ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the experience of Polish diasporic students from the post-Soviet states who are studying in the ancestral homeland. It analyses the strategies of roots migration to the predecessors' country and examines how the notions of 'nation', 'home(land)' and 'belonging' are experienced and constructed by students when in the countries of birth and upon arrival in Poland. The chapter focuses on the impact of roots migration on students' psychosocial wellbeing. It tries to reconstruct students' coping practices in the ancestral homeland. Migration researchers often consider the 'homecoming' as psychosocially 'safe' as it constitutes the 'natural' closure of the migration circle. This presumption mostly refers, however, to first- or second-generation adult returnees who usually have maintained linkages with their country of origin. For instance, Vathi and Duci note that returnee children's psychosocial condition can be negatively affected not only by their young age and the socio-spatial context (place of relocation), but also by their lack of prior diasporic belongingness.
