Labor migration is an important component of globalization which promotes the economic development of many countries with transitional economies and emerging civil societies. The influence of international labor migration from the perspective of its home country has become the focus of many studies throughout the recent decade (Tolstokorova, 2009; Hughes, 2000; and others). While it may be true that wage migrant-sending households rely on remittances to increase consumption, international migration also produces benefits because families can also use this money to sustain schooling of younger family members. Research by Taylor, Mora, & Adam (2006) provides evidence to this assumption, showing that remittances help loosen up credit constraints among receiving family members, enabling them to invest more substantially in their children’s education. Others working in this tradition have taken a definitely more negative approach, concentrating their attention on the negative aspects of cross-border migration (Hapon, 2004). Emigration is especially strong in the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe. According to Christina Montefusco (2008), who studied worldwide emigration of women, there are 7 million women migrant laborers from Ukraine (out of 48 million of the Ukraine’s population). Mass cross-border migration of Ukrainian female population (Lavrynenko, 2009) resulted in the development of complex social, psychological and educational problems, caused by the disconnection of traditional family ties, rapid growth of dysfunctional families, increase of social orphans and homeless children.

 Using a case study approach, the study explores the current dynamics of social life in Ukraine influenced by the processes of female labor migration promoting existential frustrations of returning migrants, their social and personal mal-adaptation (Hapon, & Koshmanova, 2010). This social phenomenon is strengthened by the returning migrants’ professional marginalization caused by social depreciation of professional knowledge and skills (Golovashenko, 2006).  This paper, then, closely examining personal, social and psychological factors of cross-border labor migration, will define indicators of mal-adaptation of women who returned from labor migration as compared to women who did not emigrate and stayed in the country as temporary unemployed.  It will show that there is a connection between their levels of mal-adaptation and personal self-effectiveness, their communication control. The paper is based on two suppositions: (1) Women who returned to their sending country from labor migration are characterized by specific features of mal-adaptation according to the parameters of absence of professional occupation; instability of financial status; presence of inner discomfort; perception of own health, family, home setting, their future and attitude toward society. (2) There is a connection between females’ level of mal-adaptation and their levels of personal self-effectiveness and communicative self-control. The study is based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods of research, as well as general psychological, historical and systematic principles of human development and objectivity. It employed a document analysis and methods of mathematical statistics. The authors suggest practical recommendations on the perspectives of educational work with temporary unemployed females, especially with those who returned to their sending country from labor migration.

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