With hindsight it is clear that the assumptions that most of the studies were using
to quantify future flows were faulty and led to imprecise conclusions. In the case of some
countries (e.g. the UK at the receiving end and Poland at the sending end) this resulted in
a significant economic and social impact. Most of these works were anchored in the
neoclassical theory of migration which proposes wage differentials as the most important
determinant of migration. This paper argues that the assumptions that most of the studies
used to estimate future flows were faulty and led to imprecise conclusions. While wage
and income differentials arguably play a role in affecting migrant decisions, this paper
will show that the neoclassical theory of migration struggles to account for significantly
different rates of outmigration from CEE countries which share relatively similar living
standards and wage differentials relative to Western Europe. In spite of the rigor that the
neoclassical theory of migration offers, it is rather poorly equipped to provide reliable
ways of analyzing and predicting migration in the context of EU East-West migration.