WARSAW, Poland - Marek Tomasikiewicz and his family left Poland a few years ago for higher wages and better schools in Britain, but times have changed.

Economies in western Europe are struggling, and some of the hundreds of thousands of Poles who sought better lives elsewhere are starting to trickle home, where rapid economic growth and falling unemployment have brightened many people's outlook.

Tomasikiewicz has returned, lured by an emotional attachment to his homeland and the sense that well-paid work can be had in Poland now. His family plans to join him after his 23-year-old daughter, Agnieszka, finishes her studies to be a lawyer.

Since 2004, when this formerly communist nation joined the European Union, its economy has thrived and spawned new jobs, higher wages, a stronger currency — and, no less significantly, new hope for the future.

While Polish migrants are not returning en masse, cases like Tomasikiewicz stand as a sign of the new optimism and could mark the start of a new trend if the Polish economy continues to roar ahead.

"In Poland, things have really changed a lot," said Tomasikiewicz, 48, who moved to Britain in 2001 to work as a bus driver and construction worker. "Now, jobs are just waiting for you if you want to work. I see a colossal difference."

He makes a living now on tourism, renting out one vacation house on the Baltic shore and another in the mountains that he bought largely with his British earnings. He also plans to seek work as a bus driver.

With the economic improvement, fewer Poles are leaving home.

The Home Office in Britain, the leading destination of Polish migrants along with Ireland, said the number of applications by Poles seeking work permits from August 2007 to June 2008 fell 17 percent from a year earlier, down to 134,255 from 162,495.

Poland is also attracting its own immigrants, from places like Ukraine, Belarus and Vietnam.

The jobless rate, which stood at 19.7 percent in 2003, was down to 6.8 percent this July, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistical office. Wages keep climbing — recently averaging nearly 3,000 zlotys ($1,320) a month, up from 2,256 zlotys ($990) in 2003.

The Polish currency also has risen sharply against the British pound, from more than 7 zlotys to the pound in 2004 to just over 4 zlotys now. That means Poles earning pounds in Britain and sending them home get about 40 percent less in exchange than four years ago.

In Wroclaw, one of Poland's best-run and most affluent cities, noticeable numbers of Polish migrants have returned from Britain and elsewhere, showing up at companies like Volvo to seek work and helping ease a labor shortage, said Pawel Panczyj, a city official who heads efforts to promote foreign investment.

"Just in the last four months, the situation has changed," he said. Local companies "are not experiencing such a dramatic difficulty in finding people anymore."

Migration experts say that as Poland nears the fifth anniversary of joining the EU, it is reaching a critical phase: If those who left don't return soon, they probably never will, depriving the country of people it will need in the coming decades as it grapples with the trademark problems of the industrialized world — low birth rates and an aging population.

History has shown that migrants who stay in a country longer than five years tend to never leave because they've laid down roots and lost ties to their old lives, said Krystyna Iglicka, a migration expert at the Center of International Relations in Warsaw.

Maciej Duszczyk, a migration expert who advises Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government, agreed that now is a "very crucial time."

If Poland follows in the steps of Spain and Ireland, which saw economic surges after joining the EU, then 60 percent to 70 percent of Poles who went abroad will return, he says. If not, most will probably never come back.

"We are probably in a situation where these next few years will decide the future," he said.

The fate of the economy in Britain, where the majority of Polish migrants have gone, will also help determine whether Poles stay or go.

In past years, Britain's booming construction sector and strong economy pulled in hundreds of thousands of Poles, with some estimates putting the number at around 1 million. But British Treasury chief Alistair Darling says the country is on the brink of recession, facing its worst economic crisis in 60 years.

Still, many Poles abroad say money isn't everything. They choose to remain because they value what they consider a greater tolerance and a less burdensome bureaucracy in western states like Britain.

Robert Brzezinski, a 40-year-old cameraman who moved to London last March, said he won't go home because he was disgusted by the small-town conservatism of Polish society and inefficiency, corruption and surliness of officials in public life.

"There is a still a communist mentality in government offices, post offices," he said. "If you want to build a house, for example, there are problems like under communism. It's a rotten system."

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