A systematic look at the evolution of the concept “sustainability,” of return and reintegration reveals a lack of either scholarly or policy-making consensus on what this concept means. While an absence of re-emigration and ensuring income sufficiency of the returnees characterised the earlier phases of how sustainability was conceptualized, the concept becomes fragmented with scholars developing additional criteria for measuring the sustainability of return and reintegration, and others questioning whether there could be one single definition of sustainability.To counter the ‘sedentary bias’ inherent in some definitions of sustainability, it became essential to re-introduce the element of voluntariness in migrant decision-making.Based on an inductive thematic analysis of 40 in-depth interviews with what I call 'decided returnees,' I explore how the nurturing of transnational commercial and professional ties with the former host state can affect the sustainability of economic livelihood on return to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the ICT sector (and other export-oriented industries). However, the paper also reveals that such transnational ties could hinder the sustainability of return in fields that are more place-bound and susceptible to greater political control, such as public employment in the education and health sectors.The policy discussion section of the paper looks at what sustainability of ‘decided’ return migration means from the perspectives of home and host states.