The contribution of this article is to collect and evaluate developed-country citizen-migration motives during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic (March 2020–March 2021) by concentrating on return and circular migration to the Nordic and Baltic countries. The focus is on trying to understand who returned and why, and if these individuals were likely to stay or engage in further circular migration. In our exploratory study, we engaged with prevailing migration theories to analyse our unique dataset, to ascertain how well existing scholarship might account for and predict migration during a crisis situation. The study makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion on the effect of Covid-19 on migration patterns, especially of highly qualified migrants, and calls for further scholarly investigation into the impact of emotions, social relations and obligations on return and circular migration motivations. This study also reveals how governments with established diaspora policies and initiatives that promote return migration engaged with the returning citizens.

本文的贡献是收集和评估 Covid-19 大流行第一年（2020 年 3 月至 2021 年 3 月）发达国家公民的移民动机，重点关注北欧和波罗的海国家的回返和循环移民。重点是试图了解谁返回以及为什么返回，以及这些人是否有可能留下来或进行进一步的循环移民。在我们的探索性研究中，我们利用流行的移民理论来分析我们独特的数据集，以确定现有的学术成果如何解释和预测危机情况下的移民。该研究为正在进行的关于Covid-19对移民模式（尤其是高素质移民）影响的讨论做出了宝贵贡献，并呼吁进一步开展学术调查，研究情绪、社会关系和义务对回国和循环移民动机的影响。这项研究还揭示了制定了促进回国移民政策和举措的政府如何与回国公民进行互动。