argue that no mass return migration to home country labour markets took place during the economic crisis and most migrants opted for a wait-and-see strategy (Barcevičius et al., 2012), others have found relatively high return migration rates for some CEE countries, including Slovakia (Zaiceva and Zimmermann, 2016).
Existing studies document mixed results regarding the labour market integration of return migrants. The migration experience might generate important individual-level benefits and give signals to employers about the valuable skill-set that work experience gained abroad can help to develop. However, many CEE migrants work abroad in jobs that are below their formal level of education (Kahanec and Kureková, 2013; Voitchovsky, 2014), and therefore, lack relevant work experience. For example, Barcevičius et al. (2012) found that returnees often encountered difficulties reintegrating successfully due to the gap they have had in their career development, which is particularly true for young people without work experience that relates to their qualifications.
There are several research gaps in particular with respect to the issue of labour market integration patterns of young return migrants as a specific group in the labour market, but also about the perceptions of employers of foreign work experience and returnee salary and position expectations. We focus on these issues studying the case of Slovakia where, to date, the phenomenon of return migration has not been systematically mapped. Slovakia is a particularly an interesting case because it is one of the new accession countries with a high share of post-accession work migration among young people (Kureková, 2011; Kahanec and Kureková, 2016). It has suffered from a poorly performing labour market, characterised by high unemployment, high youth unemployment and structural deficiencies reflected in large regional inequalities (Kureková, 2011). It is therefore interesting to study...