Returned "yuppie" emigrants are finding that Ireland is taking on the same negative features they came back to escape, The Scattering conference was told. Dr Mary Corcoran, a sociologist from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, said Ireland's economic boom left returned emigrants with a quandary.
The rise of the "Celtic Tiger" was founded on a creeping individualism, while the aspects of Irish life that were most valued by emigrants were disappearing.
Tradition, which had always fuelled the imagination of the emigrant, was under threat.
Just as in the foreign cities from which they had returned, commuting times were increasing, the cost of housing was becoming prohibitive and multinationals were as demanding of their Irish employees as were their parent companies.
In the 1970s, Ireland's Gross Domestic Product was half that of the UK, she said. But by last year, the State was producing more wealth per head than the UK.
"Clearly Ireland is now exerting a magnetic attraction, not just on the diaspora but on immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers from Europe and beyond."
Ms Yukiko Kobayashi of the London School of Economics said well-qualified Irish emigrants fared better in Britain than their peers did at home.
The proportion of Irish-born people in the higher social classes in the UK was higher than that of British-born people or of Irish people with the same educational level at home. The difference was especially marked for women, she said.