Can the Concept of Lifestyle Migration be applied to Return Migration? The Case of Estonians in the UK Maarja Saar* and Ellu Saar** ABSTRACT This article makes the case for using the concept of lifestyle migration to understand return migration. The key argument is that there are several advantages for engaging with lifestyle migration literature when analysing people’s return, of which the prime reason is to draw attention away from the affective and emotional aspects of return migration and view it as a conscious decision related to future planning. A combination of statistical data and interviews with highly skilled Estonian migrants in the UK shows how the return of these migrants is often related to moving from one life stage to another. In the conscious process of planning for a family, several aspects related to both countries were evaluated and the return was often explained as benefitting the (potential) family. The article also claims that there is a need for lifestyle migration research to engage more actively on interlinkages between lifestyle and life stage. INTRODUCTION In the last decade, the notion of lifestyle migration – migration motivated by life quality related concerns – has enriched migration research (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009; O’Reilly and Benson, 2009). This research has mostly focused on affluent Western migrants moving to the sunbelts of sub-tropical locales (Oliver and O’Reilly, 2010; Benson, 2011; Korpela, 2014;  Akerlund and Sand- berg, 2015). These affluent migrants talk about their migration in terms of factors such as more amenable climate, a slower pace of life, more recreational opportunities etc (see Torkington, 2010). It is, however, interesting that the idea of lifestyle motivating migration decisions has only been applied to out-migration and only rarely to return migration (see Bolognani, 2014; Eimermann, 2017). This article intends to widen the scope of lifestyle migration research by introducing life- style motivated return migration among highly skilled Estonians in London. The topic of return migration by Eastern Europeans has been understudied (see some examples Martin and Radu, 2012; Vlase, 2013; Parutis, 2011; Duda-Mikulin, 2017), especially considering the vast amount of research carried out on Eastern European migration in general (Drinkwater et al., 2009; Black et al., 2010; Ciupijus, 2011; Drinkwater and Garapich, 2015). Several Eastern European countries have experienced steady return migration, including Estonia, which in recent years has had more return migrants than emigrants (Tammur, € A€ ar and Meres, 2017). Therefore, there is a need to pay more attention to migrant returnees and the factors behind their return. *S€ odert€ orn University, Sweden ** Tallinn University, Estonia doi: 10.1111/imig.12601 © 2019 The Authors International Migration © 2019 IOM International Migration ISSN 0020-7985 Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.