What is the value of foreign work experience for young return migrants?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the value of foreign work experience for young migrants after their return to the home country labour market and their labour market preferences relative to stayers. Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyse the labour market integration patterns of young return migrants in Slovakia. After reconstructing the life histories of young people from online CVs, a set of regression models investigates the attractiveness, salary expectations and positions of interest to returnees in comparison to stayers. Findings: Post-accession foreign work experience increases the attractiveness of job candidates. Foreign work experience changes the expectations of returnees with respect to wages and widens their perspective on the location of future work. In the underperforming labour market, migration experience signals to employers a set of skills that differentiate young returnees from young stayers in a positive way. Research limitations/implications: While the web data are not representative, it allows the authors to study return migration from a perspective that large representative data sets do not allow. Social implications: Foreign work experience is, in general, an asset for (re)integration into the home labour market, but the higher salary demands of returnees might hinder the process in a less-skilled segment of the labour market. Originality/value: Return migration is a relatively underresearched area, and knowledge about the perception of returnees among employers and the labour market preferences of returnees is relatively limited. Another contribution lies in the use of online data to analyse return migration from the perspective of both labour demand and supply.