Circular migration remains a poorly defined and heavily contested concept, despite its growing policy relevance (see section on circular migration in Part I, Chapter 4). In 2013, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) set up a working group tasked with the objective of defining and measuring circular migration, which they defined in broad terms as “a repetition of legal migration by the same persons between two or more countries” (UNECE, 2016). To differentiate circular migration from return migration, the trajectory must include an element of repetition, i.e., the person must migrate from country A at least twice. Circularity is not limited to one destination country, as long as the person returns to the same origin country more than once. The duration of stay in each country is needed to differentiate circular migrants from visitors, with a minimum stay of three months in each country being the most in line with the 2021 UN Recommendations for temporary mobility or ‘movers’ (Parusel, 2017).
Figure 3:
A circular migrant is “a person who has crossed the national borders of the reporting country at least three times in a ten-year period, each time with a duration of stay (abroad or in the country) of at least 12 months". A temporary (or ‘short-term’ according to the old conventions) circular migrant is “a person who has crossed the national borders of the reporting country at least three times over a 10-year period, each time with a duration of stay (abroad or in the country) of at least 90 days”. In order to avoid conflating circular migrants with international migrants, the period during which the movements are counted is typically limited to 10 years (UNECE, 2016).